A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

OBAMA ELECTED PRESIDENT AS RACIAL BARRIER FALLS
(Adam Nagourney, New York Times)
Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States on Tuesday, sweeping away the last racial barrier in American politics with ease as the country chose him as its first black chief executive. The election of Mr. Obama amounted to a national catharsis — a repudiation of a historically unpopular Republican president and his economic and foreign policies, and an embrace of Mr. Obama’s call for a change in the direction and the tone of the country. But it was just as much a strikingly symbolic moment in the evolution of the nation’s fraught racial history, a breakthrough that would have seemed unthinkable just two years ago... To the very end, Mr. McCain’s campaign was eclipsed by an opponent who was nothing short of a phenomenon, drawing huge crowds epitomized by the tens of thousands of people who turned out to hear Mr. Obama’s victory speech in Grant Park in Chicago. Mr. McCain also fought the headwinds of a relentlessly hostile political environment, weighted down with the baggage left to him by President Bush and an economic collapse that took place in the middle of the general election campaign.

A NEW WORLD ORDER
(John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei, Politico)
Nov. 4, 2008, was the day when American politics shifted on its axis. The ascent of an African-American to the presidency — a victory by a 47-year-old man who was born when segregation was still the law of the land across much of this nation — is a moment so powerful and so obvious that its symbolism needs no commentary. But it was the reality of power, not the symbolism, that changed Tuesday night in ways more profound than meet the eye. The rout of the Republican Party, and the accompanying gains by Democrats in Congress, mean that Barack Obama will assume office with vastly more influence in the nation’s capital than most of his recent predecessors have wielded. The only exceptions suggest the magnitude of the moment. Power flowed in unprecedented ways to George W. Bush in the year after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It flowed likewise to Lyndon B. Johnson after his landslide in 1964. Beyond those fleeting moments, every president for more than two generations has confronted divided government or hobbling internal divisions within his own party. 

OBAMA'S TRANSCENDENCE BEYOND RACE
(Ron Fournier, Associated Press)
The elevation of Barack Obama to the White House is a transcendent moment, for what this election says about a nation where blacks were once considered property. And that might be the least of it. This is a once-in-a-lifetime event. At odd intervals — 1800, 1860, 1932, 1980 — the nation reaches a "pivot point," an election that draws the line between the past and the future. And 2008 appears to be just such a line in the shifting sands of our convulsive times. Reagan-style conservative supremacy? Over. The era of baby boomer leadership? Waning. And maybe, just maybe, something new has arrived: a post-partisan approach to governing, founded on the Obama Coalition, fueled by young and minority voters, powered by the 21st century technologies that helped turn a first-term senator from Illinois into a historic lodestone. From the beginning, Obama had his sights on something bigger than the "50 percent plus one" approach championed by Karl Rove. He wanted a larger statement.

HARD CHOICES AND CHALLENGES FOLLOW TRIUMPH
(Dan Balz, Washington Post)
After a victory of historic significance, Barack Obama will inherit problems of historic proportions. Not since Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated at the depths of the Great Depression in 1933 has a new president been confronted with the challenges Obama will face as he starts his presidency. At home, Obama must revive an economy experiencing some of the worst shocks in more than half a century. Abroad, he has pledged to end the war in Iraq and defeat al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. He ran on a platform to change the country and its politics. Now he must begin to spell out exactly how. Obama's winning percentage appears likely to be the largest of any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson's 1964 landslide and makes him the first since Jimmy Carter in 1976 to garner more than 50.1 percent. Like Johnson, he will govern with sizable congressional majorities... But with those advantages come hard choices. Among them will be deciding how much he owes his victory to a popular rejection of President Bush and the Republicans and how much it represents an embrace of Democratic governance. Interpreting his mandate will be only one of several critical decisions Obama must make as he prepares to assume the presidency. Others include transforming his campaign promises on taxes, health care, energy and education into a set of legislative priorities for his first two years in office.

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories. NOW GO VOTE!

AFTER EPIC CAMPAIGN, VOTERS GO TO THE POLLS
(Adam Nagourney, New York Times)
The 2008 race for the White House that comes to an end on Tuesday fundamentally upended the way presidential campaigns are fought in this country, a legacy that has almost been lost with all the attention being paid to the battle between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. It has rewritten the rules on how to reach voters, raise money, organize supporters, manage the news media, track and mold public opinion, and wage — and withstand — political attacks, including many carried by blogs that did not exist four years ago. It has challenged the consensus view of the American electoral battleground, suggesting that Democrats can at a minimum be competitive in states and regions that had long been Republican strongholds. The size and makeup of the electorate could be changed because of efforts by Democrats to register and turn out new black, Hispanic and young voters. This shift may have long-lasting ramifications for what the parties do to build enduring coalitions, especially if intensive and technologically-driven voter turnout programs succeed in getting more people to the polls. Mr. McCain’s advisers expect a record-shattering turnout of 130 million people, many being brought into the political process for the first time.

POLLS SHOW OBAMA WITH A CLEAR ADVANTAGE
(Dan Balz, Washington Post)
State and national polls released yesterday underscored the steep hill McCain must climb in the final hours to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. Burdened by President Bush's unpopularity and an economic crisis that redrew the race in September in Obama's favor, the senator from Arizona sprinted through a series of critical states yesterday -- all but one of which Bush carried four years ago -- exhorting his supporters to help him defy the odds. Obama concentrated on Florida, North Carolina and Virginia, appealing to supporters to produce a huge turnout in those battlegrounds as he sought to checkmate his rival by keeping alive as many options as possible for winning an electoral college majority. The strategy, laid down in the summer at the beginning of the general election, has proved successful in the late stages of the race and require McCain to win virtually every state where the polls are close to deny Obama a victory.

THE CURTAIN FINALLY FALLS
(Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin, Politico)
They should, by all rights, have entered Election Day with their moods matching the polls: Barack Obama elated by his seemingly substantial lead and large crowds, John McCain demoralized by the specter of defeat and meager turnout. But in the final hours of a campaign that has seldom gone according to script, the candidates' moods and their campaigns' demeanor – quite fittingly - didn't follow the expectations. Obama seemed almost unsteady amid the emotional barrage of the end of the campaign and his grandmother’s death, while his aides held fast to solid, positive early voting numbers with a mood one Chicago staffer described as "cautiously nauseous." A hoarse McCain and his top aides and advisers, clinging to the far weaker evidence of favored polls, evidenced an upbeat, even jaunty attitude through a grueling final day of airport hangar rallies that took them through seven states in just over 24 hours.

NEW ECONOMIC ILLS WILL FORCE WINNER'S HAND
(Bob Davis, Jonathan Weisman and Timothy Aeppel, Wall Street Journal)
Few economists predict the world is in for a repeat of the 1930s. But the deepening problems -- rising joblessness and home foreclosures, falling consumer spending and tight credit -- are prompting calls from businesses and Congress for quick action by the next president to clarify, and begin working on, his economic agenda. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.) says the president-elect should start by picking his Treasury secretary and economic team within days. With Congress planning a session this month to push through a second economic-stimulus package and discuss remaking the nation's financial system, lawmakers will look for direction from the future president. Mr. Dodd said he will bring the next White House team into the regulatory talks... Both campaigns declined to comment on any specific post-election plans. However, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama would likely come under pressure to assure investors that he won't increase income taxes on the wealthy during a recession -- as he hinted during the campaign -- or boost capital-gains taxes during a market slump. For Republican Sen. John McCain, one challenge would be explaining how he'd work with a Democratic Congress after a bitter presidential battle.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...
 

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

THE YEAR OF LIVING ON THE EDGE OF OUR SEATS
(Frank Bruni, New York Times)
Will one candidate win by millions, or lose by thousands? If there is a clear victor, will he be the first black American ever elected to the presidency, or the oldest American ever to win a first term? We don’t need to know the answers to be certain of this much: no matter the outcome, it will be the climax of one of the most extraordinary presidential elections in this nation’s 232-year history, and “the first” and “the oldest” capture only some of what has made it so remarkable. Whether judged by the milestones reached, the paradigms challenged, the passions stirred or simply the numbers — the 85 percent of Americans who believe the country is on the wrong track, or the record-demolishing $640 million fund-raising mark that Barack Obama passed by mid-October — the election of 2008 actually warrants the sorts of adjectives and phrases that are often just journalistic tics: epochal, pivotal, historic, once-in-a-lifetime.

THE OPENING OBAMA SAW
(E.J. Dionne, Washington Post)
A good politician triumphs by adapting to the times and taking advantage of opportunities as they come. A great politician anticipates openings others don't see and creates possibilities that were not there before. John McCain might have been the second kind of politician, tried to be the first and enters Election Day at a steep disadvantage. Barack Obama certainly seized the opportunities created by President Bush's failures and the country's profound discontent, which only deepened after the economic crash. But by creating a new social movement, new forms of political organization, and a sense of excitement and possibility not felt in politics for three decades, he is bidding to become one of the country's most consequential leaders... If any candidate's recent past stands as a warning against premature obituaries, it is McCain's. But there seems to be an inexorable quality to Obama's rise this year because he is the first truly 21st-century figure in American politics. He is the innovator who has set the standard for the next political era.

IF OBAMA LOSES, WHO GETS BLAMED?
(John Dickerson, Slate)
If Barack Obama wins the election, it will be historic. And if he loses, it will be pretty historic, too: It would mark the biggest collective error in the history of the media and political establishment. An Obama loss would mean the majority of pundits, reporters and analysts were wrong. Pollsters would have to find a new line of work, since Obama has been ahead in all 159 polls taken in the last six weeks. The massive crowds that have regularly turned out to see Obama would turn out to have meant nothing. This collective failure of elites would provide such a blast of schadenfreude that Republicans like Rush Limbaugh would be struck speechless (another historic first). This situation lends a feeling of unreality to the proceedings as we begin to measure the time until Election Day in hours. It is the elephant on the campaign plane. No one is letting on. Journalists aren't supposed to. Plus, we've been wrong so often, and politics can be so unpredictable, it would be dumb to say that Obama is going to win big.

MCCAIN'S FATE RESTS ON WHO WILL VOTE
(Jim Tankersley, Chicago Tribune)
As the presidential race enters its final weekend after two years of battle, John McCain's best chance for a history-defying comeback rests in the greatest of electoral unknowns: voter turnout. To win on Tuesday, analysts and polls suggest, the Republican nominee must win nearly all the remaining undecided voters in key swing states and peel a large chunk of "soft" supporters from Democratic rival Barack Obama. Then he must hope that his supporters vote in overwhelming numbers, and that more Obama supporters than expected stay home. It would be a daunting task in any election, but it's particularly the case this year, when analysts predict the largest voter turnout ever, perhaps 130 million, and the biggest percentage of eligible voters casting ballots in a century. 

DEMOCRATS FAR OUTSPEND REPUBLICANS ON FIELD OPERATIONS, STAFF EXPENDITURES
(T.W. Farnham and Brad Haynes, Wall Street Journal)
The national and state Democratic parties are spending far more heavily than their Republican counterparts on field operations, after years of ceding the advantage in ground-level organizing to the Republican voter-turnout machine. Finance records show Democrats have hired five to 10 times more paid field staff in swing states than the Republicans. Democrats have set up 770 offices nationwide, including in some of the most Republican areas of traditionally "red" states -- like one in Goshen, Ind., a manufacturing town with a population of about 30,000. It is the seat of Elkhart County, which voted for President George W. Bush in 2004 by more than 40 percentage points. By comparison, Republicans have about 370 offices nationwide. The focus on the ground-game is a change from past election cycles, when the Democratic party's prime objective was getting as many broadcast ads on the air as possible. In recent campaigns, Democrats outsourced their ground organization to outside groups, such as labor unions and liberal activists.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...
 

Welcome to Standard time... and the last 48 hours of the 2008 presidential race.

Here's what I'm reading (and watching) this morning:

1. Adam Nagourney's bird's-eye view of the final sprint, via the New York Times. "Mr. Obama was using the last days of the contest to make incursions into Republican territory, campaigning Saturday in three states — Colorado, Missouri and Nevada — that President Bush won relatively comfortably in 2004," he writes. "Mr. McCain... turned his attention to two states that voted Democratic in 2004 — Pennsylvania and New Hampshire — reflecting what his aides said was polling in both states that suggested the race was tightening. Still, his decision to spend some of his time in the final hours on Democratic turf signaled that Mr. McCain had concluded that his chances of winning with the same lineup of states that put Mr. Bush into the White House was diminishing. Mr. McCain’s hopes appear to rest in large part on his ability to pick up electoral votes from states that Senator John Kerry won for the Democrats four years ago."

Can he do it? McCain's staffers are correct to say the polls are "tightening" in Pennsylvania; since Oct. 20, McCain has managed to slash Obama's average lead in half, from 13.4 percent to seven percent today. But nearly all of that narrowing is a result of undecideds breaking for the Republican, whose numbers have climbed four points--from 40 percent to 44 percent--over the same period. The problem for McCain is that Obama's support has held steady--steadily, that is, above 50 percent. On Oct. 20, the Illinois senator was polling at 52 percent in the Keystone State; today, he's at 51.2 percent. As much as the margin narrows, McCain simply can't win Pennsylvania--and, likely, the election--unless swipes considerable support from Obama, dragging him down into the 40s. Time is running out.

2. Nate Silver's Nov. 1 polling round-up, via FiveThirtyEight. Here, Silver spots each candidate the states that would break their way if (and that's a big if) the polls tighten considerably before Tuesday. McCain would surge ahead in North Carolina, Florida, Indiana, North Dakota, Montana, Georgia and Missouri. Meanwhile, Obama would still prevail in New Mexico (Obama +10), New Hampshire (+10.7), Minnesota (+11.5), Michigan (+12.7), Wisconsin (+11) and Iowa (+15.3). In this scenario--which is the best McCain can hope for--the election would come down to Virginia, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Nevada. From here, I'll pass the mic to Nate: 

The victory conditions for Obama involving these five states proceed something as follows:

1. Win Pennsylvania and ANY ONE of Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, or Nevada*
2. Win Ohio and EITHER Colorado OR Virginia.
3. Win Colorado AND Virginia AND Nevada.

(* Nevada produces a 269-269 tie, which would probably be resolved for Obama in the House of Represenatives.)

Now, suppose you think that Colorado is already in the bag for Obama because of his large edge in early voting there. We can then simplify the victory conditions as follows:

1. Win Pennsylvania
2. Win Ohio
3. Win Virginia AND Nevada

Which pretty much explains why McCain has spent much of the past two days in the Keystone State--and why Joe Biden is returning for an Election Eve rally in Philly. About 55-65 percent of the 2004 electorate has already voted in New Mexico and Colorado, and according to the latest polls, large majorities of those votes have gone to Obama. If Obama picks up these two Bush states plus Iowa, McCain has no choice but to win Pennsylvania. Otherwise, the election is over--no matter what happens in Florida, Ohio and the rest of the "battleground."

3. Chuck Todd's incredible state-by-state Election Day guide, via MSNBC. Seriously--it's incredible. Read the whole thing.

4. Ross Douthat's essay on "Obama and the Race Card," via the Atlantic. Amid last-minute liberal hyperventilating about how "race will doom Obama yet," this is an important, even-handed reminder that 2008 wasn't a dirty election by any stretch of the imagination--and that being half-African-American has helped Obama as much (if not more) than it's hurt him. "Consider, for a moment, that here we are, five days away from the election, and a Republican nominee for President has run a campaign against an African-American opponent that has barely touched any of the traditional racially-charged domestic-policy issues," Ross writes. "Now there are various reasons why none of these issues have played a role in the campaign:  Attacking on some of these fronts would have required flip-flops on McCain's part; attacking on others (crime, especially) would have reaped vastly diminished returns compared to GOP campaigns of yore; etc. But it's also the case that the Obama campaign (and its surrogates and allies) have done a masterful job of boxing the GOP in on race-related fronts, playing off the media's biases, McCain's sense of honor, and the Republican Party's unpleasant history to create a climate of hair-trigger sensitivity around terrains and topic that usually hurt Democratic candidates." Couldn't agree more.

5. David Broder's look back at this "amazing race," via the Washington Post.  "The voters -- bless 'em -- ignored the oddsmakers," the Dean writes. "They were determined to do their own thing -- set the nation on a new course, sharply different from that of George W. Bush. It did not matter much to them that McCain was too old, by conventional standards, to be running or that Obama's mixed-race background broke the historic color line on the presidency. It was the emergence of these two implausible but impressive candidates that gave 2008 its special stamp... For decades, I have said that the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon campaign was the best I ever saw. But most of the drama in that contest came after Labor Day. This time, the excitement was generously distributed over a whole year, with moments of genuine humor from Huckabee, a torrent of uninhibited conversation from McCain and Biden, and rare eloquence from Obama and both Clintons. The country faces a choice between two men who both promise the nation a more principled, less partisan leadership. And meanwhile, what a show it has been -- the best campaign I've ever covered."

As for me--well, I haven't been covering elections, like Broder, since the 1960s. But I imagine this one will be hard to top.  

6. Fred Armisen impersonating my NEWSWEEK colleague Richard Wolffe on SNL. 

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

WHICH OBAMA WOULD AMERICA GET?
(Stuart Taylor, National Journal)
The first Obama has sometimes seemed eager to engineer what he called "redistribution of wealth" in a 2001 radio interview, along with the more conventional protectionism, job preferences, and other liberal Democratic dogmas featured in his campaign. I worry that he might go beyond judiciously regulating our free enterprise system's all-too-apparent excesses and stifle it under the dead hand of government bureaucracy and lawsuits... The pragmatic, consensus-building, inspirational Obama who has been on display during the general election campaign is a prodigious listener and learner. He can see all sides of every question. He seems suffused with good judgment. His social conscience has been tempered by recognition that well-intentioned liberal prescriptions can have perverse unintended consequences. His tax and health care proposals are much less radical than Republican critics suggest... I do hope that if Obama wins, the enormity of the economic and international crises facing him will accelerate his intellectual evolution and convince him that simply replacing dumb Bush policies with dumb Democratic policies will only drive the country deeper into the ditch. The best thing for the country would be to take on the interest groups and govern from the center.

IN FINAL STRETCH, MCCAIN TO POUR MONEY INTO TV ADS
(Matthew Mosk, Washington Post)
Sen. John McCain and the Republican National Committee will unleash a barrage of spending on television advertising that will allow him to keep pace with Sen. Barack Obama's ad blitz during the campaign's final days, but the expenditures will impact McCain's get-out-the-vote efforts, according to Republican strategists. McCain has faced a severe spending imbalance during most of the fall, but the Republican nominee squirreled away enough funds to pay for a raft of television ads in critical battleground states over the next four days, said Evan Tracey, a political analyst who monitors television spending. The decision to finance a final advertising push is forcing McCain to curtail spending on Election Day ground forces to help usher his supporters to the polls, according to Republican consultants familiar with McCain's strategy. The vaunted, 72-hour plan that President Bush used to mobilize voters in 2000 and 2004 has been scaled back for McCain. He has spent half as much as Obama on staffing and has opened far fewer field offices. This week, a number of veteran GOP operatives who orchestrate door-to-door efforts to get voters to the polls were told they should not expect to receive plane tickets, rental cars or hotel rooms from the campaign.

OBAMA PLANS FOUR-DAY HUNT FOR MORE DEMOCRATIC VOTERS 
(Jeff Zeleny, New York Times) 
Senator Barack Obama is spending the final four days of his campaign mining for votes in places where Democrats have not turned out at full strength in recent presidential races, hoping to offset other areas in swing states where his candidacy may need a lift... His aides say they think the electoral battlegrounds of Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, Wisconsin and New Mexico are trending toward Mr. Obama, though advisers do not rule out a last-minute visit to any place that suddenly looks troublesome. Instead, he will focus his attention on six states that President Bush won four years ago. After a late-night rally on Friday evening in Indiana, Mr. Obama heads Saturday to Henderson, Nev.; Pueblo, Colo.; and Springfield, Mo. He is scheduled to make a three-city fly-around on Sunday. And on Monday, he is set to dash through Florida, North Carolina and back here to Virginia. The breadth of Mr. Obama’s travel underscores the number of Republican-leaning states that his advisers believe remain within his reach. It is a wide path to claiming the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency, a strategy intended either to offer a multitude of options to get there or pave the way for a larger margin of victory.

WHAT'S UP WITH STILL-UNDECIDED VOTERS?
(Faye Fiore, Los Angeles Times)
There is little research on undecided voters because they are an ever-changing population -- those who equivocate in one election cycle might not in another. A study of presidential elections at State University of New York at Buffalo found that the last time wafflers made a difference was 1960. But this year, they look to be significant again. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll this week shows that this wavering wing of the electorate -- 6% in Florida and 8% in Ohio -- is large enough to make the difference in those battlegrounds. The rest of the nation, minds made up and marching by the thousands to vote early, has begun to wonder: What's up with those people? They are, after all, faced with two starkly different men, from different generations, with different ideas, revealed and vetted in perhaps the longest campaign cycle ever. Raymond and several others surveyed from Florida and Ohio explained their thinking in follow-up interviews this week, revealing an earnest if conflicted lot, deliberative by nature, particularly in decisions of consequence. 

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...
 

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

HOW JOHN MCCAIN RAN AGAINST HIMSELF
(Walter Shapiro, Salon)
Just over the horizon lies an alternate universe in which John McCain is locked in a tense nail-biter of a presidential race with Barack Obama, one in which the polls gyrate daily and "too close to call" describes most of the contested political landscape... All that would have been required to achieve electoral parity and a plausible road map to the White House would have been for the Republican nominee to have transformed himself into... the John McCain of the 2000 primaries... While alternative history is inherently speculative, a reasonable case can be made that McCain could have won the 2008 Republican nomination even if he had not pandered to Falwell and had not abandoned his fiscal conservatism to compete with Romney on taxes. The victory formula would have been built around McCain's biography, his unorthodox style, his unstinting support for the surge in Iraq and the general feeling that eight years earlier the GOP made a tragic mistake with Bush. In short, McCain could have come out of the GOP primaries prepared to run against Obama as a true maverick rather than a generic Republican railing against socialism. All it probably would have taken are these four steps. 

OBAMA AHEAD OR TIED IN 8 KEY STATES
(Ron Fournier and Trevor Tompson, Associated Press)
Barack Obama, gunning for a national landslide, now leads in four states won by President Bush in 2004 and is essentially tied with John McCain in two other Republican red states, according to new AP-GfK battleground polling. The results help explain why the Democrat is pressing his money and manpower advantages in a slew of traditionally GOP states, hoping not just for a win but a transcendent victory that remakes the nation's political map. McCain is scrambling to defend states where he wouldn't even be campaigning if the race were closer. Less than a week before Election Day, the AP-GfK polls show Obama winning among early voters, favored on almost every issue [and] benefiting from the country's sour mood... "If you believe in miracles," said GOP consultant Joe Gaylord of Arlington, Va., "you still believe in McCain."... The polling shows Obama holding solid leads in Ohio (7 percentage points), Nevada (12 points), Colorado (9) and Virginia (7), all red states won by Bush that collectively offer 47 electoral votes. Sweeping those four — or putting together the right combination of two or three — would almost certainly make Obama president... There are only two Kerry states still in contention — Pennsylvania with 21 votes and New Hampshire with four — and AP-GfK polls show Obama leading both by double digits.

WHY MCCAIN IS GETTING HOSED IN THE PRESS
(John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei, Politico)
There have been moments in the general election when the one-sidedness of our site — when nearly every story was some variation on how poorly McCain was doing or how well Barack Obama was faring — has made us cringe. As it happens, McCain’s campaign is going quite poorly and Obama’s is going well. Imposing artificial balance on this reality would be a bias of its own... Of the factors driving coverage of this election — and making it less enjoyable for McCain to read his daily clip file than for Obama — ideological favoritism ranks virtually nil... For most journalists, professional obligations trump personal preferences. Most political reporters... are temperamentally inclined to see multiple sides of a story, and being detached from their own opinions comes relatively easy... It is not our impression that many reporters are rooting for Obama personally. To the contrary, most colleagues on the trail we’ve spoken with seem to find him a distant and undefined figure. But he has benefited from the idea that negative attacks that in a normal campaign would be commonplace in this year would carry an out-of-bounds racial subtext. That’s why Obama’s long association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was basically a nonissue in the general election. Journalists’ hair-trigger racial sensitivity may have been misplaced, but it was not driven by an ideological tilt.

2 RIVALS PLANS ON FISCAL ISSUE ADD TO DEFICITS
(Jackie Calmes, New York Times) 
While both presidential candidates enter the campaign’s final week promising to be the better fiscal steward, each has outlined tax and spending proposals that would make annual budget deficits worse, analysts say, with Senator John McCain likely to create a deeper hole than Senator Barack Obama would. Mr. McCain, the Republican nominee, has proposed bigger tax cuts. He has also promised more in spending cuts, but he has not specified where most of them would come from. Even now that the financial crisis has given rise to one bailout package and prompted both candidates to call for billions more in stimulus spending, Mr. McCain has stuck by his promise to balance the budget by the end of his term, a pledge that fiscal analysts call unachievable. Mr. Obama, his Democratic rival, has vowed to reduce the deficit and put it on a path to balance. He also promises an expensive effort to make health care insurance more widely available, a raft of other spending programs and tax cuts for most families and small businesses. He would raise taxes on the wealthiest households to help pay for his health care plans. Neither presidential candidate has provided enough detail, especially about spending programs and what they would cut, for budget groups to put price tags on their agendas.

CONSERVATIVES PLAN SECRET POST-ELECTION STRATEGY SESSION
(Jonathan Martin, Politico) 
Two days after next week's election, top conservatives will gather at the Virginia weekend home of one of the movement's most prominent members to begin a conversation about their role in the GOP and how best to revive a party that may be out of power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue next year. The meeting will include a "who's who of conservative leaders --  economic, national security and social," said one attendee, who shared initial word of the secret session only on the basis of anonymity and with some details about the host and location redacted. The decision to waste no time in plotting their moves in the post-Bush era reflects the widely-held view among many on the right, and elsewhere, that the GOP is heading toward major losses next week... Few believe that the Republican party will respond to another brutal election by following a path of moderation, but conservatives are deeply dispirited and anxious to reassert the core values they believe have not always been followed by Bush, congressional leaders and their party’s presidential nominee . Many on the right, both elites and the rank-and-file, see a rudderless party that is in dire need of new blood and old principles: small government, a robust national security and unapologetic social conservatism.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...
 

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

ONE WEEK
(Barack Obama)
After decades of broken politics in Washington, eight years of failed policies from George Bush, and twenty-one months of a campaign that has taken us from the rocky coast of Maine to the sunshine of California, we are one week away from change in America. In one week, you can turn the page on policies that have put the greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street. In one week, you can choose policies that invest in our middle-class, create new jobs, and grow this economy from the bottom-up so that everyone has a chance to succeed; from the CEO to the secretary and the janitor; from the factory owner to the men and women who work on its floor. In one week, you can put an end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election; that tries to pit region against region, city against town, Republican against Democrat; that asks us to fear at a time when we need hope. In one week, at this defining moment in history, you can give this country the change we need.

STAND UP AND FIGHT
(John McCain)
We cannot spend the next four years as we have spent much of the last eight: hoping for our luck to change at home and abroad. We have to act. We need a new direction, and we have to fight for it. I've been fighting for this country since I was seventeen years old, and I have the scars to prove it. If I'm elected President, I will fight to shake up Washington and take America in a new direction from my first day in office until my last. I'm not afraid of the fight, I'm ready for it. I have a plan to hold the line on taxes and cut them to make America more competitive and create jobs here at home. We're going to double the child deduction for working families. We will cut the capital gains tax. And we will cut business taxes to help create jobs, and keep American businesses in America. Raising taxes makes a bad economy much worse. Keeping taxes low creates jobs, keeps money in your hands and strengthens our economy. If I'm elected President, I won't spend nearly a trillion dollars more of your money. Senator Obama will. And he can't do that without raising your taxes or digging us further into debt. I'm going to make government live on a budget just like you do.

AGAINST ALL ODDS, MCCAIN STILL SEES A FINAL COMEBACK
(Jay Carney, Time)
McCain seemed tired, as if he had been up too many late nights, and at times his answers meandered through a series of only tangentially connected sentences. But his central argument — that the race is not over, that he might still pull this thing out — is not completely unreasonable. It is not just that McCain has stared long odds in the face before and triumphed, as he did when his campaign collapsed in the summer of 2007, financially broke and in disarray. Back then, trusted friends advised him to withdraw rather than suffer a humiliating defeat. Even some of his closest associates were ready to give up, and it fell to McCain to tell them to quit feeling sorry for themselves, to lecture them about what it means to keep fighting for what you believe in. Of course, he was right, and he emerged improbably from a field of contenders to win the Republican nomination. "McCain doesn't have a lot of time for quitters," says a senior McCain adviser. "He's not about to quit now."

IN OBAMA'S CLOSING ARGUMENT, ACCENTS OF BILL CLINTON, 1992
(Greg Sargent, TPM Election Central)
Obama's success -- like Bill's -- is rooted in an uncanny sense of the electorate's mood, and of what it's looking for in its next leader. The likenesses were unmistakable today. In 1992, Bill -- though he was running against a popular incumbent who'd just prosecuted a successful war -- sensed a widespread drift among voters that was only partly rooted in economic doldrums. Crucially, Bill also sensed that the electorate was looking for a clear signal from its next President on just how the nation would be moved from the 20th Century to the 21st at a time of rapid global change... Obama -- should he win -- has outworked McCain in ways very similar to Bill's outmaneuvering of Bush Sr. Like Bill, Obama has sensed that the electorate is looking for something larger than a set of policies or personal attributes. Unlike McCain, who has proven utterly incapable of grasping the public mood on many levels, Obama has sensed that the electorate wants to know how we will remake our politics -- domestic and international -- for the next century.

AFTER I WIN... ER, MAKE THAT IF I'M ELECTED
(Mark Leibovich, New York Times)
Senators Barack Obama and John McCain have been ever vigilant in recent days for signs of January Fever. The candidates have slipped a few times into the “when I’m president” construction in campaign speeches, but usually are careful to use the cautionary “if I’m president” refrain... The United States does love a winner, but it most certainly does not love an early-celebrating one. Mr. McCain has spent significant stump time recently trying to portray Mr. Obama as the political equivalent of that strutting football player... Mr. McCain regularly mentions the “planning already under way” among Mr. Obama; the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid; and Speaker Nancy Pelosi to assume their hammerlock on the government come January. In Cedar Falls, Iowa, on Sunday, Mr. McCain accused Mr. Obama of already “measuring the drapes” for the White House, something he has said repeatedly. As far back as July, Mr. McCain’s campaign has tried to pin the premature-inauguration tag on Mr. Obama. They dismissed his summer tour of Europe and the Middle East as a “premature victory lap,” and mocked him for fashioning his campaign logo into a faux-presidential seal (an experiment the Obama campaign quickly scuttled). For his part, Mr. McCain traveled abroad before Mr. Obama did, delivered a speech looking back on a hypothetical first term, and began giving a Saturday morning radio address, just as real, live presidents do.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...
 

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

BLAME GAME: GOP FORMS CIRCULAR FIRING SQUAD
(Jonathan Martin, Mike Allen and John F. Harris, Politico)
With despair rising even among many of John McCain’s own advisors, influential Republicans inside and outside his campaign are engaged in an intense round of blame-casting and rear-covering—-much of it virtually conceding that an Election Day rout is likely... These public comments offer a whiff of an increasingly acrid behind-the-scenes GOP meltdown—a blame game played out through not-for-attribution comments to reporters that operatives know will find their way into circulation. At his Northern Virginia headquarters, some McCain aides are already speaking of the campaign in the past tense. Morale, even among some of the heartiest and most loyal staffers, has plummeted... One well-connected Republican in the private sector was shocked to get calls and resumes in the past few days from what he said were senior McCain aides – a breach of custom for even the worst-off campaigns... “The cake is baked,” agreed a former McCain strategist. “We’re entering the finger-pointing and positioning-for-history part of the campaign. It’s every man for himself now.”

IN MCCAIN'S UPHILL BATTLE, WINNING IS AN OPTION
(Adam Nagourney, New York Times)
Senator John McCain woke Thursday morning to what has become a fairly common greeting in these tough last weeks of his campaign. A raft of polls showing him well behind. Early post-mortems on his candidacy. Even Republicans speaking of him in the past tense. But is it really over? As Mr. McCain enters this closing stretch, his aides — as well as some outside Republicans and even a few Democrats — argue that he still has a viable path to victory... Even the most hearty of the McCain supporters acknowledge that it will not be easy, and there are a considerable number of Republicans who say, off the record, that the 2008 cake is baked. At this point in the campaign, Mr. McCain’s hopes of victory may rest on events over which he simply does not have control. Still, there do seem to be enough question marks hovering over this race that it is not quite time for Mr. McCain to ride his bus back to Arizona.

POLLS POINT TO STRUGGLE FOR MCCAIN
(Dan Balz, Washington Post)
For John McCain, the batch of battleground state polls released yesterday brought almost universally bad news. The Republican nominee's path to the presidency is now extremely precarious and may depend on something unexpected taking control of a contest that appears to have swung hard toward Barack Obama since the end of the debates. McCain's advisers acknowledge that his way back is difficult, but they maintain that there is a way. It requires a combination of smart campaigning, traction for his arguments and what the McCain team hopes will be fears among the electorate at the prospect of a Democrat in the White House with expanded Democratic majorities in Congress. McCain plans in the closing days to focus on taxes and spending, national security, and what one adviser called "the perils of an Obama presidency with no checks and balances." The campaign will point to congressional Democrats' claims about the agenda they plan in the new Congress, Obama's "spread the wealth" remark to "Joe the Plumber" and Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s comment that his running mate would be tested internationally early in his presidency.

43% AIN'T NOTHING
(Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal)
Amid two wars, a deep economic crisis, a fractured base, too much cynicism, and a campaign with the wind not at its back but head on in its face—with all of that working against Mr. McCain, 43% of the American people say, right now, in these polls, they are for him. And there are a significant number of undecideds. Four years ago about 122 million people voted. Forty-three percent of 122 million is 52 million people, more or less. A huge group, one too varied to generalize about because it includes flinty elderly Republicans from New England, home-schooling mothers in Ohio, libertarianish Republicans in Colorado, suburban patriots outside the big cities, and many others. They are the beating heart of conservatism, and to watch most television is to forget they exist, for they are not shown much, except at rallies. But they are there, and this is a center-right nation, and many of them have been pushing hard against the age for 40 years now, and more. For some time they have sensed that something large and stable is being swept away, maybe has been swept away, and yet you still have to fight for it. They will not give up without a fight, and they will make their way to the polls. And they will be a rock-hard challenge to Mr. Obama if he wins.

IDEOLOGY ASIDE, THIS HAS BEEN THE YEAR OF THE WOMAN
(Lois "No Relation" Romano, Washington Post)
Two months after Sarah Palin joined the GOP ticket, and four months after Hillary Clinton ended her quest for the presidency, 2008 is turning out to be a transformative year for women in politics, according to women leaders across the political spectrum. As Election Day nears, it's clear that gender was not a disqualifying factor for either Clinton or Palin. Voters who turned against them did so for other reasons, just as they do with male candidates. Women from both parties also perceive with satisfaction a heightened emphasis on their issues in this year's race. Palin's candidacy has sent a jolt through traditional liberal women's organizations as she tries to redefine feminism, suggesting that the old movement has become detached from the hockey moms Palin champions. The mother of five and former beauty queen is the antithesis of the bra-burning militant libbers of the '60s, and she is adamantly antiabortion. Yet Palin has grabbed the feminist label vigorously and has been hailed as one by the thousands of supportive women who wave their lipstick tubes at her rallies.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...
 

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

MCCAIN LAMBASTES BUSH YEARS
(Joseph Curl and Stephan Dinan, Washington Times)
Sen. John McCain on Wednesday blasted President Bush... whose unpopularity may be dragging the Republican Party to the brink of a massive electoral defeat. "We just let things get completely out of hand," he said of his own party's rule in the past eight years... McCain lashed out at a litany of Bush policies and issues that he said he would have handled differently as president... "Spending, the conduct of the war in Iraq for years, growth in the size of government, larger than any time since the Great Society, laying a $10 trillion debt on future generations of America, owing $500 billion to China, obviously, failure to both enforce and modernize the [financial] regulatory agencies that were designed for the 1930s and certainly not for the 21st century, failure to address the issue of climate change seriously," Mr. McCain said... aboard his campaign plane en route from New Hampshire to Ohio. "Those are just some of them," he said with a laugh, chomping into a peanut butter sandwich as a few campaign aides in his midair office joined in the laughter.

WHY BARACK OBAMA IS WINNING
(Joe Klein, Time)
Barack Obama has prospered in this presidential campaign because of the steadiness of his temperament and the judicious quality of his decision-making. They are his best-known qualities. The most important decision he has made — the selection of a running mate — was done carefully, with an exhaustive attention to detail and contemplation of all the possible angles. Two months later, as John McCain's peremptory selection of Governor Sarah Palin has come to seem a liability, it could be argued that Obama's quiet selection of Joe Biden defined the public's choice in the general-election campaign. But not every decision can be made so carefully. There are a thousand instinctive, instantaneous decisions that a presidential candidate has to make in the course of a campaign — like whether to speak his mind to a General Petraeus — and this has been a more difficult journey for Obama, since he's far more comfortable when he's able to think things through. "He has learned to trust his gut," an Obama adviser told me. "He wasn't so confident in his instincts last year. It's been the biggest change I've seen in him."

THE MAKING (AND REMAKING) OF MCCAIN
(Robert Draper, New York Times Magazine)
John McCain’s biography has been the stuff of legend for nearly a decade. And yet Schmidt and his fellow strategists have had difficulty explaining how America will be better off for electing (as opposed to simply admiring) a stubborn patriot. In seeking to do so, the McCain campaign has changed its narrative over and over. Sometimes with McCain’s initial resistance but always with his eventual approval, Schmidt has proffered a candidate who is variously a fighter, a conciliator, an experienced leader and a shake-’em-up rebel. “The trick is that all of these are McCain,” Matt McDonald, a senior adviser, told me. But in constantly alternating among story lines in order to respond to changing events and to gain traction with voters, the “true character” of a once-crisply-defined political figure has become increasingly murky.

LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE
(Steven Stark, Boston Phoenix)
NOVEMBER 5 -- There was Wilson over Hughes. And, of course, Truman over Dewey. But there's never been a surprise in presidential politics like the one that awaited Americans this morning, who woke up to discover that, somehow, John McCain had been elected president over Barack Obama... Of course, Wednesday-morning quarterbacking is ridiculously easy, but in retrospect, what happened should have been crystal clear: Obama's lead was never as great as the media hype that accompanied it -- he only led by two to six points in some major tracking polls. In several of them, Obama tellingly never cleared 50 percent. (There was a larger-than-usual undecided vote.) And whether it was the so-called "Bradley effect" (suggesting a racial element to the vote) or something else, Obama performed last night exactly as he often had in the spring against Hillary Clinton: he ran below expectations. Meanwhile, the tsunami of youth support for Obama never materialized. Instead, it was the over-65 crowd who turned out as if the election were a five-o'clock dinner special, and who voted in record numbers for their fellow senior citizen.

MCCAIN'S PATH TO VICTORY THROUGH PA.
(Charles Mahtesian, Politico)
Nearly everyone in a position to know thinks the race for Pennsylvania’s 21 electoral votes is considerably tighter than what recent polls reveal. “There’s a tendency in Pennsylvania for the polls to change dramatically in the final days,” says John Brabender, a top Republican political consultant based in Pittsburgh. “In the governor’s race in 2002, there were polls just a few days out showing [Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell] with a 25-point lead and he ended up losing 50 of 67 counties and won by nine points.” I don’t believe there’s a double-digit lead,” said Jon Delano, a western Pennsylvania-based political analyst who also serves as an adjunct professor of Public Policy and Politics at Carnegie Mellon University. “The history of the presidential elections here is different.” Even top Democrats concede that McCain’s deficit in the polls — 11 percentage points, according to the latest Real Clear Politics polling average — isn’t a solid indicator of his chances of carrying the state. On Tuesday, CNN reported that an anxious Rendell had sent two recent memos to the Obama campaign requesting that the Democratic nominee spend more time campaigning in Pennsylvania.

PALIN DROVE A STAKE INTO CENTRIST HEARTS
(Froma Harrop, Providence Journal)
For the longest time, I was sitting on the fence, as were many centrists. A former Hillary Clinton supporter, I was bothered by Barack Obama's thin résumé, his rock-star rallies and the sexism tolerated by his campaign. At the same time, I admired McCain for his fiscal rectitude, history of bipartisanship and concern over global warming. That the right wing despised him for several high-profile breaks with the Bush administration -- notably on torture and the early tax cuts -- was a plus... What happened, Mark? Sarah Palin happened. Independents like me wanted two things out of a McCain running mate. (1) A capable leader who could step into the top job should something happen to the not-very-young No. 1. (2) Someone who would temper McCain's recent efforts to woo social conservatives. They got neither in the Alaska governor... Independents tend to be fiscally conservative, socially liberal and strong on defense. They were McCain's natural constituency and in mid-September gave him a 13-point margin. That lead has since flipped over to Obama, and Palin is a big reason. The choice of her as McCain's VP would have been politically brilliant had a Democrat made it.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...
 

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

IN ENDGAME, METRICS ARE ADDING UP FOR OBAMA
(Charlie Cook, National Journal)
Today it seems very unlikely that the focal point of this election is going to shift away from the economy. And as long as the economy is the focal point, it's difficult to see how this gets any better for Republicans up or down the ballot... The metrics of this election argue strongly that this campaign is over, it's only the memory of many an election that seemed over but wasn't that is keeping us from closing the book mentally on this one. First, no candidate behind this far in the national polls, this late in the campaign has come back to win. Sure, we have seen come-from-behind victories, but they didn't come back this far this late... As things are going now, this election would appear to be on a track to match Bill Clinton's 1992 5.6 percent margin over President George H.W. Bush, the question is whether it gets to Bush's 1988 7.7 percent win over Michael Dukakis or Clinton's 8.5 percent win over Robert Dole in 1996. Maybe some cataclysmic event occurs in the next two weeks that changes the trajectory of this election, but to override these factors, it would have to be very, very big.

ARE THE POLLS ACCURATE?
(Michael Barone, Wall Street Journal)
Can we trust the polls this year? That's a question many people have been asking as we approach the end of this long, long presidential campaign. As a recovering pollster and continuing poll consumer, my answer is yes -- with qualifications... Harvard researcher Daniel Hopkins, after examining dozens of races involving black candidates, reported this year, at a meeting of the Society of Political Methodology, that he'd found no examples of the "Bradley Effect" since 1996...  What this suggests is that Mr. Obama will win about the same percentage of votes as he gets in the last rounds of polling before the election. That's not bad news for his campaign, as the polls stand now. The realclearpolitics.com average of recent national polls, as I write, shows Mr. Obama leading John McCain by 50% to 45%. If Mr. Obama gets the votes of any perceptible number of undecideds (or if any perceptible number of them don't vote) he'll win a popular vote majority, something only one Democratic nominee, Jimmy Carter, has done in the last 40 years.

THE NYT'S DRAPER ON MCCAIN
(Mike Allen, Politico Playbook)
Despite their leeriness of being quoted, McCain’s senior advisers remained palpably confident of victory — at least until very recently. By October, the succession of backfiring narratives would compel some to reappraise not only McCain’s chances but also the decisions made by Schmidt, who only a short time ago was hailed as the savior who brought discipline and unrepentant toughness to a listing campaign. "For better or for worse, our campaign has been fought from tactic to tactic," one senior adviser glumly acknowledged to me in early October, just after Schmidt received authorization from McCain to unleash a new wave of ads attacking Obama’s character. "So this is the new tactic."

AFTER A YEAR ON THE ROAD, OBAMA IS CHANGING HIS TEMPO
(Michael Powell, New York Times)
It is tempting, in contrasting the Obama of a year ago with the presidential candidate of today, to conclude that Miles Davis has turned himself into Barry Manilow. That is not quite the case; he still draws crowds — 100,000 in St. Louis on Saturday — that would warm a rocker’s heart. And his words can still soar, as when he and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton formed a campaign duet Monday in Florida. But this Mr. Obama is a consciously, carefully, intentionally more grounded one, and a touch duller for the metamorphosis. The slow muting of Mr. Obama’s rhetorical dial, particularly noticeable as world markets gyrate and unemployment spikes, speaks to a candidate who has run a rigorously disciplined campaign. His goal a year ago was to soar while rivals still cast their eyes down; now he must convince voters that he can walk just a step or two ahead of them, and so help navigate treacherous ground.

HOW JOHN MCCAIN CAME TO PICK SARAH PALIN
(Jane Mayer, New Yorker)
A week or so before McCain named her, however, sources close to the campaign say, McCain was intent on naming his fellow-senator Joe Lieberman, an independent, who left the Democratic Party in 2006. David Keene, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, who is close to a number of McCain’s top aides, told me that “McCain and Lindsey Graham”—the South Carolina senator, who has been McCain’s closest campaign companion—“really wanted Joe.” But Keene believed that “McCain was scared off” in the final days, after warnings from his advisers that choosing Lieberman would ignite a contentious floor fight at the Convention, as social conservatives revolted against Lieberman for being, among other things, pro-choice... With just days to go before the Convention, the choices were slim. Karl Rove favored McCain’s former rival Mitt Romney, but enough animus lingered from the primaries that McCain rejected the pairing... Other possible choices—such as former Representative Rob Portman, of Ohio, or Governor Tim Pawlenty, of Minnesota—seemed too conventional. They did not transmit McCain’s core message that he was a “maverick.” Finally, McCain’s top aides, including Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis, converged on Palin.

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

SURVEY SAYS...
(Michael Crowley, New Republic)
Leve and his ilk are proliferating because an unprecedented demand exists for the information they peddle. An anxious, politically savvy public has developed a compulsive need to know precisely where the presidential contest stands at any given moment. The profusion of poll numbers in turn fuels the public's hunger for more definitive, or more reassuring, polls--a cycle made all the more relentless by a panoply of websites, such as RealClearPolitics and Talking Points Memo, that post every last number almost in real time. This new, frenetic age of polling has not necessarily led to more empirical certainty. The very instantaneousness of polls like Leve's threatens to shape perceptions as much as record them. And the deluge of polling data has just given partisans another opportunity to cherry-pick facts and impugn their rivals. In this besieged environment, even pollsters themselves fight bitterly over the best way to measure public opinion and whether the likes of Jay Leve have it exactly right--or very, very wrong.

OBAMA APPEAL RISES IN POLL; NO GAINS FOR MCCAIN TICKET
(Meghan Thee, New York Times)
As voters have gotten to know Senator Barack Obama, they have warmed up to him, with more than half, 53 percent, now saying they have a favorable impression of him and 33 percent saying they have an unfavorable view. But as voters have gotten to know Senator John McCain, they have not warmed, with only 36 percent of voters saying they view him favorably while 45 percent view him unfavorably... The percentage of those who hold a favorable opinion of Mr. Obama is up 10 points since last month. Opinion of Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Obama’s running mate, is also up, to 50 percent last weekend from 36 percent in September. In contrast, favorable opinion of Mr. McCain remained stable, and unfavorable opinion rose to 45 percent now from 35 percent in September. Mrs. Palin’s negatives are up, to 41 percent now from 29 percent in September. Mr. Obama’s favorability is the highest for a presidential candidate running for a first term in the last 28 years of Times/CBS polls. Mrs. Palin’s negative rating is the highest for a vice-presidential candidate as measured by The Times and CBS News. 

OBAMA TAKES THE HOMESTRETCH IN STRIDE
(Mark J. Penn, Politico)
The presidential campaign’s homestretch is looking a lot more like President Bill Clinton’s 1996 solid reelection over Republican nominee Bob Dole than like Ronald Reagan’s late-breaking 1980 landslide over incumbent Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Democratic standard-bearer Barack Obama appears headed toward victory over John McCain. But a campaign’s closing couple of weeks can be unexpectedly treacherous. Just ask John F. Kerry and Al Gore. In 2000, Vice President Gore’s popularity had begun to dip after the Democratic National Convention, when his populist people-vs.-the-powerful theme came off to much of the electorate as a call for higher taxes. During the last three weeks of the campaign, he lost late-breaking voters almost 2-to-1... This year, Democrats have considerably more reason for optimism about closing strong.

FEAR OF FAILURE HELPED FUEL OBAMA'S RECORD FUNDRAISING
(Matthew Mosk, Washington Post)
Unease about lingering tensions within the Democratic Party and worry that an Internet drive would underperform infused Sen. Barack Obama's campaign with an urgency that led to the most voracious one-month fundraising drive in American politics... Obama's record-breaking month is primarily a story about the explosive fundraising power of the Internet, and the expanding role of regular people in financing modern presidential campaigns. But it also underscores the importance of the powerful and well-connected, who accounted for about a third of the money that poured into Obama's coffers. Raised in $2,300 increments at VIP receptions, that money remains a foundation of the fundraising effort. A review of the Democrat's schedule shows that he dramatically ramped up the pace of his high-dollar fundraising events in September, such as the Barbra Streisand concert that helped him raise $9 million in a matter of hours. The campaign also dispatched a team of surrogates that included billionaire Warren Buffett, former Treasury secretary Robert E. Rubin and Caroline Kennedy, all of whom could tap Rolodexes full of contacts who could write large checks. 

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

THE POWELL ENDORSEMENT: HURTS MCCAIN, HELPS OBAMA
(Marc Ambinder, The Atlantic)
In that order, I think. (1) It deprives McCain of a day to win the news cycle. There are sixteen left. (2) Powell is a "man who I admire as much as anyone in the world," McCain has said. He was an informal adviser to the campaign early on. And the content of the endorsement acknowledges what McCain's accomplished, studies it, and judges that it is insufficient for the modern world. (Powell is closer to McCain than Obama on Iraq.)  McCain would be a maverick, Powell says, but America needs a transformation figure. (3) McCain might take this as a personal rejection, and he might wear it on his sleeve. (4) Powell is a culturally individuated African American hero; to the extent that there remain white voters who have inchoate worries about Obama's race, it helps to have him associated with a man whose race they've already gotten over.  I do think this cohort of people is tiny. 

DEMOCRATS SEE OPPORTUNITY IN OUTER SUBURBS' TROUBLES
(Alec MacGillis, Washington Post)
For all the emphasis on Sen. Barack Obama's chances with working-class voters in declining Rust Belt cities, the biggest swing vote in the presidential election is likely to be in outer suburban communities, where Democrats hope to capitalize on economic unease and demographic shifts to overturn traditional Republican strengths. Republicans have long dominated in the fast-growing exurbs, which President Bush won by an even larger margin in 2004 than in 2000. But Democrats made inroads in these areas in the 2006 congressional elections, part of a broader trend that has seen the party gain among college-educated suburban professionals. And this year, many exurbs that grew rapidly in the past decade are being hit particularly hard by the economic downturn. These exurbs, home to an increasing share of the electorate, will help decide who wins states such as Florida, North Carolina, Colorado and Nevada, which are emerging as battlegrounds in the final weeks of the election while Republican chances of reclaiming industrial states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have waned. Nowhere, though, are the exurbs more relevant than they are in Virginia, where Loudoun and Prince William counties are likely to be pivotal.

THE RIGHT'S CLASS WAR
(John Heilemann, New York)
With the prospect of defeat for John McCain growing more likely every day, the GOP destined to see its numbers reduced in both the House and Senate, and the Republican brand debased to the point of bankruptcy, the conservative intelligentsia is factionalized and feuding, criminating and recriminating, in a way that few of its members can recall in their political lifetimes. Populists attack Establishmentarians. Neocons assail theocons. And virtually everyone has something harsh to say about the party’s standard-bearer. Election Day may still be two weeks away, but already the idea-merchants of the right have formed a circular firing squad. When the weapons of choice shift from pistols to Uzis after November 4, the ensuing massacre will be for Democrats a source of political opportunity, not to mention endless entertainment. But for Republicans it will be a necessary passage toward either the revival or reinvention of conservatism. Nobody serious on the right doubts that the overhaul is at once required and bound to be arduous—but it may take longer and prove even bloodier than anyone now imagines.

MCCAIN IS NO SALESMAN ON TAX PROPOSALS
(Clive Crook, Financial Times)
How is it... that Mr McCain has been so thoroughly outmanoeuvred on tax policy? Both candidates have offered complex tax proposals. Proliferating alternative baselines (with or without the extension of the Bush tax cuts, with or without a “patch” for the alternative minimum tax, and so forth) deepen the confusion. Unable to fathom the details, voters are left to weigh the competing slogans. Mr Obama promises to cut taxes for 95 per cent of working families. Mr McCain says the rich need a tax cut, too. Guess who wins that argument. Here is a fact you might not have noticed. It certainly seems to have slipped by most Americans. The typical US household would get a bigger tax cut under Mr McCain’s proposals than under Mr Obama’s. I know a few politicians who could do something with that. Broadly speaking, Mr McCain proposes to leave the Bush tax cuts in place. Mr Obama proposes a big increase in taxes on people earning more than $250,000 (€187,000, £145,000) a year, in order to cut taxes and increase subsidies at the bottom; for the middle, he too would mostly keep the Bush tax code. Middle-income households do come out slightly ahead under the Obama plan – but only if you leave out the effect of Mr McCain’s healthcare proposal. The question is, why would you do that?

JOHN MCCAIN AND AN ARMY OF JOES
(Byron York, National Review)
In recent days, the Joe the Plumber phenomenon has taken on a deeper meaning for McCain’s audiences, for two reasons. First, he is a symbol of their belief that Barack Obama is going to raise their taxes, regardless of what Obama says about hitting up only those taxpayers who make more than $250,000 a year. They know Wurzelbacher doesn’t make that much, and they know they don’t make that much. And they’re not suspicious because they believe that someday they will make $250,000, and thus face higher taxes. No, they just don’t believe Obama right now. If he’s elected, they say, he’ll eventually come looking for taxpayers who make well below a quarter-million dollars, and that will include them. The second reason Joe the Plumber resonates with the crowds is what his experience says about the media. Everybody here seems acutely aware of the once-over Wurzelbacher received from the press after his chance encounter with Obama was reported, first on Fox News, and then mentioned by McCain at last week’s presidential debate... As the people here in Woodbridge saw it, Joe was a guy who asked Barack Obama an inconvenient question — and for his troubles suddenly found himself under investigation by the media.  

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

POLLS CAUSE CAMPAIGNS TO CHANGE THEIR ITINERARIES
(Adam Nagourney and Jim Rutenberg, New York Times)
Confronting an increasingly bleak electoral map, top aides to Senator John McCain said Thursday that they were searching for a “narrow-victory scenario” and would focus in the final weeks on a dwindling number of states, using mailings, telephone calls and television advertisements to try to tear away support from Senator Barack Obama. Mr. Obama’s advisers said they would use the remaining 19 days of the campaign to focus mainly on capturing states that President Bush won in 2004; he is going to Missouri, North Carolina and Virginia, over the next three days and spending two days in Florida next week... By contrast, Mr. McCain is spending the next three days campaigning in states that Mr. Bush won in 2004 and that earlier this year Republicans had considered relatively safe: he will visit Florida on Friday, followed by North Carolina, Virginia and Ohio. Republicans said their hopes of capturing any state the Democrats won in 2004 appeared to be dwindling... By every indication, Mr. Obama entered this post-debate period in a significantly stronger position than Mr. McCain, with broader support in polls, more options for an Electoral College victory and voters increasingly fixated on the economic crisis, to the decided advantage of Mr. Obama.

OBAMA AHEAD IN CRITICAL COUNTIES
(Alexander Burns, Politico)
Sen. Barack Obama holds leads in four key counties that will go a long way toward determining the eventual winner in four important swing states—Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia—according to a new Politico/Insider Advantage survey... In Bucks County, a politically competitive but historically Republican suburb that shares a border with Philadelphia, Obama is running ahead of McCain, 47-41 percent. In 2004, Democrat John Kerry carried the county by a slim 51-48 percent. Obama bests McCain 50-42 percent in Prince William County, a Washington, D.C. suburb that voted for George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004. Between 1976 and 2004, Prince William County supported Republican presidential candidates by an average margin of 18 points.  Obama also has opened up a wide 53-37 percent advantage over McCain in suburban St. Louis County, which does not include Missouri’s largest city, St. Louis. In 2004, Democrat John Kerry carried St. Louis County, the most populous county in the state, 54-45 percent. In Ohio’s Franklin County, the state’s second-most populous county after Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County, Obama leads by a narrower 45-40 percent margin. Kerry carried Franklin County 54-45 percent in 2004. 

AS MCCAIN'S ROAD GETS STEEPER, OBAMA WARNS OF OVERCONFIDENCE
(Dan Balz and Shailagh Murray, Washington Post)
The global financial crisis, coupled with Obama's steady performance through the three presidential debates, has left McCain with an extremely difficult path to the White House. Absent his ability to pick off any state won by the Democrats four years ago, he must prevent Obama from winning any of half a dozen Republican states that now appear vulnerable. Republican strategists see trouble almost everywhere, facing the prospect of not only losing the White House but seeing Democratic majorities in the House and Senate grow as well. That could force a competition for resources during the final weeks, but strategists said a McCain comeback would be most helpful in relieving some of the pressure on other GOP candidates... Obama sought to pump up his supporters with a stern message not to take the race for granted. "For those of you who are feeling giddy or cocky or think this is all set, I just have two words for you: New Hampshire," he told top contributors... "I've been in these positions before when we were favored and the press starts getting carried away and we end up getting spanked."

THE END OF THE REAGAN ERA?
(Ronald Brownstein, National Journal)
Reagan's commanding victory 28 years ago marked what many historians see as a hinge in American history -- a moment that was a transition between political eras. If the Democrats win a victory of comparable breadth on November 4, the obvious question will be whether 2008 marks another transition... [But] even if Democrats win big next month, they will face the challenge of understanding what kind of victory they have won. Large Democratic gains unquestionably would reflect a severe judgment on George W. Bush's performance as president. Although history may commend some of Bush's twilight decisions (including the financial rescue package and the "surge" in Iraq), his failures far outnumber his successes. And he is approaching Election Day with the highest disapproval rating (71 percent) the Gallup Poll has recorded for any president. Less clear is whether a big Democratic win would represent an ideological pivot like 1980. Many Democrats believe that a breakthrough next month, coming after a financial meltdown that has discredited unfettered markets, would represent the public's repudiation not just of Bush's performance but of Reagan's small-government ideas... Conservatives are dubious.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...
 

A round-up of this morning's must read stories.

EDGY MCCAIN SHEDS NO NEW LIGHT
(John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei, Politico)
John McCain’s challenge at the final debate was to present his case for the presidency in a new light. But over 90 minutes of intense exchanges with Barack Obama—sometimes compelling, often awkward—-there was very little new light, and no obvious reason for McCain to be optimistic that he has turned his troubled campaign in a new direction. To the contrary, what McCain offered at Hofstra University was simply a more intense, more glaring version of his campaign in familiar light —- an edgy, even angry performance that in many ways seemed like a metaphor for his unfocused, wildly improvisational campaign. The Arizona senator threw many punches and sometimes may have landed a few, as when he called Obama out for reneging on a clear promise to accept public financing and the spending limits that go with it. But just as often Obama smoothly sidestepped the punches, as when he gave what seemed like a plausible and non-defensive answer on how he came to know the ‘60s-era domestic terrorist Bill Ayers and pivoted to boast about the range of advice he seeks from establishment pillars like Warren Buffet on the economy. More important, what was not evident in all the flailing of arms was a clear or logically consistent case about why McCain should be president and Obama should not be. 

PRESSING ALL THE BUTTONS, MCCAIN ATTACKS, BUT OBAMA STAYS STEADY
(Patrick Healy, New York Times)
Senator John McCain was in a groove early in the presidential debate on Wednesday night, looking Senator Barack Obama in the eye and chiding him over taxes, over his backbone in standing up to Democrats and over the Obama campaign’s portrayal of Mr. McCain as the second coming of George W. Bush. It looked like Mr. McCain might, just might, raise the level of his game in throwing Mr. Obama off his — Mr. McCain’s essential goal 20 days before the election, as he seeks a comeback in the face of declining poll numbers in battlegrounds like Pennsylvania and Virginia. But then Mr. McCain began to undercut his own effort to paint Mr. Obama as just another negative politician. Mr. McCain grew angry as he attacked Mr. Obama over his ties to William Ayers, the Chicago professor who helped found the Weather Underground terrorism group. Suddenly, Mr. McCain was no longer gaining ground by showing command on the top issue for voters, the economy; he was turning tetchy over a 1960s radical... It seemed as if Mr. McCain was veering from one hot button to another, pressing them all, hoping to goad Mr. Obama into an outburst or a mistake that would alter the shape of the race in its last three weeks. But for a punch to make a difference, the punch needs to do something to its target — to rattle, to wound, or (best of all) cause the opponent to counterpunch in a self-defeating way.

MAC'S SHOT AT A LATE-GAME WIN
(Dick Morris and Eileen McGan, New York Post)
The short term impact of the third debate will be to help Barack Obama. But the long term implications may give John McCain a needed boost. Obama looked good, but McCain opened the tax-and-spend issue in a way that might prevail. Remember 1992. Clinton had a big lead over George Bush Sr. with three weeks to go. But then Bush and Quayle hammered him over the tax issue and his big spending plans. Day after day, the Republicans gained, and Clinton fell back. By the Thursday before the Tuesday election, Bush had gained the lead. Ultimately Clinton was saved at the bell by the announcement by Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh that he was going to indict Bush's Defense Secretary Cap Weinberger. That restored the Clinton lead and delivered the victory to him. McCain is not as good on television as Obama is. So the immediate impact of the debate was to help Obama. But the tax-and-spend issue is the one that Republicans want at the center of the race, and McCain put it there. So this may turn out to have been a turning point for McCain, after all.

DOES TEMPERAMENT MATTER?
(Nancy Gibbs, Time)
That Obama's fortunes rose as the markets sank shows how central temperament has become in the homestretch of the presidential race. Only weeks ago, you might have expected that McCain's greater experience and his courage in the clutch would lift him as a leader in a moment of crisis. Yet the turn of the polls suggests the reverse; without taking a dramatically different approach on substance, Obama won this round on style and disposition. Both candidates supported the bailout, and both call for tax cuts and policing of markets, but in tenor, they were polar opposites. Temperament is in the eye of the voter. Is one response evidence of composure and self-possession — or of being too laid-back and unassertive? Is the other response a sign of urgency and decisiveness or a frantic lack of control?... So at this crucial moment, what do we make of the two men before us, the passionate Maverick and the cool-handed Hopemonger, Mr. Fire and Mr. Ice? Does the crucible of a campaign actually give you a glimpse of their souls? And does anything that happens on the trail have any bearing on what would happen after they take the oath of office?

WORKING FOR THE WORKING-CLASS VOTE
(Matt Bai, New York Times Magazine)
Given the fact that he is not, in fact, a white male, Obama would seem to face an even-less-forgiving landscape among white-male voters... And yet Obama has persevered, devoting far more time and money than either of the last two Democratic nominees on an effort to persuade working-class and rural white guys that he is not the elitist, alien figure they may be inclined to think he is... Mathematically, Obama can probably win the election without winning any of these states — or Nevada or Montana or any of the other conservative states where he has campaigned in the past several months. What he probably can’t do, if he doesn’t convert enough voters to throw at least a few traditionally red states into the blue column, is get beyond what he dismissively refers to as the “50-plus-1” governing model, the idea that a president need only represent 50 percent of the country (plus 1 additional vote) to command the office. From the start, Obama has aspired not simply to win but also to stand as a kind of generational break from the polarized era of the boomers, to become the first president in at least 20 years to claim anything more than the most fragile mandate for his agenda. Absent that, even if he wins, Obama could wake up on Nov. 5 as yet another president-elect of half the people, perched uncomfortably on the edge of an impassable cultural divide.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...
 

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

OBAMA, MCCAIN SEEK LEADER'S IMAGE IN FINAL DEBATE
(Liz Sidoti, Associated Press)
Barack Obama and John McCainwill both pursue the image of a strong leader in troublesome economic times as they meet Wednesday night for their third and final presidential debate. Their face-off comes as Obama widens his lead in typically Democratic states and campaigns with an air of optimism about his prospects, while McCain seeks a way to gain ground and finds himself defending traditionally Republican states with less than three weeks left in the race... Wednesday's debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., is slated to focus entirely on the economy and domestic policy. The candidates will be seated at a table with moderator Bob Schieffer of CBS. Both presidential contenders have used the previous debates to make and remake their main campaign points, frequently sidestepping direct questions such as how they would have to scale back their long lists of campaign promises in light of the economic crisis. Advisers for each candidate say he will use the final debate to lay out his vision for the country and promote his economic policies while drawing differences with his opponent. Character attacks — subtle or not — also could occur.

WHICH JOHN MCCAIN WILL SHOW UP TO DEBATE?
(Mike Madden, Salon)
A day before the final presidential debate of the year -- and three weeks before Election Day -- McCain's campaign still seems to be struggling to figure out how to regain momentum in a race that, for him, has gone south faster than a retiree with a ticket to Florida. (That is, if the retiree still has any savings left to head south with.) McCain himself is sticking to a kindler, gentler stump speech that only impugns Obama's policies, not his personality, and his rallies are more carefully controlled by the campaign -- at least in part because polling found voters were starting to turn away from McCain, rather than Obama, because of McCain's sharp tone. But aides haven't given up on the notion that voters would revolt against the Democrat if they only knew whom he's been hanging out with... Nearly all of McCain's TV ads are attacking Obama in similar fashion. And a day after McCain debuted his retooled stump speech, and only a few days after he rebuked his own supporters for taking anti-Obama vitriol past where McCain wanted it to be, he also promised the old McCain -- last week's McCain -- would make an appearance at Wednesday night's debate, with an attempt to highlight Ayers. 

MCCAIN'S BROTHER BLASTS CAMPAIGN STRATEGY
(Paul West, Baltimore Sun)
Frustrations inside John McCain's camp boiled over on the eve of Wednesday night's presidential debate as the candidate's brother unleashed an e-mail blasting the campaign's "counter-productive" strategy. "Let John McCain be John McCain," wrote Joe McCain in a missive sent out shortly before midnight Monday. "Make ads that show John not as crank and curmudgeon but as a great leader for his time." McCain's younger brother was sharply critical of unnamed top campaign officials who "so tightly 'control the message'" that they are preventing reporters from speaking with those, like himself, who know the candidate best. His complaint echoed those of other McCain intimates who have chafed for months at orders not to speak with the news media without advance permission from the campaign. The younger McCain called this news management strategy "counter-intuitive, counter-experiential, and counter-productive" because it conflicts with his brother's reputation for openness. The clampdown "has gradually bled away all the good will that this great man had from the press," he wrote. 

FROM 2 RIVALS, 2 PRESCRIPTIONS
(Jackie Calmes, New York Times)
Both presidential candidates have now outlined their plans for addressing the economic crisis, leaving voters with a clear choice when it comes to one of the biggest challenges the next president will face. Mr. McCain’s new plans include tax cuts on capital gains and on withdrawals from retirement accounts by people 59 and older, bigger write-offs for stock losses and a tax waiver for unemployment benefits.Those proposals, which would be effective for two years, complement an overall economic program that hews to the Republican playbook: tax cuts geared especially to individuals and businesses at the top of the income scale, in the belief that they will stimulate the economy and create jobs that benefit everyone... The $60 billion stimulus package that Senator Barack Obama announced Monday, combined with his longstanding economic agenda, reflect Democratic emphasis on tax cuts intended for middle-class and low-wage workers and for the smallest businesses, as well as spending increases for public works to create jobs... Even with the new proposals, which come on top of the hundreds of billions of dollars the government has already committed to bail out financial institutions and other faltering corporations, both candidates continue to promise that as president they would reduce the ballooning annual budget deficits, without forfeiting any of the big-ticket promises they made pre-crisis.