John McCain is in Virginia this morning, kicking off the final weekend of the campaign in a red state that is threatening to turn blue. It’s worth noting that he’s in what his campaign has referred to as “real Virginia”—Newport News—but we’ll be flying from here to Springfield, a suburb of Washington, D.C., for his final rally in the state before Election Day. From here, we will spend the rest of the day in Pennsylvania before heading to New York City, where McCain will appear on Saturday Night Live tonight. Details are still being worked out, but, according to a senior McCain adviser, the candidate will almost surely appear in a skit with Tina Fey as Sarah Palin.

Tomorrow, McCain spends part of the day in Pennsylvania before heading to New Hampshire, where he’ll hold his final town hall of the campaign in Peterborough, a place that McCain regards as something of a lucky charm. He held his first town hall meeting there during his 2000 campaign and wound up there on the eve of his comeback primary victory earlier this year. It’s “where our campaign has been rescued and resurrected many times before,” Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, told reporters yesterday. Yet privately, McCain and his aides are unsure if it will be as lucky this time around. Down by 13 points in the state according to poll released yesterday, McCain and his aides view his stop there as more nostalgic than game changing. Indeed, a senior McCain aide says the candidate and his advisers have gone back and forth in recent days about whether the stop was time well spent in the final hours of the campaign. Also of great debate: Whether it was a good idea for McCain to take questions from voters, that could risk sending the candidate off message, or simply hold a rally. His aides were split, but in the end, McCain himself made the call: He would do a town hall.