An Associated Press article on MSNBC's website today reports that Barack Obama has already spent $3.3 million in television advertisements with a projected total of $90 million in campaign advertising to be spent by November 4th.

The dollar amounts are also buttressed by Obama's 11 percent point lead over McCain in the Gallup polls ("the largest advantage since the organization began testing voter opinions in their matchup early in the summer" the report claims.)

Yet, I think the most persuasive argument in support of Obama's advantage is the fact that his ad campaign has been predominantly positive as only a mere "34 percent of his ads attacked McCain directly."

The McCain/Palin campaign, on the other hand, seems to be scraping for negative attacks against Obama and nearly all of McCain's television spots have focused on Obama. The GOP's resort to personal attacks on Obama's personal life, his past affiliations (see the Bill Ayers issue), and campaign finances wreak of desperation and (I think) will ultimately prove detrimental to the McCain/Palin ticket as the more they try to pin the tail on Obama the less they are able to effectively address the economic crisis, which is going to be the deciding issue for American voters in this election.

Obviously, the economic crisis is playing into the hands of Democratic candidates across the nation as Republicans seem to be incapable of separating themselves from the disastrous fiscal idiocy of the last eight years and McCain is no exception.

Whether or not the situation we're currently in actually is the Bush administration's fault or not is not the issue, in the collective voting conscience across America it is. Perhaps it'd be more beneficial to McCain and Palin to redirect their attack-dog-tactics towards the Bush Administration rather than Obama. The problem lies in the obvious risk in such a move, Palin's utter incapability of making such a turn, and the bottomless ocean of fresh material it'd give Democrats to use against the Republican ticket.

The math for Obama, from this perspective, is much, much better than even the polls or dollar numbers can show.