GuppieGrouper - you listed the reasons why Charley was most certainly a tropical system and not subtropical or extratropical. One of the primary defining characteristics of a tropical cyclone is a tight, compact wind field with the strongest winds near the center in the eye. The damage from Charley is consistant with this, as you noted. Subtropical systems and particularly extratropical systems have their strongest winds well-removed from the center of circulation. The satellite signature & cyclone phase analyses from the models all confirm a tropical cyclone at it's strongest warm core when it made landfall.

BillD - the models are picking up on the remnants of both Charley and Bonnie merging together with the trough along the east coast and moving across the Atlantic to pick up Danielle. We've been joking that Charley and Bonnie will get together and become Charnie (coincidentally, there was a meteorologist a long time ago named Charney who worked in instability theory); now if Danielle joins the party, we've got Charnielle on our hands. But, it's likely that's what they are picking up on to recurve the system...we'll see in the next couple of days if that plays out.