I think I finally figured out why the campaign ads Google spits out in the sidebar* are all McCain, despite my interpretation of this election as Middling Status Quo Guy vs Old Dude That May Be Insane:

1) Obama’s people value message discipline to an almost paranoid degree.  Google ads are fairly random, so that’s a no-go.  McCain’s people really don’t seem to give a fuck, so Google ads are a go for them.

2) Keywords.  I don’t talk about Obama much because frankly I don’t see much of substance to talk about with him, and see that as in a way the whole point of his campaign: having abandoned the few positions where he differed in any meaningful sense, he’s effectively running as the Generic Democrat that was trouncing the Generic Republican in the polls back when the campaign season first started — which is working.

Pick one, and add to it that the 3rd parties don’t have the money for much, at least as far as I can tell.

(* - as for any possibility of directly selling ad space, I dunno and don’t really care.  Besides, I can’t tell if I get enough traffic to justify it, and it’d probably break compatibility with the theme anyway.  I don’t want to change the look of the site just to stick an ad over there that I like, that’d only be an option if a shit-hot designer fell into my lap that could figure out purely based on content — visual design ain’t my strength — a look that would say what you’re getting here better than the tagline already does, without bashing anyone in the skull with it.)