First this, from this morning's New York Observer:

"Again invoking Mr. Obama’s intermittent encounters with Mr. Ayers, Mr. McCain asked a crowd in Albuquerque, N.M., on Oct. 6, “Who is the real Barack Obama?” Someone in the crowd screamed in reply, “a terrorist!” Mr. McCain grimaced, but kept going."

It’s the third time this morning I’ve read someone telling the anecdote, particularly the part about the grimace. I wonder, thinking about McCain’s performance last night, if he’s worried about what frenzy his campaign--i.e., Sarah Palin--has stoked the voters into. He seemed muted to me last night; also like a guy who was rethinking the down and dirty attacks in the back of his mind while the less dirty attacks were coming out of his mouth. Like a guy returning to his senses a bit, perhaps. And not wanting to be someone who inflamed racists and zealots into violence against Obama.

A former campaign advisor for McCain, Mark McKinnon, quit McCain's campaign last February, because, as he told NPR, "I would simply be uncomfortable being in a campaign that would be inevitably attacking Barack Obama. I think it would be uncomfortable for me, and I think it would be bad for the McCain campaign."

So it seems to me that they Know What They Do in the McCain camp--and that there must be people within the campaign, those who love the old McCain (the one moderate Dems used to like) and who are worried about the race-baiting, given the caliber of some of the people in the Right Wing. I've been canvassing in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley these last two weekends and while most people were at least polite, a couple of encounters were disturbing. One guy slammed his door on us when it was clear who we were working for. And then he actually got in his car and drove out to find us. "I was in Korea," he began. "I love blacks. I fought with blacks. Blacks have slept in my house. But this guy [Obama], is a nigger." Another group of canvassers had their car rammed by someone. We were told by a local guy who was with us, a young Marine just back from four years' service in Guantanamo, that this area had at one time been a recruiting ground for the KKK.

Is anyone working on this story--the story behind the grimace? It's an important one.