"You are in the tank"

So the McCain campaign, fed up with being called liars, holds a telephone press conference in which they proceed to attack the press for not exploring negative stories about Obama. But, in the process of describing these negative stories, they make the mistake of embellishing the details.

Here we see the end result of the McCain camp's decision to go with the flat-out-lie strategy. Would the press have been so willing to highlight these embellishments if they had not gone through several months of outright lies from the McCain team? Not likely.

More likely is that the press corps, tired of being used as McCain's bitch, has decided that McCain deserves none of the usual benefit-of-the-doubt hedging that we used to see.

And what is the McCain campaign's response to once again being called out on embellishments?

Asked about the series of errors, McCain aides could not provide evidence to back up Schmidt’s assertions.

One McCain aide, Michael Goldfarb, said Politico was “quibbling with ridiculously small details when the basic things are completely right.”

Another, Brian Rogers, responded more directly:

“You are in the tank,” he e-mailed.

Trust me guys, after years of experience seeing the way the press responds to criticism, I've learned that the last thing you want to do is accuse them of being "in the tank" for anyone. Even if it's true, they will just double down in response.