"Play nice" is not an instruction generally given to politicians, Chris Matthews is much more on point when he calls politics "Hardball."

Both the right and the left are attacking on issues that have nothing to do with average people's lives, like how many houses Cindy and John McCain have or what Michelle Obama wrote in a college paper, if Sarah Palin should stay home with her kids and if Joe Biden plagiarized a term paper.

Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain need to specifically spell out their proposals.

After the primaries and conventions, I am honestly sick of hearing about their lives. If I want to know more about their personal histories, I can buy their books.

I am far more concerned with what they plan to do about the plunging economy, the health care crisis and Social Security.

And please don't tell me I can read their positions on their websites, there are millions of voters who won't take the time to do that.

I happen to think Sen. Obama has the superior plan on most of the things Americans are worried about but he needs to get that across to voters and not worry so much about "smears."

Those who mistakenly think he's Muslim will not change their minds nor will calling those who oppose him racists upset most of them in the least, unlike what happened in the primary.

Often people say Americans are just too dumb and that's why we get leaders like George W. Bush. But the candidates appear to agree we're too stupid to understand anything of substance so we get montages of flags and amber waves of grain and feel-good slogans.

Obama says it's "the change we need" and McCain says "change is coming." So now that we've all agreed things are going to change, TELL US HOW!!

While I am a Hillary voter who feels her talents would have been wasted as vice president, she would be in a far better position to debate Palin than Biden is.

And she would have helped in many of the 13 states currently listed as undecided (New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada).

I find it hard to imagine a scenario in which the Democrats retake the White House without the electoral votes of a majority of these states, particularly Pennsylvania (21) and Ohio (20), which Hillary won, and Michigan (17) and Florida (27), whose primaries were invalidated by the DNC.

All the commentary about the McCains' homes and her expensive clothes make me wonder if the same remarks would have been made about John and Jacqueline Kennedy in 1960.

Presidents such as FDR and JFK came from great wealth but were extremely sensitive to the needs of the common person.

What a distraction this is from what really matters, how either of these candidates is going to fix our badly broken economy

What a sense of humor the headline writer for this column has: "Simply saying the word 'change' a lot isn't enough," LOL!

That reminds me of what Hillary Clinton supporters said during the primary about Barack Obama.

Hopefully, now that the conventions are over, both candidates will stop speaking in catch phrases and sound bites and start talking about their specific proposals, not just posting them on websites where they can't be debated or questioned.

I must not understand the definition of the word "independent." I thought it referred to somebody whose views on issues cut across party lines and who doesn't judge candidates simply by labels.

For a person to describe himself as an independent in the same post in which he says he will vote against every Republican this year just like he did last year sounds about as "independent" as Joe Lieberman

All candidates trot out their families and their life stories during conventions and campaigns.

I found the story of the McCains adopting their daughter touching and was impressed by Cindy McCain's charity work. Did his daughter look uncomfortable? I didn't see that but if she did, many kids her age would be uneasy standing on stage in front of a huge audience.

I admire John McCain's heroism as a POW and am offended by arguments about whether he made a mistake as a pilot or broke under torture.

And as a mother who worked outside the home, I find the criticism of Sarah Palin's not staying home with her children bizarre coming from a party that's supposed to be all about choice for women.

There are plenty of ways to attack McCain and Palin on political issues, not on his war record or their families. And the people making these personal attacks tend to be the same ones who are incensed over the "mean old" GOP.

Are their tactics a surprise? They shouldn't be, the phrase "Republican attack machine" was frequently used during the primary to describe what would happen if Hillary was the nominee. Nor have I seen the Republicans do anything this election cycle that comes close to the Willie Horton ad they employed against Michael Dukakis in 1988.

If the Democrats can't take back the White House after eight years of George W. Bush, it's time for the party leaders to take a long look in the mirror and ask themselves what they're doing wrong, not to blame an electorate which keeps turning down their presidential candidates, electing only one Democrat, Bill Clinton, since 1981.

Blaming the Clintons for "demonizing" Obama is really a productive strategy for creating a unified party and winning in November, "buzman".

Clinton won some big swing states that are still there for the taking. Assigning a possible Obama loss to her is not going to win over any of her voters who are now undecided.

Democrats can continue to argue about who demonized who in the primary and keep on debating racism and sexism right up until the day McCain is inaugurated or they can stop whining about the primary and the mean Republicans and come up with a way to take back the White House