Team Obama: Incompetent?

Further evidence they don't know what they're doing:

Since his visit to southwest Missouri last week, presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain has aired more than three times as many campaign ads in the state as his Democratic rival, Barack Obama.
McCain’s campaign outspent and out-aired Obama in every major media market in Missouri, including St. Louis, from June 19 through last Wednesday. McCain held a town-hall forum in Springfield, Mo. on June 18.
McCain spent $224,696 for 791 spots that ran on local broadcast stations around Missouri. That compares to $115,054 spent by the Obama campaign to air 212 spots.

So, while the Obama campaign talks about sending their candidate to Alaska (3 Electoral College votes) and Europe (zero Electoral College votes), McCain's campaigning in Missouri, a swing state with 11 Electoral College votes -- where the Republican now leads by 7 points.

David Plouffe's PowerPoint prowess may have impressed Eleanor Clift, but I'm not impressed by a Democratic presidential campaign that talks grandiosely of "a 50-state strategy" while getting their butts kicked in Missouri, Kentucky and Florida. The poll trends most emphatically do not justify such manic overconfidence by Team Obama, especially given the lingering bitterness in the Clinton camp.

McCain's running circles around them in key swing states, while Plouffe & Co. devote staff time and resources to coordinating travel to London, Paris and points beyond. Sensible Democrats should be pushing the panic button at this point, although if they want to keep whistling past the graveyard, that's fine with me.

UPDATE: Change you can Photoshop:

(Hat tip: Instapundit.)

UPDATE II: Some Democrats begin to sweat.

UPDATE III: Time magazine analyzes the spin:

A series of national polls suggested that Obama's lead over McCain was expanding. Two of them — one by Newsweek, the other by the Los Angeles Times — showed his lead jumping to double-digits. The McCain campaign quickly — and rightly — criticized the polls' methodology, claiming each over-sampled self-identified Democrats. Other polls, like those by Gallup, Rasmussen and Time, suggest a narrower race. But the Obama folks capitalized on the perception shift by dispatching campaign manager David Plouffe to Washington, where he gave a 12-slide PowerPoint presentation demonstrating just how confident they are.

See? A couple of anomalous polls are the basis for Team Obama to push a "perception shift" with Plouffe's slideshow. It's all about getting the media to paint Obama as the confident frontrunner, in an attempt to create an early "bandwagon effect" for the Democrat. The problem is that Team Obama seems to be reading their own press releases, which is the only thing that can explain their wild-eyed talk of dispatching the candidate to Europe and Anchorage.

UPDATE IV: "Remember Dukakis."