While speaking in Virginia Beach on Monday, with less than three weeks to go until the race is decided, John McCain noted that his campaign is six points behind that of his rival, Barack Obama.

This is surprising news—Virginia hasn’t supported a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964, when it threw its 13 electoral votes behind Lyndon B. Johnson in his race against Barry Goldwater.

What’s making Virginia so uncharacteristically blue these days?

Well, let’s talk about the economy.

Governor Timothy M. Kaine has recently announced that there is an estimated $2.5 billion shortfall in our state’s budget. The frenzy on Wall Street, the credit freeze and the collapse of the housing market haven’t helped Virginia’s already ailing economy.

So now Virginians are facing cuts in services such as education, health care, law enforcement, and hundreds of people will be losing their jobs.  Here in Goochland, the stormy nature of the economy has prompted county leaders to reexamine approving the funds needed to build a new elementary school.

As Republican strategist Ed Rollins said the other day, referring to the Clinton War Room mantra of, “It’s the economy, stupid,” this year’s battle cry could go a little something like this: “You morons, what have you done with my money, my life, my kids!”

The political hasn’t seemed this personal in a long, long time.

And concerns about terrorism and foreign relations, while still critical for our nation’s security and growth, simply seem less immediate when families fear losing their homes or their retirement funds. When candidates lose that connection with the reality of what many Americans are facing, they lose their chance to provide real answers to real dilemmas.

Last week McCain chose to launch attacks implying that Obama is hiding a shady past with ties to 60’s radical Bill Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground, a group that bombed federal buildings in protest of the Vietnam War. Obama, who was a child at the time of those bombings, once served with Ayers on the board of a charitable organization.

As Carl Bernstein sardonically pointed out in a blog posted on Oct. 13, describing the relationship between McCain and G. Gordon Liddy, who hosted a fundraiser for the candidate in 1998, “During the same period that Bill Ayers was a member of the Weather Underground, Gordon Liddy was making plans to firebomb a Washington think tank, assassinate a prominent journalist, undertake the Watergate burglary… and kidnap anti-war protesters at the 1972 Republican convention.”

While both Obama and McCain have met with dodgy characters, there doesn’t seem to be much to substantiate that notion that either candidate is a terrorist.

So what’s the point of these irrelevant and unfounded accusations? At the bottom of it seems to be a desperation to turn attention away from what matters most to many of us: The survival of our families and our livelihoods.

Even McCain, who had previously disdained the notion of inflammatory attacks on political rivals, seems to realize that such strategies were backfiring. He has subsequently reminded his supporters that Obama is “a decent, family man.”

Obama returned the gesture by noting that McCain “has served this country with honor.”

At this point, voters deserve to see our candidates behave calmly during the economic crisis that our country is confronting. The challenges facing our nation are formidable enough—creating shadowy diversions, meant to scare people away from facing those challenges, is not the kind of leadership we need right now