Blog Buzz: Pew Poll Shows Barack Obama Leads Among Early Voters, Obama's Changing Tax Plan, McCain Adviser Says Sarah Palin Is a "Whack Job"

Our daily look at stories and topics that are lighting up the Internets:

Early Voters Are Cause for Early Celebration

A Pew Research poll released today shows Barack Obama leading by 19 percent among those who have already voted. Liberal bloggers are fairly confident that these results guarantee an Obama victory on Tuesday. A centrist blogger says the numbers should "scare John McCain." Most notable is that Obama has a narrow lead in 10 battleground states that voted for George W. Bush in 2004. The only questions remaining—who are the undecideds and who will they vote for? While Obama fans may think their guy has it locked up, a conservative blogger has seven reasons why a McCain-Palin win is a sure thing.

Obama Tax Plan Is a Slip'n Slide

Conservative bloggers—and John McCain—are jumping on a recent comment by Joe Biden and a new Obama ad, saying they are both evidence that Obama has changed his tax plan. Obama has said that families who make less than $250,000 and individuals who make less than $200,000 would get a tax cut; Obama's ad changes it to families making less than $200,000 and Biden said it was "anyone making less than $150,000." Conservative bloggers say Obama's plan is a "slippery slope" and are afraid if Obama is elected it will continue to slip. Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin at Politico think Biden's remark was probably just a slip-up (and Obama surrogates on TV say that's what it was); Marc Ambinder says it's "not accurate to say that Obama has changed his plan."

Sarah "Whack Job" Palin

The rift between the McCain and Palin camps (yes, that's camps, plural) has grown even deeper recently after a McCain adviser called Sarah Palin "a whack job." Christopher Orr at the New Republic says a rift is also forming between anti-McCain Republicans and anti-Palin Republicans. Liberal and pro-Obama bloggers say it's an example of why McCain's decision to choose Palin was terrible. A conservative blogger thinks that any criticisms directed toward Palin could be "more than equally applied to both Obama and Biden."

—Gretchen Hannes