I heard from a regular Undip reader this morning that John McCain continues to run ads in Iowa, and judging by what the reader is seeing, the McCain ads outnumber the Obama ads by a margin of about 2 to 1.  The reader also said that he’s seeing about three negative McCain ads for every positive one.

By all accounts, McCain is down by double digits in Iowa and has been for at least a month.  It probably is more “lost” to him than Michigan was when he pulled out.  So what is he doing?  Does he have internal numbers that contrast what the national polls are saying.  Does he think that there’s a Bradley effect in Iowa?  Or has his campaign just stopped trying to allocate resources according to reality?

Worse yet, is his campaign actually polling on the Bradley effect?  You would think that that would have leaked by now, but maybe not.  And it’s not stopping anytime soon — McCain is scheduled to go back to Iowa on Saturday.

This campaign gets uglier and weirder by the day.

UPDATE:  Both Chris Orr at TNR and Dan Balz in The Washington Post beat me to this today (and do a better job of reportin reporting).  Here’s Orr, quoting Balz:

The last time John McCain visited Iowa, all he got out of it was an embarrassing video of his testy meeting with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register and a column by former strategist Mike Murphy that derided the “stunning lack of competence in the McCain operation” and asked “Why put McCain in the wrong state, at the wrong place?”

But give McCain points for obstinance, if nothing else. As Jonathan Martin points out, he’s headed back to Iowa for a rally in Davenport on Saturday. Why? Dan Balz reports:

Asked why, if he has given up on Michigan, McCain has not given up on Iowa, a state that looks strong for Obama in public polls, [McCain Political Director Mike] DuHaime said because the campaign’s polling has Obama’s lead in the low single digits.

Hmm. There hasn’t been a ton of recent polling in Iowa, presumably because no one sees much point: Pollster.com lists it as “strong” Obama, RCP says “solid” Obama, and FiveThirtyEight gives Obama a 96 percent chance of winning there. Of the last ten polls listed on Pollster.com, only one has had the race closer than 7 points (the inaugural “Big Ten” poll, which was conducted in mid-September) and a majority have Obama’s lead in double digits. So either this visit is some kind of misplaced confidence game on McCain’s part, or his polls are, frankly, nuts.

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