Obama won the day yesterday. First, from Politico:

Final score: Obama wins the day… Or maybe that should be: “McCain loses the day.” A day after trying to explain his way out of his suggestion that the American economy is “strong,” McCain still lacked a serious, persuasive response to the week’s financial upheaval. The candidate started the day with a feint toward policy talk, suggesting that a 9/11-style commission should examine the causes of the teetering market. Any substance behind that suggestion, though, got drowned out by a series of unhelpful comments made by advisors Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who implied that McCain helped invent the BlackBerry, and Carly Fiorina, who told MSNBC that Sarah Palin wouldn’t be qualified to run Hewlett-Packard.

Then the Hill:

McCain campaign stumbles through day…. Top advisers to Republican presidential candidate John McCain spent much of Tuesday with their feet in their mouths.

Their comments to reporters left openings for Democratic rival Barack Obama’s campaign to exploit throughout the day.

Filed under campaign déjà vu, McCain senior policy adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin got the day started by saying the Arizona senator helped created the BlackBerry, a claim the Obama camp labeled “preposterous.”

Holtz-Eakin told reporters at a campaign stop in Florida that McCain’s seat on the Senate Commerce Committee was responsible for the invention of one of the most-used devices in Washington.

“If John McCain hadn’t said that ‘the fundamentals of our economy are strong’ on the day of one of our nation’s worst financial crises, the claim that he invented the BlackBerry would have been the most preposterous thing said all week,” Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement….

Holtz-Eakin, according to reports, held up his BlackBerry as an example of “a miracle that John McCain helped create.”

Holtz-Eakin was explaining how McCain’s position on the committee helped him understand financial markets, using his BlackBerry as visual evidence. McCain has noted his computer illiteracy in several interviews. The GOP presidential candidate has also said he doesn’t use a BlackBerry, although his wife Cindy McCain is often spotted with one.

“Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce Committee, so you’re looking at the miracle John McCain helped create and that’s what he did,” Holtz-Eakin said, according to reports.