As I’ve watched the debates and commercials unfold, there are several reasons that McCain can’t seem to get on track unrelated to the economic mess.

Here are my observations:

1) Obama has effectively countered McCain’s foreign policy experience with one particular line:

Senator McCain said that we would be welcomed as liberators. He said the shia and Sunni had not history of violence.

I am not sure if McCain has a counter to this other than to list along with Iraq other areas. But this has put a huge dent into the McCain campaign.

2) On health care, people who are solidly Republican texted me after the last debate and said “I like Obama’s health care plan better than McCains.”

The best I can respond is that I don’t like either one of them very much. I preferred something like Mitt despite some of its problems, but the biggest thing out there is that people who want to vote for McCain don’t like his plan.

That means that either he is not articulating it very well or its not a very good plan.

3) The biggest nail in McCain’s coffin that I can see right now is also a part of his health care plan and that is Barak’s insistence that McCain would “tax health benefits for the first time ever and that it would be a very large tax increase.

Beyond the problems with the plan (the biggest one being that the companies won’t really give the money to the employees and it will cost more for individuals to buy insurance than it does companies), the Obama campaign can now use this talking point to say that McCain wants to raise taxes.

It’s a very simple talking point and it’s true (sort of) that McCain’s plan would raise taxes. Now, it’s suppossed to be tax neutral, but that part doesn’t quite make the translation and that’s what Barak is using.