Here's a wrap-up of the four major national tracking polls for today. With one new day of post-VP debate data within these three-day tracking polls, Barack Obama's lead is just getting wider:

• Gallup: Obama 50%, McCain 42%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 49%-42% Obama lead yesterday.

• Rasmussen: Obama 51%, McCain 45%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 51%-44% Obama lead yesterday.

• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 48%, McCain 41%, with a ±3.2% margin of error, compared to a 48%-42% Obama lead yesterday.

• Research 2000: Obama 52, McCain 40%, with a ±3% margin of error, compared to a 51%-40% Obama lead yesterday.

Adding these polls together and weighting them by sample sizes, Obama is ahead 50.4%-42.7%, even wider than his lead yesterday of 49.9%-42.5%. And more importantly, Obama is now over the 50% mark.

Sarah Palin attacked Obama's patriotism today over his association with former Weatherman Bill Ayers -- a move that makes it perfectly legitimate to raise questions about the Palins' associations with a group founded by an Alaska secessionist who once professed his "hatred for the American government" and cursed our "damn flag."

In Colorado today, Palin seized on the big front-page New York Times story about Ayers and Obama, which concludes that the two men "do not appear to have been close," to launch her most vicious attack yet on the Illinois Senator -- a harbinger of what's to come.

"This is not a man who sees America as you and I do -- as the greatest force for good in the world," Palin said. "This is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country."

If Palin is going to say this, it is now perfectly legitimate to point out that she repeatedly courted a secessionist group founded by someone who openly professed hatred of the American government, cursed our flag, and wanted to secede from the Union. Sarah's husband, Todd Palin, was a member of this group, which continues to venerate that founder to this day, for years.

Read more »

WaPo: McCain Camp Plans New Assault On Obama's Character
The Washington Post reports that the McCain campaign is planning a new offensive against Barack Obama for the home stretch of the campaign, relying less on talking about John McCain's biography and more about taking On Barack Obama's personal character. "There's no question that we have to change the subject here," said a Republican operative.

Obama Camp: McCain Wants To Change The Subject From The Economy
The Obama campaign has already responded in a statement to the WaPo report about the McCain campaign preparing new attacks: "We understand that it's not easy for John McCain to defend the worst economic record of our lifetime, but he will have to explain to the people struggling to pay their bills and stay in their homes why he would rather spend his time tearing down Barack Obama than laying out a plan to build up our economy."

Obama In Virginia, Biden Speaking To Gay-Rights Activists
Barack Obama is holding a rally today in Newport News, Virginia. Joe Biden is speaking to the Human Rights Campaign's annual dinner in Washington, DC.

Palin In California, McCain Off The Trail
Sarah Palin is campaigning today in Carson, California, with a rally scheduled for 5:30 p.m. ET -- an odd choice, considering that California is practically a lock for Barack Obama. John McCain does not have any announced public events.

NYT Looks At Obama And Ayers
The New York Times has a lengthy piece today on Barack Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers -- and it's less than epic, finding that Obama knew Ayers through limited social encounters and their work together as part of broader efforts at education reform. "A review of records of the schools project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63," the Times says. "But the two men do not appear to have been close."

Poll Gives Franken The Lead In Minnesota
A new Star Tribune poll gives Al Franken a 43%-34% lead over Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN), with Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley getting 18%. This is practically the opposite of the SurveyUSA poll from two days ago, which gave Coleman a 43%-33% lead.

The Obama campaign is opening up a major new offensive against McCain on health care that includes a forceful speech today denouncing McCain's plan as "radical," as well as a blitz of ads like this new one:

The ad hammers McCain's proposed tax of health benefits as a "trillion dollar tax" and the "largest middle class tax hike ever," an effort to turn McCain's frequent claim that Obama would hike middle class taxes on its head.

With the push on health care, which has been gearing up for some time now, the Obama team is homing in on a specific pocketbook issue in order to paint McCain as the risky, uncertain, and even frightening choice at a time when public fears are fixed squarely on the economy. Many Dems think that Obama's strongest suit amid all the generalized anxiety is to close out the race with as much specificity as possible as to how precisely he will improve people's lives, and why McCain would make them worse off.

Buried at the end of this Washington Post piece on the aggressive attacks McCain intends to wage in the campaign's final days is this unfortunate quote from a senior McCain adviser:

"We are looking for a very aggressive last 30 days," said Greg Strimple, one of McCain's top advisers. "We are looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis and getting back to discussing Mr. Obama's aggressively liberal record and how he will be too risky for Americans."

That seems like an awfully candid admission, if an inadvertent one: The McCain campaign doesn't want to talk about the economic crisis anymore; the McCain camp would rather talk about how "risky" Obama is.

What's more, the "turning the page" line seems awfully flip. Why entrust McCain to steer our economy out trouble if his own top adviser admits that McCain and company don't want to talk about solving the crisis and are hoping to merely "turn the page" on it?

Seems like a line the Obama campaign just might grab on to.

This morning, we reported that an independent group was running ads in Wisconsin attacking Obama for supposedly letting babies die by hitting him for opposing an Illinois measure that purported to protect the lives of babies who had survived an abortion.

Now Mark Halperin has obtained a copy of the ad, which is the work of some group called the Committee for Truth in Politics, and it's a nasty piece of work that actually features a cooing baby:

In the next month, we're going to see an assault on Obama's character, patriotism, and fitness to be president that is unprecedented in American politics.

Here's tonight's run-down on the Congressional races.

Minnesota GOP Accused Of Playing Up Racial Angle In House Race
Now this is awkward. The Minnesota Dems are circulating this tracker video of a state GOP press conference from Tuesday, in which reporters asked some very tough questions about wether the party was using race as an issue in saying that their House candidate Erik Paulsen better fits the "demographic" of the district than Democrat Ashwin Madia, who is Indian-American:

"I'm just saying from a demographic standpoint, Erik Paulsen fits the district very well," said state party chairman Ron Carey. A spokesperson for the state party declined to speak to Election Central when approached for comment.

Endangered GOP Senator Links Himself To Ted Kennedy In New Ad
Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR), who has fallen behind in the polls against Democrat Jeff Merkley in this blue state, has this new ad touting his support for gay rights -- and his work with Ted Kennedy on the issue:

Smith has previously run ads tying himself in with Barack Obama and John Kerry -- the latter of whom he'd previously called a socialist back in 2004.

Read more »

And now for a little Friday happy hour entertainment. John McCain, in a statement just out on the passage of the bailout bill, shatters all his previous "do as I say, not as I do" records:

"Washington is still on the wrong track, and we face a stark choice in this election. We can go backwards with job-killing tax hikes, the same old broken partisanship, and out of control spending as Senator Obama would have us do or we can bring real reform to Washington."

Decrying partisanship and attacking Obama in the same sentence -- that surpasses McCain's previous achievement, where he blamed Obama and Dems for the initial bailout collapse while calling for an end to all the finger-pointing in the space of two sentences.

Meanwhile, on the trail today, Obama hailed the passage of the bill, and took credit for his role in getting some Dems on board.

Obama's comments, and McCain's full statement, after the jump.

Read more »

This won't shock you all that much, but Sarah Palin will not be on any of the Sunday shows this weekend.

A source forwards me the Obama campaign TV booker's internal line-up of Sunday show guests, which gets sent out to select political and media insider types. No Palin on it.

NBC's Meet the Press is fielding consultants Paul Begala and Mike Murphy and several others. CBS is hosting Jennifer Granholm, Diane Feinstein and other pols. ABC: Ed Rendell, Sherrod Brown and others. Fox: Claire McCaskill.

Biden isn't on any of the shows, either. But Biden has done a gazillion of these interviews, and no one doubts that he'd appear if asked or directed to.

By contrast, yesterday was supposed to be Palin's triumphant return, where she was to prove that she can withstand scrutiny, despite her disastrous train-wreck interviews and her campaign's subsequent decision to pack her off to far more friendly media confines.

This weekend might have been a logical time for her to step back into the media glare. Alas, it isn't to be. When, then?

An odd moment on Fox News: Sarah Palin appears to say that she heard about her campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan only today, despite it being reported far and wide across our great land yesterday. She seems to suggest she heard it about it from the newspapers...

"Well, that's not a surprise because, you know, the polls are showing we're not doing as well there evidently as we would like to," Palin said. "But I read that this morning also. I fired off a quick email and said `Oh, come on, you know, do we have to? Do we have to call it there?'"

How sequestered from her campaign's workings is Palin, anyway? To be fair, she has been holed up in debate prep for days. But still, this was a major, major campaign decision. It's odd that she appeared to have heard nothing about it, let alone having been in any sort of discussions about it.

The McCain campaign has now shifted virtually 100 percent of his national ad spending into negative ads attacking Obama, a detailed breakdown of his ad buys reveals.

By contrast, the Obama campaign is devoting less than half of its overall ad spending to ads attacking McCain. More than half of its spending is going to a spot that doesn't once mention his foe.

I asked Evan Tracey -- who tracks national ad spending for the Campaign Media Analysis Group -- to detail the amounts each campaign is spending on specific different spots. The idea was to gauge the precise degree of the McCain campaign's shift into negative mode amid his slide in the polls, and determine whether the Obama camp was following suit.

The results were striking, and suggest a sharper turn into negative campaigning as time runs low. For one thing, Tracey says, Obama is now outspending McCain by nearly two to one on the air -- Obama is spending $2.4 million per week, and McCain is spending $1.3 million weekly. But on to the breakdowns.

As of October 1 -- three days ago -- the McCain campaign's $1.3 million weekly is being broken down as follows, according to Tracey, who stressed that he himself wasn't labeling the ads either "positive" or "negative":

Read more »

The Obama and McCain campaigns have both announced new attack ads aganst each other this afternoon, a preview of what we can expect to see for the next month.

Here's the McCain ad, airing nationally, calling Obama a liar when he says he'll cut taxes for most people:

"At least Congressional liberals admit they want to raise your taxes," one of the announcers says. Thing is, this isn't true -- unless by "you" they mean this ad is only meant to be seen by people making over $250,000 per year. Obama and the Dems are promising tax reductions for pretty much everyone else.

Here's Obama's new ad, targeted to key states, continuing the day's theme of deconstrucitng McCain's position on health care tax credits, and saying it's McCain who would raise taxes on working people:

"McCain would make you pay income tax on your health insurance benefits. Taxing health benefits for the first time ever," the announcer says. "And that tax credit? McCain's own website said it goes straight to the insurance companies, not to you. Leaving you on your own to pay McCain's health insurance tax."

The House passed the bailout plan moments ago by a comfortable margin, 263 to 171. The political world exhales, and the strangest presidential campaign in recent memory takes yet another turn.

Now what?

The passage of the plan has the potential to help McCain a bit. It could rally the markets, ease everyone's sense of impending apocalypse (a bit), and allow McCain to expand the campaign beyond the economy into areas where he might have a hope of turning things around.

McCain desperately needs the conversation to get back to the question of Barack Obama's fitness to be commander in chief: Time is running out, and while McCain still holds a decided national security edge, Obama's performance amid the crisis has in a broad sense closed the "preparedness" gap between the candidates.

But on the immediate political question of which candidate, if either, will benefit, McCain's unlikely to bank any real political gains. His earlier, and higher-profile, effort to insert himself into the process was a bust. The public has clearly decided it favors Obama's handling of the crisis. And Obama has been edging into a more active role amid the evolving meltdown, calling House members to rally them behind the bailout and repeatedly demanding on the stump that Congress pass the plan.

Also key: A majority of GOPers again opposed the plan. Ninety one House Republicans voted for it, and 108 voted against, again casting doubt on McCain's ability to rally members of his own party behind a measure that he suggested was necessary to rescue the Republic from doom.

Still, predictions are basically futile. The latest news could shift the dynamic of the race (again) in unforeseen ways and send us (again) into uncertain territory as the race enters the final stretch.

Here's a wrap-up of the four major national tracking polls for today, showing Barack Obama expanding his lead even further:

• Gallup: Obama 49%, McCain 42%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 48%-43% Obama lead yesterday.

• Rasmussen: Obama 51%, McCain 44%, with a ±2% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.

• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 48%, McCain 42%, with a ±3.2% margin of error, compared to a 47%-42% Obama lead yesterday.

• Research 2000: Obama 51%, McCain 40%, with a ±3% margin of error, the same as yesterday.

Adding these polls together and weighting them by sample sizes, Obama is ahead 49.9%-42.5%, even wider than his lead yesterday of 49.4%-42.9%.

Bear in mind that these three-day surveys were conducted before last night's vice-presidential debate. As such, they don't tell us what effect -- if any -- that the debate had on the race. But what they do give us is a baseline for determining that effect as we see more polls over the next few days.

One of Sarah Palin's key claims at the debate last night -- one that has gone largely unremarked on --was her assertion that Joe Biden strongly supported John McCain's Iraq policies, and opposed those of Barack Obama, until this campaign got underway.

We took a look at the record, and found that this claim is, like so many others, a near-complete falsehood.

In the debate, Palin said:

And you had supported John McCain's military strategies pretty adamantly until this race and you had opposed very adamantly Barack Obama's military strategy, including cutting off funding for the troops that attempt all through the primary.

And I watched those debates, so I remember what those were all about.

The claim that Biden supported McCain's policies "pretty adamantly until this is race" is essentially a lie, and the record proves it.

Read more »

Here's today's run-down on the Congressional races: Democrats are running strong in some key races, thanks to the economic crisis -- but some other opportunities could be slipping away.

Senate GOP Ad Bashes Bailout Supported By Incumbent Senator, Opposed By Dem
The NRSC has this new ad in the Oregon Senate race that is strongly critical of Wall St. and Washington, then says Dem candidate Jeff Merkley would make things worse:

"Our economy in trouble, Wall St. and Washington gambling with our money, piling up more government debt," the announcer says. It should be noted here that incumbent GOP Sen. Gordon Smith voted for the bailout, and Merkley is opposing it. And then there are the two chief leaders of the GOP, George W. Bush and John McCain, who both support it.

Al Franken's Wife Talks About Alcoholism In New Ad
The Franken campaign has this new ad out presenting an image of a very human and compassionate Al Franken, at odds with the idea of a manic and angry person that the GOP has worked to project. In this spot, Franken's wife Franni talks about her struggle with alcoholism, and Al's work to help other people with this problem:

"The Al Franken I know stood by me through thick and thin," Franni Franken says. "So I know he'll always come through for Minnesotans."

Read more »

In a speech going on right now in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb, Barack Obama wades a bit deeper into the action on the bailout package, urging the House to pass it today and making a specific reference to the impact he had on it.

From the prepared remarks:

It's a plan I voted for the other night - because I made sure it included taxpayer protections and wasn't simply a blank check like this administration initially asked for. And it's a plan that the House is going to be voting on soon. So to Democrats and Republicans in the House who are now on the fence, let me say this: do not make the same mistake twice. For the sake of our families, our economy, and our country, step up to the plate and pass this plan.

You know, there were a lot of noteworthy moments in that debate, but there's one that sticks out this morning. It's when Governor Palin said to Joe Biden that our plan to get our economy out of the ditch was somehow a job killing plan.

I wonder if she turned on the news this morning.

Because it was just reported that America has experienced its ninth straight month of job loss. Just since January, we've lost more than 750,000 jobs across America, 7,000 in Pennsylvania alone. This is the economy that John McCain said - just two weeks ago - was fundamentally strong. This is the economy that my opponent said made great progress under the policies of George W. Bush. And those are the economic policies that he proposes to continue for another four years.

So when Senator McCain and his running mate talk about job killing, that's something they know a thing or two about. Because the policies they're supporting are killing jobs every single day.

Full prepared remarks after the jump.

Read more »

An independent group is running a TV spot in Wisconsin that attacks Obama by suggesting he allowed babies to die by opposing a measure in Illinois that purportedly would have protected the lives of babies who survive abortions.

The ad ran in the Wisconsin market this morning on the local NBC affiliate, a reader reports to us, and an employee at the affiliate, NBC 15, confirms that the spot will be running for a week.

The ad uses the same false attack line as does the big radio ad campaign being planned by the powerful National Right to Life Committee that we reported on here yesterday.

The new TV spot, the NBC 15 employee confirms, is being funded by a group called the Committee for Truth in Politics, which registered as a PAC in 2004 and seems to have involved itself in some local Nevada races.

At any rate, the next five weeks will be more and more dominated by this kind of stuff, and painting Obama as indifferent to the lives of babies appears to be a choice tactic for these groups.

We're trying to get more on this, including where else it's running, the script, and possibly the ad itself, and will let you know when we know more.

One thing to watch for: Prominent conservatives essentially conceding that the race is over. This morning, none other than Charles Krauthammer waves the white flag:

Part of reassurance is intellectual. Like Palin, he's a rookie, but in his 19 months on the national stage he has achieved fluency in areas in which he has no experience. In the foreign policy debate with McCain, as in his July news conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Obama held his own -- fluid, familiar and therefore plausibly presidential.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously said of Franklin Roosevelt that he had a "second-class intellect, but a first-class temperament." Obama has shown that he is a man of limited experience, questionable convictions, deeply troubling associations (Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko) and an alarming lack of self-definition -- do you really know who he is and what he believes? Nonetheless, he's got both a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament. That will likely be enough to make him president.

As if that weren't enough, Krauthammer also compares Obama's temperament to that of Ronald Reagan, causing no shortage of wailing and gnashing of teeth at McCain's Arlington HQ. Not exactly the message the McCain team wanted from conservative megaphones on the morning after Sarah Palin's big makeover debate.

Here's another Palin flub from last night's debate: She endorsed an economic populist position that McCain opposes, and seemed to present it as the GOP ticket's position.

During the debate, Joe Biden talked about allowing bankruptcy courts to deal with the housing crisis by adjusting the principal amounts that people owe on their mortgages, and added that McCain and Palin don't support it. Palin replied, "That is not so."

In fact, it is so. McCain spokesman Brian Rogers confirmed to ABC News after the debate that McCain doesn't back it.

More flubs to come throughout the day, we suspect, as more and more people get to review the tape.

New Obama Ad Hits McCain And Palin On Health Care Taxes
The Obama campaign is right out of the gate with this post-debate TV ad, set to air on national cable, featuring video of Joe Biden taking apart Sarah Palin on health care:

"Taxing your health care benefit," Biden says. "I call that the "Ultimate Bridge to Nowhere."

Obama In Pennsylvania
Barack Obama is campaigning today in Pennsylvania, with an event at 11 a.m. in Abington. Joe Biden does not have any public events.

McCain In Colorado
John McCain is holding a town-hall style event today in Pueblo, Colorado, scheduled for 1 p.m. ET. Sarah Palin does not have any public events.

WaPo: McCain's Senate Chief Of Staff Is Former Freddie Lobbyist
The Washington Post reports this morning that John McCain's current Senate chief of staff, Mark Buse, was hired by Freddie Mac to lobby McCain back in 2003 and 2004 on the issue of executive pay. Freddie hired Buse specifically because of his closeness to McCain.

Poll: McCain Takes One-Point Lead In Minnesota
A new SurveyUSA poll is giving John McCain a narrow lead in Minnesota, a state that hasn't voted Republican since the 1972 Nixon landslide. The numbers: McCain 47%, Obama 46%, within the ±3.7% margin of error.

Poll: Obama Takes Big Lead In New Hampshire
A new Rasmussen poll of New Hampshire gives Barack Obama a 53%-43% lead in this swing state, which voted narrowly for George W. Bush in 2000 and then switched to John Kerry in 2004. Just a week ago, Rasmsussen gave McCain a 49%-47% lead.

Palin Got Troop Levels Wrong
On top the McClellan/McKiernan gaffe, here's another mistake that Sarah Palin made last night: Getting the number of troops in Iraq wrong. Palin claimed forces are now down to pre-surge levels, FactCheck.org notes, but in reality there are still about 14,000 more troops than were there in January 2007.

Many people will analyze this debate by asking whether Sarah Palin outdid her previous disastrous interview performances, and hence proved she just might have the mettle to be a Vice President, after all.

But a better way to decide who "won" tonight is this: Which Veep candidate most forcefully made the case against the opposing presidential candidate?

By that standard, the winner by that measure was unquestionably Joe Biden. He made a far stronger case against John McCain than Sarah Palin did against Barack Obama. It wasn't even close.

Tellingly, Biden was the first to target the other ticket's presidential candidate, laying into McCain over his "fundamentals of the economy" gaffe, a core contrast point for the Obama campaign. That immediately forced Palin to go on the defensive -- in the context of a discussion of the presidential candidates -- which she did with the silly argument that McCain's "fundamentals" line was a reference to American workers.

Biden also drew a devastatingly sharp contrast between Obama and McCain on Iraq. While Biden admittedly wasn't at his best at times during the first half, when the debate drifted onto foreign policy turf, Biden clearly found his footing, and then some. He stared right into the camera as he made the case as clearly as you could ask for.

"We're spending $10 billion a month while the Iraqis have an $80 billion surplus. Barack says it's time for them to spend their own money," he said. "This is a fundamental difference between us: We will end this war. For John McCain, there is no end in sight to end this war. Fundamental difference: We will end this war." And Biden hit a very strong riff on how McCain's foreign policies are indistinguishable from those of George W. Bush.

To be clear, Palin did outperform in many ways tonight, and did clear a basic competence bar. She was far more in command of the material than she has been in her catastrophic interviews. And there's no reason to doubt the reports we're hearing about relief and even elation in Republican and conservative circles.

It's also true that Palin did get in some blows on Obama, hitting him somewhat effectively over his willingness to meet with foreign leaders and blasting him for waving the "white flag of surrender" in Iraq.

But here's the key: Even on those issues where Palin did score with base-pleasing hits on Obama or Biden, the unshakable reality underlying all this is that public opinion agrees with the Obama-Biden view on the core questions discussed tonight. And Biden seemed to proceed from a firm understanding of this point, articulating a big-picture contrast between Obama and McCain on the economy and on foreign policy with gusto and intensity.

That will prove far more consequential than whatever narrow success Palin had in outdoing previous expectations, and in proving her own baseline competence. And as a result -- this being a race between two would be presidents, after all -- the public will give this debate to Biden by sizable margins.

In tonight's debate, Sarah Palin mischaracterized statements by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, in which he said that an Iraq-like "surge" would not be appropriate for Afghanistan.

Palin asserted that one thing distinguishing John McCain's proposed policy in Afghanistan from President Bush's was that McCain thinks that "the surge principles that have worked in Iraq need to be implemented in Afghanistan, also."

In response Biden pounced, noting that McKiernan had come out against such an approach just today. Palin then hedged, saying that "McClellan" (meaning McKiernan) had not "definitively" ruled out using "surge principles" in Afghanistan:

Read more »

The first round of snap polls give the debate to Joe Biden, by sizable margins.

CBS polled 473 uncommitted debate-watchers, and found that 46% say Biden won, 21% say Palin won, and 33% say it was a tie.

While both candidates saw their images improve, 98% saw Biden as "knowledgeable" after the debate, while only 66% saw Palin as knowledgeable, an admittedly high number, given what folks thought of her before tonight.

Meanwhile, CNN's poll of debate-watchers found that far more thought Biden did the best job in the debate (51%) than Palin did (36%).

And here's a really key number from CNN. While a startling 84% said Palin did better than expected, it still wasn't enough for her to clear her basic hurdle tonight: Only 46% said she's qualified to serve as president, up only four points from before the debate. And a clear majority, 53%, say she is not qualified.

It's not wise to put too much stock in snap polls. But if this bears out, it'll confirm our earlier argument: Palin's disastrous interviews raised expectations for her tonight, in the sense that the pressure on her to prove she's ready for the job was even higher than it otherwise might have been. And she didn't prove it, at least according to these early numbers.

Late Update: As he so often does when it comes to poll numbers, Mark Blumenthal provides a much needed reality check.

Sarah Palin flubs the name of the top commander in Afghanistan, calling him "McClellan" rather than "McKiernan," which is his actual name.

McClellan is the Civil War general. Or she might have been thinking of former White House flack Scott McClellan.

Interestingly, Biden didn't correct her. Probably a good move.

As long as Joe Biden is hitting John McCain directly on Iraq, directly facing the camera, the debate is on safe ground for Dems.

In fact, CNN's dial sessions were skyrocketing as Biden drew the contrast as clearly as you could want...

"We're spending $10 billion a month while the Iraqis have a $80 billion surplus. Barack says it's time for them to spend their own money have the 400,000 military we've trained for them begin to take their own responsibility, and gradually over 6 month -- 16 months, withdraw.

John McCain, this is a fundamental difference between us: We will end this war. For John McCain, there is no end in sight to end this war. Fundamental difference: We will end this war."

Palin hit back with some really 2004-sounding rhetoric, saying that Obama-biden wanted to "wave the white flag." Polls show that majorities don't see withdrawal from Iraq as surrender, so it's not surprising that CNN's dials are favoring Biden on foreign policy.

That said, Palin countered pretty effectively by hammering Obama for his willingness to meet durin his first year with hostile foreign leaders without preconditions, but Biden had a ready response: McCain's Zapatero gaffe:

And the last point I'll make: John McCain said as recently as a couple weeks ago, he wouldn't even sit down with the government of Spain, a NATO ally that has troops in Afghanistan with us now. I find that incredible."

Snap analysis right now: Palin is showing competence and some command of issues, and there will be some bogus "Palin defied expectations" punditry to slog through, but the voters will give the nod to Biden tonight. You heard it here first.

One big question hovering over tonight's debate was how each Veep candidate would focus the discussion on the opposing presidential candidate.

Joe Biden trains fire on McCain first, hitting him on his number one economy gaffe, the "fundamentals" line:

Until two weeks ago, it was two Mondays ago, John McCain said at 9 o'clock in the morning that the fundamentals of the economy were strong. Two weeks before that he said we'd made great economic progress under George Bush's policies. Nine o'clock the economy was strong, 11 o'clock that same day two Monday ago, John McCain said that we had an economic crisis. That doesn't make john McCain a bad guy, but it does point out he's out of touch.

Palin was clearly primed to respond to this one with the "fundamentals equals work force" hooey, and said:

John McCain in referring to the fundamental (sic) of our economy being strong, he was referring to and he was talking about the American work force, and the American work force is the greatest in this world.

And Palin followed up with an attack on Obama:

Now Barack Obama, of course, he's pretty much only voted along his party lines. In fact 96% of his votes have been solely along party line. Not having that proof for the American people to know that his commitment to is, you know put the partisanship, put the special interests aside, and get down to getting' business done for the people of America.

So in the first round, the exchange is: McCain has been supporting deregulation for decades and only became a populist when the economic crisis knocked his campaign off the rails...versus...Obama hasn't spewed the same platitudes about bipartisanship that McCain has.

The McCain-Palin ticket has worked overtime to argue that predatory home lending, rather than the deregulation of Wall Street, is the real cause of our economic crisis.

A few moments ago, Sarah Palin took that message and seemed to freight it with a pretty heavy historical reference, saying that hockey moms and Joe Sixpacks should unite and say, "never again."

"Never will we be exploited again," Palin said that hockey moms and Joe Sixpacks should say. "Never again will we be taken advantage of."

Hockey moms, Joe Sixpacks, unite!

Palin's first line of the night.

Debate underway.

We keep hearing that Sarah Palin's public implosions on CBS and elsewhere have lowered "expectations" for her, to the point where all she needs to do in order to get solid grades is avoid vomiting on the podium or collapsing on the stage in a fit of hysterical laughter.

But is this really true? Will the public really rate her against past interview performances, or will they rate her against what they expect in a Vice President?

It may be that Palin's catastrophic public performances have actually raised the bar for her, in the sense that this is her last chance to turn around the perception of her as hopelessly incompetent -- way too incompetent to be the second in command behind a 72-year-old commander in chief.

Just look at the numbers. The recent Pew poll finds that a majority of 51% say she's unqualified to become president, while 63% say Joe Biden is qualified. And the recent Washington Post poll finds that only 35% say Palin has what it takes to serve effectively as president, while twice as many (70%) say that about Biden.

She needs to reverse those perceptions. And those perceptions were created by her recent spate of disastrous interviews.

The notion that Palin will be judged merely against her previous performances is something of a Beltway confection. Do voters really think this way? Isn't it possible that voters will judge her performance tonight based solely on whether she appears qualified for the job she's asking them to grant her?

Here's another key piece of info from that McCain campaign conference call earlier this evening: The McCain campaign announced that the RNC took in a whopping $66 million in September.

"The RNC had its best fundraising month last month," said adviser Greg Strimple. "It took in $66 million. That is the best month that they've had since October of 2000. We are very well-funded, and we are looking forward to a very aggressive last 30 days."

We still don't know how Obama and the DNC did, but this does put Obama's decision to forego public financing in perspective. McCain got about $85 million from the government, and on top of that McCain is getting a continued assist from private donations into the RNC's coffers, which can make up in a lot of ways for the constraints that public finance have placed on him.

The Obama campaign's bet was that they could continue to take in enough money to not only make up for the $85 million, but also outdo the GOP. And it's looking less likely that they'll manage to pull off that trick -- so we may end up be where we usually are every presidential election, with the Republicans having the financial advantage.

The McCain campaign just wrapped up a big damage-control conference call with reporters, and in it, they seemed to make a striking concession: That the race is uncomfortably close in two reliably red states, Indiana and North Carolina.

They also seemed to concede that the core battleground states that they must win are all red states.

Asked to explain their route to an electoral college win, campaign adviser Greg Strimple cited the following six states -- Ohio, Virgina, Florida, Missouri, Indiana, and North Carolina -- and described them as "all states where we're tied or ahead."

Strimple added that victories in all of them would effectively give them a route to victory, when combined with wins in other battlegrounds. But he seemed to clearly state that those six were crucial to them winning -- the foundation for their victory. All of them, of course, went for Bush four years ago.

That the McCain team has quietly slipped Indiana and North Carolina onto the list of key battlegrounds that are "tied or ahead" is striking. North Carolina hasn't voted for a Dem since 1976; Indiana, not since 1964.

What's more, Pollster.com actually has Obama ahead in several of these key states the McCain team has already placed in their definite (and crucial) "win" column: Virginia, Florida and Ohio (where it's virtually tied).

Asked on the call how it was that things got to the point that they were aggressively defending red states, McCain advisers offered a creative defense. They said, in essence, that they'd played rope-a-dope with Obama, spending nothing in them while letting Obama advertise aggressively in them in order to waste his money.

"One of the strategic decisions our campaign has made is to let Mr. Obama spend his resources until we got closer to the election," Strimple said. Those states, he added, "will snap back aggressively in our favor."

For the McCain camp to be conceding that the must-win battleground is comprised of red states, some of which Obama holds leads in, and that two states that haven't voted Dem in decades are now real battlegrounds, doesn't seem like a very strong position at all.

Late Update: Here's the audio from the call:

Click To Play

Here's tonight's run-down of the Congressional races: The bailout and the economic crisis continue to dominate the campaigns -- which is never good news for the GOP -- while the Republicans are fending off the attacks by charging that the Dems don't have any solutions, either.

Al Franken Opposes Bailout Bill
Al Franken has put out a press release strongly opposing the bailout bill, which incumbent GOP Sen. Norm Coleman voted for: "Last night the United States Senate voted to take $700 billion from taxpayers who did nothing wrong and offer it as a sacrifice at the altar of financial mismanagement."

Smith And Merkley Joust Over The Bailout
Senate candidate Jeff Merkley (D-OR) is criticizing the bailout package, as well: "I have dedicated much of my life to advocating for consumers and I believe it is just wrong to spend $700 billion of taxpayer money to bailout the very Wall Street financiers who created this crisis." Incumbent Sen. Gordon Smith (R) has fired back at Merkley, saying Merkley has "shamefully placed his partisan ambitions ahead of the retirement, financial and economic security of the people he seeks to serve."

Read more »

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, speaking to reporters today, inflates the expectations bubble until it finally bursts:

After repeatedly calling Palin first "an extremely good debater," then a "great" one, at the end he ramped it up to "Gov. Palin is one of the best debaters in American politics," at which point the press gaggle interrupted him with its laughter.

"No, she is! Her 2006 debate, she knew where she wanted to take every question, and so I think she'll be relentlessly on message tonight..."

Dems say they expect Palin to answer literally every question with an attack on Biden or Obama. Plouffe says she's very competent on the attack, and that will probably prove truer than we expect.

But the question is whether that translates into accomplishing a more basic mission, which is to persuade people that she possess the most basic level of overall competence and preparedness, a task which has proven comically elusive for her so far.

So here's a quick explanation of the rules for tonight's vice-presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sara Palin.

The rules will be a lot like the presidential debate we saw last week: One of the candidates will be asked a question and be given 90 seconds to respond -- less than the two minutes from the presidential debate -- followed by a 90-second rebuttal for the other candidate, and then a free-flowing discussion on this between the two candidates. But it won't be quite the same.

The big twist here is that the rules were modified -- at the insistence of the McCain campaign -- to limit those back-and-forth exchanges to a mere two minutes, and not the five-minute periods that we saw at the presidential debate. This was widely seen as an accommodation for Sarah Palin, allowing her to retreat to sound-bites that can fill the time up rather than having to spontaneously take on Joe Biden on the merits of this or that issue.

We'll be live-blogging the debate tonight, right here at Election Central.

I just got in touch with the McCain campaign, and they're not contesting this big news from Jonathan Martin that the McCain campaign is pulling out of Michigan:

John McCain is pulling out of Michigan, according to two Republicans, a stunning move a month away from Election Day that indicates the difficulty Republicans are having in finding blue states to put in play.

McCain will go off TV in Michigan, stop dropping mail there and send most of his staff to more competitive states, including Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida. Wisconsin went for Kerry in 2004, Ohio and Florida for Bush.

McCain's campaign didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a sign of how rapidly the race is shifting right now, Evan Tracey, who tracks national ad buys for the Campaign Media Analysis Group, tells me that as of Tuesday, McCain was outspending Obama in Michigan. Now McCain is apparently pulling out.

Separately, it's surprising that this didn't get any national coverage to speak of, but the McCain campaign also announced yesterday that he's adding a dozen new offices in Virginia, where Obama has gained in recent days. If nothing else, Obama is forcing McCain to spend more money in a state that hasn't voted for a Dem for president for 44 years -- LBJ in 1964.

Big things happening.

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid:

Sarah Palin plans to go on the attack in tonight's debate, hitting Joe Biden for what she will call his foreign policy blunders and penchant for adopting liberal positions on taxes and other issues, according to campaign officials involved in prepping her for tonight's showdown.

Palin attacking Biden, the longtime chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a well-known figure in world capitals, on foreign policy?

That should be interesting. Maybe she can attack over Obama's suggestion that he'd chase terrorists into Pakistan or tout the successes of the Bush Doctrine...well, maybe those aren't such hot ideas, come to think of it.

Here's a thought. Maybe Palin can hit Biden with the charge that he has never run a state where spy-planes take off in the direction of Russia?

Late Update: In all seriousness, it looks like the Palin team hopes to compensate for her yawning gap of foreign policy knowledge by trying to draw Biden into a dogfight and thus diminish him. According to the report linked above, Biden is planning on sticking to a prosecutorial, just-the-facts approach.

Either way, Palin's most basic task tonight is merely to project even an elementary level of competence, something that's eluded her so far, and it remains to be seen if going toe to toe with Biden on foreign policy is a good way to do that.

Here's a wrap-up of the four major national tracking polls for today, with John McCain possibly slipping even further behind Barack Obama:

• Gallup: Obama 48%, McCain 43%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 48%-44% Obama lead yesterday.

• Rasmussen: Obama 51%, McCain 44%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 51%-45% Obama lead yesterday.

• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 47%, McCain 42%, with a ±3.2% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.

• Research 2000: Obama 51%, McCain 40%, with a ±3% margin of error, compared to a 51%-41% Obama lead yesterday..

Adding these polls together and weighting them by sample sizes, Obama is ahead 49.4%-42.9%, up just slightly from a 49.4%-43.7% lead yesterday. Obama has stayed in place, while McCain's support has slipped by a small amount.

Now this is a good ad. A Virginia Democrats sends over a new radio spot that Obama is airing in the southern part of the state -- it stars homegrown bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley vouching for Obama's values and character to the tune of some banjo pickin' in the background.

Give it a listen:

Click To Play

"Howdy, friends. This is Ralph Stanley, and I think I know a little something about the families around here," the spot runs.

"Barack'll cut taxes for everyday folks -- not big business -- so you'll have
a little more money in your pocket at the end of the year," he continues. "I also know Barack is a good man. A father and devoted husband, he values personal responsibility and family first."

The spot -- a sign of the times if there ever was one -- is the latest in an increasingly micro-targeted air war that's hitting radio waves across the country.

A leading pro-life organization is preparing to unleash a scathing radio ad campaign across the country charging that Barack Obama's position on abortion is "extreme" and that he, in effect, allowed babies to die.

The ad charges that Obama killed a measure in Illinois that would have protected the lives of babies who survive abortions.

The group, the National Right to Life Committee, has filed a request for an advisory opinion from the FEC as to whether the ads are within FEC rules, and their request letter lays out the text of the spots. You can read the letter here.

"Barack Obama was responsible for killing a bill to provide care and protection for babies who are born alive after abortions," the spot runs. It charges that Obama subsequently lied about his record on the measure.

National Right to Life's letter informs the FEC that the group intends to "immediately" begin broadcasting the ad "throughout the United States" and to continue broadcasting it right up until the election. The group is politically potent and its FEC filings suggest it has the resources to make good on its threat.

Obama has been under fire from this group for some time. The issue in question is Illinois' Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which Obama opposed, prompting the group to attack him for callously being willing to let babies die. Obama and his campaign have forcefully dismissed the group's assertions as lies, saying he voted against it because the measure it purported to outlaw was already illegal and was crafted just to undermine Roe v. Wade.

In its letter, the group is arguing to the FEC that the ad doesn't constitute a prohibited "electioneering communication" under campaign finance law, claiming that this isn't merely an assault on Obama. Rather, it says, the spot is a response to Obama's earlier assertion that the group had lied about his record on the issue.

In other words, like other third party groups looking for loopholes, the spot appears to be an effort to get around campaign finance law and unleash a heavy national assault on Obama over abortion under the guise of responding to his earlier comments on it. The FEC has yet to rule on the case.

National Right to Life didn't return calls. The script of the ad is after the jump.

Read more »

Here's today's run-down on the Congressional races: Republicans are reacting to the economic crisis and the bad poll numbers with some apparently twisted and phony attacks against the Dems.

GOP Accused Of Twisting Video Of Franken
It looks like the NRSC, in their zeal to paint Al Franken as angry and unstable, have seriously twisted some key video out of context. Minnesota blog MNPublius found that the NRSC repeatedly used in their TV ads video of Franken yelling out, "You can take this guy!" in a manic fashion -- but it looks like he was doing an impression of the late Sen. Paul Wellstone at his son's track and field meets. Here's the original video:

McConnell Campaign Accused Of Lying To Veteran For Campaign Ad
Oh boy. Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) has been airing attack ads charging that a chain of veterans' clinics run by Dem opponent Bruce Lunsford have offered inferior care. However, it turns out one of the veterans in the ad now says he was lied to and his words taken totally out of context. Now that same veteran is doing a Lunsford ad:

"Tricking veterans, twisting their words -- how low will Mitch McConnell go?" the announcer says. In response, McConnell has a revised ad without that particular veteran, and with other veterans who directly blast Lunsford by name.

Read more »

A quick note to TPM readers: As you may have heard, we are launching an all-new version of our TPM community on October 8 -- an overhaul of our community tools that will vastly improve your reading, commenting, and blogging experience here.

But before we launch, we need some of our trusted readers, commenters and bloggers to test out the new system. You can be the first to experience it!

If you're interested, we'd need you to commit at least two hours this weekend to testing the tools and sending us your impressions, along with any bugs you run into. For more information, and to sign up, click here.

In a speech just now in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Barack Obama departed from the prepared remarks and unleashed some of his most empathetic language yet about people's economic distress.

Obama reiterated his familiar criticism of McCain for his "fundamentals" line, then said: "The fundamentals of our economy are not strong, and it's time we had a President who understands that." And then:

It's time we had a president who understands what it's like to stand alongside people who have lost their jobs, and walked the picket line with them. Who understands what it's like to listen to a grown man choke up because he hasn't just lost his job, he's lost his pension, he's lost his healthcare, and he's trying to figure out how he's gonna go home that day and explain to his wife and his kids that they're in trouble and he might not be able to take care of them the way he wants.

There's something wrong about that. There's something un-American about that.

Obama has used similar language before, but today he gave it some pretty heavy dosage, and it seems likely that Obama will really crank up the emotional appeals on the economy in the race's final stretch.

Full prepared remarks after the jump.

Late Update: Here's the video:

Read more »

There were a couple of odd moments during John McCain's interview with MSNBC just now. The first: In a strange verbal stumble, he appeared to harshly criticize the bailout bill he voted for yesterday.

McCain was asked by the MSNBC anchor why he voted for it if it had so much objectionable pork and spending during an economic crisis that has us on the "brink of economic disaster."

"Because of what you just said," McCain replied. "This bill is putting us on the brink of economic disaster." He then went on to say that he'd fought against other pork-laden bills. Take a look...

It seems like he meant to say he'd voted for the bill, despite the pork, because we already are on the brink of economic disaster, but that's a pretty weird screw-up.

In another moment during some banter about baseball later in the interview, McCain flatly said he wasn't rich.

McCAIN: I think it's very possible that both of those teams -- both the Dodgers and the Red Sox -- could surprise everyone.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Boy, well those are two class organizations --

McCAIN: -- but that shows you why I'm not a rich man. [laughs]

Tonight: The Veep Debate
Tonight is the big night for Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, with their debate in St. Louis. The debate will begin at 9 p.m. ET. Palin's challenge at this point is simply to overcome the phenomenally low expectations that have been set as a result of her disastrous TV interviews, while Biden will have to both win on points and come across as a friendly alternative.

Poll: Plurality Disapproves Of McCain's Handling Of Economic Crisis
The new CBS/New York Times poll contains a very interesting piece of internal data, suggesting that John McCain's intervention into the bailout negotiations have really been a bust. A 46% plurality disapproves of McCain's handling of the economic crisis, with only 35% approving. By contrast, Obama's more careful approach is approved 44%-32%.

The Obamas In Michigan Today
Barack Obama is campaigning today in Michigan, with a rally scheduled for 9:30 a.m. in Grand Rapids and another at 2:30 p.m. in East Lansing. Michelle Obama is also campaigning in Michigan, with an 11:30 a.m. rally in Saginaw and a 4:30 p.m. community event in Clinton Township.

McCain In Colorado
John McCain is holding a town hall-style event today in Denver, Colorado, scheduled for 5:45 p.m. ET. The event is officially billed as a "women's town hall meeting," so we might see McCain playing up his selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate and going after Democrats for criticizing her.

Another Poll Shows Palin Dragging Down McCain
Newly-released data from the ABC/Washington Post poll further illustrates that Sarah Palin has become a liability for John McCain. Only 35% of respondents said Palin has the experience to serve effectively as president, with 60% saying she does not. And 32% say her selection makes them less likely to vote for McCain, compared to only 23% who say it makes them more likely to vote for him.

Poll: Obama Ahead In North Carolina
For the second week in a row, Rasmussen polling shows Barack Obama ahead in North Carolina, a Southern state that hasn't voted Democratic since Jimmy Carter was the region's favorite son in 1976. The numbers: Obama 50%, McCain 47%, with a ±4% margin of error, compared to a 49%-47% Obama lead last week.

Biden Receives More Coaching On Debating A Woman
The Wall St. Journal reports that Joe Biden has received coaching from Hillary Clinton and other female Dem Senators on how to effectively debate against a female candidate, plus Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who has portrayed Sarah Palin in their debate preparations. Meanwhile, the New York Times says Biden has received advice from a very close long-time adviser: His sister Valerie, who has run his campaigns since 1972.

Here it is, the much-hyped moment where Sarah Palin was unable to name any Supreme Court case that she disagreed with, other than Roe v. Wade:

Palin employs the same dodge here as she did when Katie Couric asked her what newspapers she reads -- she retreated to vague terms about how there are all those Supreme Court decisions out there that people might disagree with, just as she mentioned all those newspapers out there she relies on.

There is a certain irony here. John McCain has long criticized Barack Obama for speaking in platitudes, and then he went and picked a running mate who apparently can only think in platitudes.

Here's tonight's run-down of the Congressional races: Dems are continuing to hammer the Republicans on the economy, as the GOP faces some more bad poll numbers.

GOP Rep: I Wouldn't Have Picked Palin
Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) told the Chicago Tribune, "Quite frankly, I don't know" whether Sarah Palin is qualified to be president. In a very frank admission, Kirk added, "I would have picked someone different." As the Tribune noted, Kirk was initially a vocal supporter of Palin's nomination when it was first announced. (Via Progress Illinois)

Dem Ad: Coleman's Attacks Against Franken Are Ridiculous
The DSCC has this funny ad out, mocking the GOP's attacks against Al Franken:

"Al Franken sank this ship! Crashed these trains! And he hates puppies!" the announcer says. There is one problem, though: This ad is reminiscent of the humorous "Steele hates puppies" ad from the 2006 Maryland Senate race -- and Michael Steele lost by ten points.

Read more »

For the third day in a row, the McCain campaign has directly faulted Barack Obama for the bailout implosion -- even as it continued to decry partisanship and finger-pointing amid the crisis.

On a McCain campaign conference call this afternoon, leading McCain surrogate Rudy Giuliani hailed McCain's supposed leadership on the bailout solution while faulting Obama for "retreating from the problem."

"He's working now to put a new one together," Giuliani said, in reference to McCain. "He'll be in Washington tonight. He'll be working at this until it gets done. That's leadership. On the other hand, Barack Obama's first reaction to this was, `Call me if you need me,' which indicates a quality of leadership that says, `I'm gonna lead by retreating from the problem, so I don't get blamed for it.'"

That McCain campaign conference call featuring Rudy blaming Obama for his lack of leadership amid the meltdown ended a little before 3:30 today. At 3:38, the McCain campaign released a new ad decrying all the partisanship and finger-pointing and calling on everyone to come together and solve the crisis.

So let's try to recap.

On Monday, McCain blamed Obama and Dems for the bailout collapse -- and then decried finger-pointing in the very next sentence. On Tuesday, McCain denied he'd ever blamed them, even as his campaign released an ad blaming them.

And today, the McCain campaign released an ad calling for an end to the fingerpointing only a few minutes after his campaign got done pointing a finger directly at Obama.

I'm a bit lost in the funhouse at this point, but I'm reasonably sure this is how it went down.

Late Update: Here's audio of Rudy...

Yesterday the Republican National Committee's independent expenditure arm released an ad, to air in multiple battleground states, that seemed to attack the bailout package and negatively link Obama to it.

Today, the RNC made its report to the FEC on how much it's laying out for TV ad placement, and it's serious money: Nearly $5 million.

So let's see if we can get this straight. At a time when John McCain keeps saying that the bailout is necessary to save the republic, and keeps decrying partisanship and finger-pointing amid the crisis, the RNC is apparently spending five million dollars on an ad campaign dumping on both the bailout and on Obama in connection with it?

Wow. Hours after a set of polls showed Obama gaining in key battlegrounds, another batch of polls from CNN finds additional confirmation that the economic crisis has put Obama way up in other ones:

• Florida: Obama 51%, McCain 47%, with a ±3.5% margin of error.

• Minnesota: Obama 54%, McCain 43%, with a ±3.5% margin of error.

• Missouri: Obama 49%, McCain 48%, with a ±3.5% margin of error.

• Nevada: Obama 51%, McCain 47%, with a ±4% margin of error.

• Virginia: Obama 53%, McCain 44%, with a ±4% margin of error.

Four of these states were won by George W. Bush twice, with Minnesota being the only exception. All totaled, those four red states add up to 56 electoral votes -- and John McCain can barely afford to lose even one electoral vote from the Republican column.

Also, CNN has changed their map to favor Obama a little bit more -- Minnesota has moved from Toss-Up to Leans Obama, and Missouri from Leans McCain to Toss-Up.

The McCain campaign goes up with another ad about the economic crisis, decrying the partisanship and fingerpointing over the bailout-implosion that John McCain himself repeatedly contributed to with such gusto:

"Democrats blamed Republicans. Republicans blamed Democrats," McCain says in the ad. "We're the United States of America. It shouldn't take a crisis to pull us together."

One of the Republicans who blamed Democrats, of course, was McCain himself. He attacked Obama and Dems for helping cause the bailout collapse, and his campaign released an ad doing the same.

The new spot will be televised nationally.

The wingers are in full ref-gaming mode today, hammering away at the idea that PBS' Gwen Ifill can't possibly be a fair moderator for the Biden-Palin debate because she will be releasing a book this January that's apparently pro-Obama.

But a few moments ago, John McCain said on Fox News that he has no problem with her moderating at all...

"I think that Gwen Ifill is a professional, and I think she will do a totally objective job, because she is a highly-respected professional," McCain said.

The McCain campaign has apparently been saying they didn't know about Ifill's book. But as Michael Calderone notes, the book has been public for quite some time now.

At bottom, though, debating whether there's any merit in the attack on Ifill is beside the point, because as this is really just a transparent game, of course. The criticism is about trying to spook the moderators into going easy on Palin -- a "time-honored form of pre-debate spin," as Ben Smith put it.

What's more, as a Republican operative points out to me in a moment of candor, the existence of the book is potentially helpful to McCain, because it gives McCain supporters a way of retroactively cushioning the blow for Palin, should she pull yet another homina homina homina in response to any Ifill question, as is her wont.

"If I were an Obama supporter, i would see this as a bigger problem for me than for Palin," the GOP operative tells me. "Now any line of questioning can be dismissed as the product of an obviously biased moderator."

Get it?

Bill Clinton -- doing some powerful campaigning in Florida for the first time on Obama's behalf today -- laid out an interesting argument against McCain-Palin, claiming that the economy will consume so much of the new president's attention that the Veep will be forced to play a bigger role on the world stage...

From Bill's comments...

"Senator Obama has spoken a lot about how we oughta relate to the world, and yes, he'll get out and travel some in the first year, we should want him to do it. But he is going to have to be really focused on fixing this economy. That means that role of the Vice President in repairing quickly our relations with the rest of the world will be relatively more important in the first two years of the next presidency.

"And I am just telling you, you can talk to me or anybody else at any time in Washington, and they will tell you there is nobody, nobody in the entire United States senate that understands the political, the economic, and the security challenges and opportunities of the world better than Joe Biden does. He is a superb choice."

Impeccably timed by the Master, raising the stakes for the Veep choice right on the eve of the Veep debate.

The Obama campaign goes up with this new spot in swing states firing back at John McCain's contention that Obama is the big tax-and-spender in the race. The ad says McCain is the real big spender, what with his multi-trillion-dollar tax handouts to the rich and the insurance companies:

"So as we borrow from China to fund his spending spree, ask yourself: Can we afford John McCain?"

Unlike the McCain campaign, which has blamed Obama repeatedly for the bailout implosion even as it calls for bipartisan cooperation to deal with the crisis, the Obama camp has actually refrained from blaming McCain for the collapse. Instead, the Obama campaign has confined its attacks on McCain over the economy to a more general critique, such as the one in this ad.

The mention of Chinese debt-holders seems designed to resonate with people's sense of economic nationalism, which is probably running higher amid the very deep sense of worry that people have about the credit crisis.

Here's a wrap-up of the four major national tracking polls for today. Barack Obama continues to hold a substantial lead over John McCain:

• Gallup: Obama 48%, McCain 44%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 49%-43% Obama lead yesterday.

• Rasmussen: Obama 51%, McCain 45%, with a ±2% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.

• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 47%, McCain 42%, with a ±3.2% margin of error, compared to a 47%-41% Obama lead from yesterday.

• Research 2000: Obama 51%, McCain 41%, with a ±3% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.

Adding these polls together and weighting them by sample sizes, Obama is ahead 49.4%-43.7%, down just slightly from yesterday's 49.8%-43.3% lead, but still well ahead.

In an unusually candid interview, a top official for the largest union backing Obama said that internal union polling shows that the race remains much more volatile and fluid in key battleground states than public polling suggests. He warned that low-information swing-state voters are saying they still don't have a firm enough grasp on Obama's life-story, character and record for the Illinois Senator to close the deal with them.

The comments by the official, AFL-CIO deputy political director Mike Podhorzer, are surprisingly frank and seemed intended as a reality check at a time when polls show the momentum has clearly swung in Obama's favor.

"This election remains extremely volatile in the battlegrounds," Podhorzer told us. "The public polls are giving a false sense of precision about where the race is. That's a story that's not really being told."

Strikingly, Podhorzer said that his union's internal polls -- which push voters hard on the question of whether people are really firmly committed to their pick -- show that as many as "15 to 20 percent" of battleground state voters remain "persuadable," as he put it, despite what public polls say about the level of undecided voters.

"There are more voters than you'd expect who are just starting to pay attention to the election," he said. "And there's a lot of room for people to go back and forth."

Podhorzer stressed that he is impressed by Obama's gains and is convinced Obama is on track to win right now. But he said that the union's interaction with battleground-state voters, combined with extensive internal polling, indicate that this dynamic is anything but fixed and that there's much more fluidity than is generally acknowledged.

Read more »

Two new national polls show Barack Obama expanding his lead over John McCain to a seven-point margin, thanks in large part to two big problems for McCain. The first one is the economy -- and the second is Sarah Palin.

The numbers from Pew: Obama 49%, McCain 42%, with a ±3.5% margin of error. And from Time: Obama 50%, McCain 43%, with a ±3% margin of error.

In the Time poll, 65% say their personal economic situation has declined in the last year, and this group is going 59% for Obama. In the Pew poll, Obama is trusted over McCain to improve the economy by 51%-33%.

And here's the bad news for Palin. Time says that McCain is losing women at a faster clip than Palin was able to gain them -- before the two conventions, Obama led among women by ten points, which then narrowed to one point after she was picked. Now he leads by 17 points.

And in Pew, Palin's public image has taken a very serious fall. Three weeks ago, Palin was seen as qualified to be president by a 52%-39% margin. Now that number has been reversed: Only 37% think she's qualified, and 51% say she is not.

Uh oh. It looks like the ongoing horror movie series otherwise known as the Katie Couric-Sarah Palin interviews may be about to offer up yet another gristly installment.

The other day, Politico's Jonathan Martin quoted an anonymous Palin aide who was worried about still-undisclosed interview footage in which Palin noted Roe vs. Wade but was unable to reference or discuss any other major court cases.

"There was no verbal fumbling with this particular question as there was with some others, the aide said, but rather silence," Martin wrote.

That was an anonymous account. And CBS News has refused to publicly confirm it. But a few moments ago, CBS News released the text of a couple questions (but not the answers) that Palin has been asked on interview footage that's set to air tonight. And sure enough, one of them is...

Why do you think Roe v. Wade is a good or bad decision? What other Supreme Court decisions do you disagree with?

Dum. Da Dum, Dum. Viewers with weak stomachs, consider yourselves warned...

Here's today's run-down on the Congressional races: The Democrats are barreling ahead with more attacks against the GOP for the financial crisis, and more polling data is showing the economy dragging the Republicans down in key races.

House Dems Drop Almost $4.6 Million In One Day
The DCCC spent an enormous amount in yesterday's FEC filings, shelling out almost $4.6 million in 37 races. The Dems are spending $450,000 on offense for three seats in Ohio, $300,000 for two GOP seats in New Mexico, and half a million each in Arizona and Pennsylvania on both offense and defense -- a serious leveraging of their huge financial advantage over the House GOP.

Franken Ad Blasts Coleman For The Wall St. Crisis
Al Franken has this new ad against Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN), tying Coleman to the financial crisis and the unpopular economic policies of George W. Bush:

"Who was looking out for us? Not Norm Coleman," the announcer says. "He's taken $2 million from Wall St. and financial interests -- more than any other Senate candidate in the country."

Read more »

Planned Parenthood is going up with an absolutely brutal new ad hammering the policy of Wasilla, Alaska of charging rape victims for gathering evidence when Palin was mayor:

"Under Mayor Sarah Palin, women like Gretchen were forced to pay up to $1,200 for the emergency exams used to prosecute their attackers," the announcer says, after a heartbreaking testimonial from a woman talking about her own experience of being raped. "In the Senate, John McCain voted against legislation to protect women from these same heartless policies."

The ad will run in Missouri, Wisconsin, and the Northern Virginia media market.

(Via First Read)

One key thing about the new Quinnipiac polling released today is this: It is now the fourth recent public to find Barack Obama ahead in Florida, a state most observers have previously thought would be John McCain's to lose:

• Quinnipiac: Obama 51%, McCain 43%, in a poll released today. Three weeks ago, McCain lead 50%-43%.

• PPP (D): Obama 49%, McCain 45%, in a poll released yesterday. Three weeks ago, McCain was up 50%-45%.

• ARG: Obama 47%, McCain 46%, in a poll released a few days ago. Two weeks ago, the candidates were tied 46%-46%.

• Mason-Dixon: Obama 47%, McCain 45%, in a poll from a week ago. They also had Obama ahead 45%-44% a month ago, but were something of an outlier at the time.

There are other pollsters that don't have Obama ahead, but they've all shown him making significant progress:

• Rasmussen: Tied 47%-47%, in a poll released two days ago. Late last week, McCain had a 48%-47% edge.

• SurveyUSA: McCain 48%, Obama 47%, In a poll released two days ago. Two weeks ago, McCain was up 51%-45%.

The reason for Obama's surge in Florida is the same as it is everywhere else: The economy. Both the Quinnipiac and PPP polls, which have supplied data on this, show that over 60% of Florida voters list the economy as their most important issue, and they give Obama a double-digit lead over McCain on how to handle it. By contrast, security issues only register in the teens, and McCain's advantage on those doesn't appear to be big enough to overcome the economic hurdles.

Sarah Palin has an answer to her media critics who say she isn't fit to be next in line for the presidency: They hate me because I represent the average "Joe Six-Pack" American.

Palin called in yesterday for a brief interview on the Hugh Hewitt radio show, and had this eminently quotable exchange:

Hewitt: Governor, your candidacy has ignited extreme hostility, even some hatred on the left and in some parts of the media. Are you surprised? And what do you attribute this reaction to?

Palin: Oh, I think they're just not used to someone coming in from the outside saying you know what? It's time that normal Joe six-pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency, and I think that that's kind of taken some people off guard, and they're out of sorts, and they're ticked off about it.

Well, it's true that Palin has taken some members of the press off guard, but not for the reasons she suggests...

Late Update: There was also this interesting line about bias by the media and the left against her religion:

Palin: I think that there's a lot of mocking of my personal faith, and my personal faith is very, very simple. I don't belong to any church. I do have a strong belief in God, and I believe that I'm a heck of a lot better off putting my life in God's hands, and saying hey, you know, guide me... And you know, so bet it, though I do have respect for those who have differing views than I do on faith, on religion. I'm not going to mock them, and I would hope that they would kind of I guess give me the same courtesy through this of not mocking a person's faith, but maybe perhaps even trying to understand a little bit of it.

Have any prominent members of the mainstream media mocked Palin's faith? Does anyone know what she's talking about?

Polls: Obama Ahead In Florida, Ohio And Pennsylvania
A new set of Quinnipiac polls gives Barack Obama the lead in all three of the largest swing states: He's up 51%-43% in Florida, 50%-42% in Ohio, and 54%-39% in Pennsylvania, all outside the ±3.4% margins of error. Three weeks ago, Quinnipiac put Obama ahead in Ohio and Pennsylvania, but behind by seven points in Florida. The reason for Obama's surge: The economy.

Bill Clinton Campaigning For Obama Today
Bill Clinton is holding two rallies for Barack Obama today in Florida, after spending months being criticized for showing too little enthusiasm for the Democratic nominee. The first event is at 12 p.m. ET in Orlando, and the next one in Fort Pierce at 2:45 p.m. ET.

Obama In Wisconsin, Then Back To The Senate
Barack Obama has a campaign rally at 11 a.m. ET in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and is then heading back to Washington for a vote on the revised bailout package. Joe Biden does not have any public events, but is preparing for the debate and will also attend the Senate vote. Michelle Obama is holding two rallies today, one at 12 p.m. ET in Boulder, Colorado, and the other at 6:10 p.m. ET in Kansas City, Missouri.

McCain In Missouri And Then Washington, Palin In Debate Camp
John McCain is campaigning this morning in Independence, Missouri, and will then head back to Washington tonight's big Senate vote on the revised bailout. Sarah Palin is off the campaign trail, preparing for tomorrow's debate with Joe Biden.

McCain: I Take Strong Exception To Accusations That My Campaign Is Lying
John McCain met yesterday with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register, where he had a very tense exchange over whether his campaign has been honest in its personal attacks against Barack obama:

McCain was asked how he can inspire confidence with less than 100% absolute truth in his campaign. "Because I've always had 100% absolute truth, and that's been my life of putting my country first, and I'll match that record against anyone's, and I'm proud of it," McCain said. "And an assertion that I've ever done otherwise, I take strong exception to."

The new ABC/Washington Post poll shows Barack Obama leading John McCain 50%-46%, with a ±3% margin of error.

For now at least, the election is really coming down to the economy. Obama leads 50%-43% on handling the economy, and leads 50%-40% on handling the current financial crisis. McCain wins on foreign policy questions, but security doesn't seem to be enough to get him into the lead.

On the one hand, this poll does seem to vindicate the McCain campaign's contention that last week's ABC/WaPo survey was an outlier when it had Obama leading 52%-43% among likely voters. On the other hand, Obama is still ahead -- and it doesn't speak well of the McCain campaign's confidence that they felt the need to hold a conference call with reporters and aggressively debunk an outlying poll.

Here's a fun postscript to John McCain's appearance yesterday afternoon -- the one where he appeared to blame Obama and the Dems for the bailout implosion and then call for an end to the finger-pointing in the very next sentence.

In a new interview with ABC News' Ron Claiborne, John McCain is now denying that he ever blamed them:

RC: Senator, you said that now is not the time to fix blame, but to fix the problem, but you said almost in the same breath that the democrats, including Senator Obama are responsible for the, the rescue plan falling apart.

JM: No, actually I said yesterday very clearly right before the media [that] it's time not to fix the blame, but to fix the problem. We need to sit down together republican and democrat. We don't have inflame the situation today. History will judge who was to blame, and who wasn't...

When asked whether he blamed Dems and Obama for the bailout collapse yesterday, McCain said "no."

But yesterday McCain said: "Senator Obama and his allies in Congress infused unnecessary partisanship into the process."

As for McCain's claim to ABC today that "history will judge who was to blame," the McCain campaign released an ad today that ... blamed Dems and Obama.

So yesterday McCain blames Obama and Dems while calling for no more fingerpointing. Today he denies having blamed them while releasing an ad blaming them.

The untruths are getting almost too convoluted to track at this point -- it's a bit like being trapped in a falsehood fun-house or something.

Late Update: Here's the video:

Here's tonight's run-down on the Congressional races: The Democrats are aggressively exploiting the political opportunities presented by the economic crisis -- while the Republicans are running in the other direction as they watch their numbers fall.

Mitch McConnell Turning Down Debates
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (KY), who has found himself in some uncomfortably close polls against Dem businessman Bruce Lunsford, is refusing to debate. The campaign has rejected an invitation from the League of Women Voters and has not responded to one from Kentucky Educational Television, saying only that they'll hold a debate with the Paducah Sun in late October.

Dems Launch Ads About Social Security Privatization And Wall St.
The DCCC has a whole new wave of ads running in Pennsylvania and Indiana about Social Security -- and specifically, what would be happening if Social SEcurity were tied to the stock market in the middle of the banking crisis. Here's one of them in Pennsylvania:

"Barletta wanted to follow Bush right into this mess," the announcer says. "And with the markets in free-fall, where would our safety net be now?"

Read more »

So did the first presidential debate actually change anything? Not so, according to CNN -- their poll of polls now shows Barack Obama ahead by 48%-43%, exactly where it was before the debate.

The rub here is that this non-event in the polls effectively helps Obama, as McCain lost a big opportunity to take Obama down a notch in the eyes of the public. This is especially more damaging for McCain in that the national-security debate was supposed to favor him. With the economic crisis accelerating, the next debates could be very good territory for the Dems.

From the pollster's analysis: "The pressure is increasing on McCain to find some way to change the fundamental dynamics of this race. He can't afford to walk away with a tie in the remaining debates."

We usually don't post Web ads, but this latest from the McCain campaign is so comically misleading that it really is a must-see:

The ad shows footage of Obama that's edited down to make him say this: "We've got the long-term fundamentals that will really make sure this economy grows."

The ad then suggests that this shows that Obama agrees with McCain's recent controversial claim that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong."

"Is Obama saying McCain's right?" the ad continues. "Or is Obama saying his own attacks are shameless?"

It turns out, of course, that the Obama quote was torn out of context in a hilariously dishonest way. It comes from Obama's speech yesterday, in which he was discussing his prescriptions for the economy, and said...

"And then after this immediate problem, we've got the long-term fundamentals that will really make sure this economy grows. Change means a tax code that doesn't reward the lobbyists who wrote it but the American workers and small businesses that deserve it. As president I am going to eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses and start-ups. That's how we'll grow our economy..."

In other words, the "long-term fundamentals" Obama was referring to were those of his own economic plan, not of the economy right now!

Oh, that's a good one. What with all the dire news and with happy hour still hours away, we needed a good laugh...

I missed this yesterday, but it's really worth a quick mention. Buried in this New York Times piece about NBC anchor Tom Brokaw and his efforts to patch things up between his network and the McCain campaign is an extraordinary glimpse into the equal parts whining and behind-the-scenes ref-gaming the McCain camp has undertaken with some members of the media...

Mr. Brokaw said he had been told by a senior McCain aide, whom he did not name, that the campaign had been reluctant to accept an NBC representative as one of the moderators of the three presidential debates -- until his name was invoked.

"One of the things I was told by this person was that they were so irritated, they said, 'If it's an NBC moderator, for any of these debates, we won't go,' " Mr. Brokaw said. "My name came up, and they said, 'Oh, hell, we have to do it, because it's going to be Brokaw.' "

Mr. Brokaw will moderate the second debate, on Oct. 7, in Nashville.

A senior McCain adviser actually threatened that McCain might skip the next debate if NBC fielded one of the moderators? This, from the same candidate who hammered Barack Obama for not agreeing to six dozen town hall meetings or whatever it was McCain wanted? Another day, another snit...

Now that John McCain's first effort to corral Congress into passing a bailout has proven a bust, the question is how aggressively Barack Obama will thrust himself into the center of the action at a moment when McCain is attacking him daily for remaining "on the sidelines."

In Nevada today, Obama turned up the volume, reiterating his idea to increase the FDIC limit to $250,000, and suggesting that he would be taking on a more active and hands-on role in the days ahead.

"We must act and we must act now," Obama said. "We cannot have another day like yesterday."

"For the rest of today and as long as it takes, I will continue to reach out to leaders in both parties and do whatever I can to help pass a rescue plan," he added. "To the Democrats and Republicans who opposed this plan yesterday, I say -- step up to the plate and do what's right for this country."

The fact that two-thirds of House Dems voted for the bailout creates an interesting political dynamic for Obama. On the one hand, because most Dems are already on board for this plan and are unlikely to bolt should it be revised, it's hard for Obama to actually show meaningful concrete results in terms of delivering votes.

On the other, there's not really any room for the sort of failure that publicly claimed McCain. And the pressure is still on the Arizona Senator to deliver on his initial vow to rally his own party behind the plan, or a revision of it.

Barring more specific proposals as to how to address the crisis, one way Obama will likely try to show leadership is to use his skills at persuasion to convince larger swaths of the public that the crisis is real enough to demand unpalatable action (though again, success in this endeavor would be hard to quantify). And he is already staking out a role as the candidate who is setting an appropriately sober, measured, and reconciliatory tone in discussing the crisis.

Still, stepping into the role of man of action at a time of intense public anxiety is an extraordinarily delicate political operation, as McCain found out the hard way. As much as McCain has struggled, the politics right now remain very volatile and unpredictable, and it's hard to overstate how high the stakes will be in the days ahead. Full Obama remarks after the jump.

Read more »

Here's a wrap-up of the four major national tracking polls for today -- the first day on which we've gotten three-day tracking polls that were taken entirely after Friday's debate. Barack Obama continues to hold a big lead:

• Gallup: Obama 49%, McCain 43%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 50%-42% Obama lead yesterday.

• Rasmussen: Obama 51%, McCain 45%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 50%-45% Obama lead yesterday.

• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 47%, McCain 41%, with a ±3.2% margin of error, compared to a 47%-42% Obama lead from yesterday.

• Research 2000: Obama 51%, McCain 41%, with a ±3% margin of error. Yesterday, Obama was up 51%-42%.

Adding these polls together and weighting them by sample sizes, Obama is ahead by a margin of 49.8%-43.3%, virtually the same as yesterday's 49.8%-43.1% lead.

This could be big news. A new survey of Florida from Public Policy Polling (D) is giving Barack Obama the lead in Florida, where John McCain has led in virtually all the polls up to now.

The numbers: Obama 49%, McCain 46%, with a ±3.2% margin of error. Three weeks ago, PPP gave McCain a lead of 50%-45%, which was about in line with other polls from the time.

The economy seems to really be the source of Obama's surge here. An overwhelming 64% of voters rank the economy as the single biggest issue, and Obama has a 55%-40% lead among this group. Obama is also ahead 54%-43% among the 15% who say the Iraq War is the biggest issue, while McCain makes it close thanks to overwhelming leads among the smaller groups who list the traditional conservative issues of taxes, moral values and immigration.

It looks like the McCain campaign's efforts to pin the failure of the bailout on Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats aren't getting any traction, according to the new ABC/Washington Post poll, the first survey to look at this issue.

The numbers: Among registered voters, 44% blame the Congressional Republicans -- that is, the ones who actually voted against the bailout -- compared to only 21% who blame Congressional Dems, and 17% who blame both equally.

Also, the Democratic arguments over who is to blame for the crisis appear to be winning the day. George W. Bush is seen as the single most important cause of the crisis by 25% of voters, followed by financial institutions with 18%. Congress is blamed by only eight percent.

In public remarks a little while ago, John McCain professed his disappointment with the "lack of bipartisan good will" in dealing with the financial crisis, and called for everyone to "come together in a bipartisan way" in order to chart the way forward.

At around the same time, his campaign released a new ad directly attacking Democrats and Obama and blaming them for the meltdown.

"I am disappointed at the lack of resolve and bipartisan good will among members of both parties to fix this problem," McCain said today in Des Moines, Iowa. "Bipartisanship is a tough thing; never more so when you're trying to take necessary but publicly unpopular action. But inaction is not an option."

"I call on everyone in Washington to come together in a bipartisan way to address this crisis," McCain later said.

A few minutes later, the McCain campaign released this spot attacking Dems and Obama for the meltdown:

The ad suggests that Fannie and Freddie are largely to blame for the crisis, and says that McCain pushed for stronger regulation of the mortgage giants, "while Mr. Obama was notably silent."

"Democrats blocked the reforms," the spot continues, and invokes Bill Clinton's criticism of Dems on this front.

McCain made his remarks calling for bipartisanship at around 11:10 this morning. The McCain campaign sent out the ad attacking Dems and Obama at 11:26.

So it only took 16 minutes for the McCain campaign to drop its principal's bipartisan pretenses. Which is actually an improvement over yesterday, when McCain managed to attack Obama over the crisis and then call for no finger-pointing in the space of only two sentences.

With the economy continuing to dominate the political discourse, Republicans are taking two tacks: Proclaiming their heroism in killing the bailout, or just plain changing the subject.

Bachmann: Pelosi's Speech Did Not Make Us Vote No
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is directly contradicting the party leadership's notion that Nancy Pelosi's speech yesterday led to Republicans voting against the bailout. "I want to assure you that was not the case," Bachmann said at a Republican Study Committee press conference yesterday. "We are not babies who suck our thumbs. We have very principled reasons for voting no."

Davis Iglesias Bashes GOP House Nominee
Here's a video making the rounds, in which former U.S. Attorney goes after Darren White, the Republican nominee for the close open seat of Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM), for overzealously wanting to prosecute accusations of voter fraud:

"So I've been very disappointed in Darren. He doesn't understand his duties as a sheriff," Iglesias says. "He put -- and this is why I'm very critical about people like Gonzales -- they put loyalty to the party at a higher plane than their loyalty to the Constitution. Darren did the same thing. So I hope the voters understand that come November."

Read more »

The pro-war group Vets for Freedom is going up on the air tomorrow with a new ad -- which the group hasn't yet released -- that hits Obama on an array of foreign policy fronts, chastising him for supposedly voting against funding our troops, not holding oversight hearings on Afghanistan, and making only two trips to Iraq.

Here's a copy of the spot, forwarded to us by a source (we're trying to determine if this is the final version, and will keep you posted)...

"Barack Obama skipped 45% of Senate votes, but did manage to show up to vote against emergency funding for our troops," the ad says.

The allegation that Obama voted against funding our troops has also been made by McCain, and it will continue to be key to McCain and the Republicans' efforts to paint Obama as both unprepared to be commander in chief and insufficiently respectful of the military.

The only problem with the charge is that it's bogus. If Obama can be said to have voted against funding the troops on the basis of opposing an Iraq supplemental without a withdrawal timeline, then McCain, too, voted against funding our troops. He voted against an Iraq funding bill with a timeline.

What's more, the charge that Obama didn't conduct oversight hearings on Afghanistan is similarly bogus. The Afghanistan issue before Obama's subcommittee was, as a matter of policy, handled through the full Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is chaired by ... oh, yeah, the man Obama picked to be his Veep candidate.

We'll bring you details of the buy when we get them.

Late Update: A Vets for Freedom spokesperson tells me that this is in fact an earlier version of the ad and that a spot like this will be going up. We'll bring you the final version as soon as we get it.

The AFL-CIO -- which has taken on a lead role in trying to persuade working class voters in swing states to vote their economic interests -- keeps up the economic assault on John McCain with this new mailer in battleground states hammering McCain as rich, out of touch, and a disaster on health care.

Click on the images to enlarge:

The mail, which will be dropped in Colorado, Virginia, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida, features Ohio union worker Dave Fecke hammering McCain as "rich" and saying "he doesn't get it" on kitchen-table issues.

The mail piece, which doesn't mention Obama, signals the start of a new and aggressive campaign by the union to target McCain in those key battlegrounds by speaking to worker anxieties about health care with more mailers, phone calls, and door-to-door canvassing, AFL-CIO spokesperson Steve Smith says. Health care, of course, is an increasingly urgent issue on its own for financially pinched families, as well as a kind of proxy for larger anxieties about the state of the economy in general -- anxieties that McCain has failed to address, polls show.

"McCain's practically had free health care his whole life," Fecke says in the mail piece. "He doesn't understand how hard it would be for my family to pay more."

The stakes of such efforts are particularly high in the slower-growing states of the industrial midwest, where polls show Obama gaining but still not at the point where he's put these states way, despite the economic collapse.

The Obama campaign goes up with his second two-minute ad in which he directly addresses voters on the economy:

The spot doesn't offer any new proposals on what do specifically about the current crisis, instead sketching out his broader economic proposals in an effort to deepen the contrast in economic philosophies between the two candidates.

"I know that that we can steer ourselves out of this crisis," Obama says. "But not by driving down the very same path. And that's what this election's all about."

RNC Ad Bashes Bailout, Says Obama Will Make Things Worse
The new RNC TV ad, targeted for key states, seriously undercuts the attempts at political consensus from President Bush, John McCain and Barack Obama that there should be a bailout, then warns that Obama would make things even worse:

"Meltdown," the announcer says. "Wall St. squanders our money. And Washington is forced to bail them out with -- you guessed it -- our money. Can it get any worse?"

Bill Clinton To Campaign For Obama Tomorrow
The Obama campaign has announced dates for campaign rallies starring Bill Clinton, who has been criticized in many media outlets for showing insufficient enthusiasm for Barack Obama. Bill will hold two rallies tomorrow in Florida, one in Orlando and the other in Fort Pierce.

Obama In Nevada, Biden Off The Trail
Barack Obama is campaigning in the swing state of Nevada today, with an event this morning at the University of Reno. Joe Biden is off the campaign trail, preparing for Thursday's debate with Sarah Palin.

McCain In Iowa, Palin At Debate Camp
John McCain is campaigning today in Iowa, a swing state where Barack Obama has enjoyed a big lead in all the recent polls, with a small business roundtable scheduled for 11 a.m. ET. Sarah Palin is off the campaign trail, cramming for Thursday's debate.

Obama Calls For Expanding FDIC Insurance
Barack Obama is calling for FDIC insurance on bank accounts to be raised from $100,000 to $250,000 in an effort to increase the confidence of small businesses in the banking system. "While that guarantee (of $100,000) is more than adequate for most families, it is insufficient for many small businesses that maintain bank accounts to meet their payroll, buy their supplies, and invest in expanding and creating jobs."

McCain Tries To Rebrand Bailout
Appearing on CNN this morning, John McCain said the bailout plan should instead be called a "rescue effort." Said McCain: "We haven't convinced people that this is a rescue effort not just for Wall Street but for Main Street America."

Palin Facing A Lot Of Pressure For Debate
The New York Times reports today on the anxiety many conservatives are feeling about Sarah Palin, ahead of Thursday's debate. "I think she has pretty thoroughly -- and probably irretrievably -- proven that she is not up to the job of being president of the United States," said former Bush speechwriter David Frum. "If she doesn't perform well, then people see it."

In the latest installment of the ongoing horror movie otherwise known as Sarah Palin's interviews with CBS News, John McCain just made a cameo appearance -- and blamed Palin's recent Pakistan flub on "gotcha journalism," even though her screw-up came with an ordinary voter.

CBS just aired Couric's joint interview with both McCain and Palin, and asked the two about her statement over the weekend to a voter in a Philadelphia fast food joint that we should reserve the right to cross into Pakistan to chase down terrorists -- a position that McCain has criticized Barack Obama for expressing out loud.

In the interview, Couric asked McCain if Palin should have given voice to this, and he replied...

"Of course not. But, look, I understand this day and age `gotcha' journalism. Is that a pizza place? In a conversation with someone who you didn't hear ... the question very well, you don't know the context of the conversation. Grab a phrase. Gov. Palin and I agree that you don't announce that you're going to attack another country."

It's unclear what McCain is complaining about here. Is he really trying to excuse Palin's flub with the silly excuse that she was the victim of gotcha journalism? She was asked a question by a citizen. And McCain has repeatedly railed against Obama for refusing to face the voters with him in town hall meetings. Back in June, McCain called on Obama to join him in a "direct conversation with voters."

What's more, should reporters really not report public statements that Palin makes to voters about matters of international policy, simply because she made them to ordinary citizens? In this particular exchange, she revealed -- again -- that she knows absolutely nothing about the finer points of foreign policy, let alone her own running-mate's positions on it. That's news. Rather important news.

Apologies for using the cliche again, but it's irresistible: If Palin is so incapable of answering questions from ordinary citizens in fast-food joints that reporters should politely look the other way when she interacts with voters, how can she stand up to Al Qaeda?

A second poll is now saying that Barack Obama is ahead in North Carolina, a state that hasn't voted Democratic since Jimmy Carter ran as the South's favorite son in 1976.

The new numbers from Public Policy Polling (D): Obama 47%, McCain 45%, with a ±3% margin of error. This comes on top of a Rasmussen poll from last week, which had Obama up 49%-47%, with a ±4.5% margin of error.

Obama surge in some of these red states has been happening in large part due to economic anxiety. In the PPP poll, an astonishing 64% of North Carolinians rated the economy as their top issue, and these voters who list the economy as the most important give Obama a 55%-38% advantage.

What makes these numbers even more surprising is that North Carolina is a state with a big military presence. And yet only 10% of respondents said the Iraq War is the biggest issue.

Here's tonight's run-down on the Congressional races: The GOP may be panicking in the face of more poll numbers showing serious losses from the economic crisis, with a new round of nasty attack ads against the Dem candidates.

Another Poll Shows GOP Sen. Dole Losing Re-Election
The new survey from Public Policy Polling (D) shows Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) trailing her Dem opponent Kay Hagan by a 46%-38% margin. PPP has tended to be the most favorable for Hagan, but even this lead is the widest one they've registered yet -- and on top of that, they've received corroboration from Rasmussen polls showing a narrow Hagan lead.

GOP Ad: Dem Challenger Is So Irresponsible, She Should Be On Wall St.
The NRSC is trying to make the economic crisis work for them in an odd place: The North Carolina Senate race, where economic anxiety has put incumbent Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R) behind Dem challenger Kay Hagan in the polls:

"Balanced? That's a hoax -- Hagan just borrowed the money," the announcer says. "Maybe Hagan should skip Washington -- and go straight to Wall St."

One is reminded of a line from the fictionalized Pappy O'Daniel in O Brother, Where Art Thou?: "How we gonna run reform when we're the damn incumbent?"

Read more »

John McCain just now delivered a statement to the press about the bailout collapse, and called for the finger-pointing to stop -- barely two hours after his campaign directly blamed Obama in unequivocal terms.

"Now is not the time to fix the blame." McCain said. "It's time to fix the problem."

But at around 3:30 P.M., the McCain campaign blasted out a statement that fixed the blame directly on Obama.

"Barack Obama failed to lead, phoned it in, attacked John McCain, and refused to even say if he supported the final bill," the statement said. "This bill failed because Barack Obama and the Democrats put politics ahead of country."

Of course, it's already been established repeatedly that McCain isn't responsible for what his own campaign does, so nothing to see here.

In all seriousness, this seems to show either that the McCain campaign realizes how badly it erred in launching such an attack on Obama in the midst of today's crisis news, or that the meltdown's political strains have knocked the McCain team so badly off its game that we're way beyond erratic now and are rushing headlong into unhinged.

Late Update: John Aravosis makes the good point that McCain came very close to contradicting himself within the space of two sentences.

Here's the response, from Obama campaign spokesperson Bill Burton, to John McCain's broadside today blaming Obama for the collapse of the bailout package in the House:

"This is a moment of national crisis, and today's inaction in Congress as well as the angry and hyper-partisan statement released by the McCain campaign are exactly why the American people are disgusted with Washington. Now is the time for Democrats and Republicans to join together and act in a way that prevents an economic catastrophe. Every American should be outraged that an era of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street and Washington has led us to this point, but now that we are here, the stability of our entire economy depends on us taking immediate action to ease this crisis."

And so the A-word -- "angry" -- makes its appearance. McCain's assault has given the Obama campaign an opening to go after McCain while still spotlighting him as the one who dragged the dialog into the mud with partisan political attacks at a moment of national crisis.

Now that the bailout has failed in the House, it's worth contrasting the immediate responses from the campaigns.

In Colorado today, Obama called for calm and predicted ultimate success. Here's what he said (before MSNBC cut away)...

"It's important for the American public and the markets to stay calm, because things are never smooth in Congress, and to understand that it will get better...We are going to make sure that an emergency package is put together, because it is required for us to stabilize the markets...

"So I'm confident that we are going to get there, but it's going to be a little rocky. It's sort of like flying into Denver -- you know you're going to land, it's not always fun going over those mountains."

By contrast, the McCain campaign statement hailed McCain's own Herculean efforts on behalf of the bailout and attacked Obama for his failure to rise to McCain's heights of heroism and self-sacrifice:

"From the minute John McCain suspended his campaign and arrived in Washington to address this crisis, he was attacked by the Democratic leadership: Senators Obama and Reid, Speaker Pelosi and others. Their partisan attacks were an effort to gain political advantage during a national economic crisis. By doing so, they put at risk the homes, livelihoods and savings of millions of American families.

"Barack Obama failed to lead, phoned it in, attacked John McCain, and refused to even say if he supported the final bill.

"Just before the vote, when the outcome was still in doubt, Speaker Pelosi gave a strongly worded partisan speech and poisoned the outcome.

"This bill failed because Barack Obama and the Democrats put politics ahead of country."

The anger and frustration coming out of the McCain campaign over the massive failure of the suspension stunt is very palpable today, and has a real whiff of tantrum about it. Really, it's so reassuring to see the McCain campaign's typical high-mindedness and keen sense of priorities on display at such a critical moment of national need.

In political terms, John McCain needed this bailout bill to pass. Now that it's failed in the House, it's clear that this could pose a serious blow to his campaign -- and that his big campaign suspension gambit could backfire badly.

McCain pushed way too many political chips onto the bailout deal with his supposed decision to put his campaign on ice and his subsequent high-profile swooping into D.C. His campaign got way too far out front appearing to take credit for the bailout in advance.

"What Senator McCain was able to do was to help bring all of the parties to the table, including the House Republicans, whose votes were needed to pass this," McCain senior Steve Schmidt said on Meet the Press yesterday.

"We're optimistic that Senator McCain will bring House Republicans on board without driving other parties away, resulting in a successful deal for the American taxpayer," McCain spokeswoman Kimmie Lipscomb said a few days ago.

McCain needed action on the meltdown. It was his only hope of getting the campaign discussion off of favorable turf for Obama. Now people are more frightened than ever amid the crisis. The electorate's ratcheted up emotional state over the economy is similar to how on-edge the electorate was about national security in the years after 9/11. This allows Obama to counter McCain's effort to cast him as risky on national security by casting McCain as the risky and frightening choice -- on the economy, the focus of so much attention and fear right now.

And second, to whatever degree McCain could be seen to have galvanized any action in Congress, he'd be able to blunt Obama's change argument by casting himself as the race's real change agent -- in real time.

It's unclear, of course, where the dust will settle after the spin wars over the bailout's failure -- the GOP is aggressively blaming Congressional Dems, which could reflect on to Obama. And it's possible that McCain will be able to retain credit for supposedly having tried to light a fire under Congress' posterior, although that's unlikely at any rate given the press reports about his disruptive role.

But it looks more like McCain invested way too much in the illusion that he'd be able to force action -- and that his investment has now gone belly-up.

According to advance text sent our way by an Obama aide, Obama will use McCain's affection for gambling as a jumping off point to portray the Arizona Senator as a risk we can't afford to take on the economy.

Obama will hit this riff in his remarks later today in Colorado:

I read the other day that Senator McCain likes to gamble. He likes to roll those dice. And that's okay. I enjoy a little friendly game of poker myself every now and then.

But one thing I know is this -- we can't afford to gamble on four more years of the same disastrous economic policies we've had for the last eight.

I know that when Senator McCain says he wants to bring the same kind of deregulation to our health care system that he helped bring to our banking system -- his words -- well, that's a bet we can't afford. We can't afford to roll the dice by privatizing Social Security, and wagering the nest egg of millions of Americans on Wall Street. We can't afford to gamble on more of the same trickle down philosophy that showers tax breaks on big corporations and the wealthiest few. We've tried that. It doesn't work.

More excerpts after the jump.

Late Update: This is, in a sense, the flip-side of the McCain campaign's efforts to cast Obama as "risky" on national security. The 9/11 attacks happened seven years ago, and now the thing that's scaring the heck out of everyone is not terrorism, but the economic meltdown. That's what has everyone on edge, something that could grow even more pronounced with no bailout solution agreed upon -- making it easier to cast McCain as the risky, frightening choice.

Read more »

Here's a wrap-up of the four major national tracking polls for today. Barack Obama continues to hold a big lead in post-debate polling:

• Gallup: Obama 50%, McCain 42%, with a ±2% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.

• Rasmussen: Obama 50%, McCain 45%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 50%-44% Obama lead yesterday.

• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 47%, McCain 42%, with a ±3.2% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.

• Research 2000: Obama 51%, McCain 42%, with a ±3% margin of error. Yesterday, Obama was up 50%-43%.

Adding these polls together and weighting them by sample sizes, Obama is ahead by a margin of 49.8%-43.1%, basically the same as yesterday's 49.7%-42.9% lead.

These three-day poll numbers include two days of sampling from after the debate. During that time, Obama's lead has shot up in the polls, indicating that he walked away the political winner of their first face-off.

And here's something noteworthy: The Hotline poll also shows that there has been a very serious movement in the candidates' favorable ratings. Three days ago, they were essentially the same: Obama was at 54% favorable and 39% unfavorable, McCain 54%-38%. But now it's Obama 57%-36%, and McCain 50%-43%. In short, it looks like McCain's attacks during the debate may have just hurt his own numbers, while Obama's have improved.

The Obama campaign keeps up its economic assault on John McCain with this new ad on national cable. It ties McCain to the culture of Wall Street golden parachutes by going after McCain adviser Carly Fiorina's lavish severance package when she was fired from Hewlett Packard:

"Last week, another bank went under -- but its CEO could walk away with $19 million," the announcer says. "John McCain's advisor, Carly Fiorina: The fired CEO who left with $42 million."

"You've got corporate executives who are giving themselves million dollar golden parachutes and leaving workers high and dry," Obama says. "That's wrong, it's an outrage."

It's good that Obama has been hitting the "outrage" button, which could perhaps quiet the concerns reported in this silly piece in The New York Times suggesting that Obama's style may be "too cool" for the crisis. For some strange reason, the article didn't mention any of the numerous polls finding that more people think Obama identifies with their problems and more trust Obama to handle this crisis.

A CBS source confirms to me that more footage of Sarah Palin being interviewed by Katie Couric will indeed air this week, in advance of the debate.

The question of whether there's more footage of Couric talking to Palin arose this morning after Howard Kurtz published a column with this buried at the end:

And the worst may be yet to come for Palin; sources say CBS has two more responses on tape that will likely prove embarrassing.

The CBS source clarifies to me that these taped responses from Palin are not a part of the big trainwreck interview that aired last week.

Rather, the source says, in addition to the big interview, Couric also interviewed Palin as part of its Vice Presidential Questions series, in which the same questions were also posed to Joe Biden.

Couric's interviews with both Veep contenders will air on Wednesday and Thursday. I couldn't verify Kurtz's contention that Palin's answers will "likely prove embarrassing," but we now know that they will definitely air.

The McCain campaign has this new radio ad hammering Joe Biden's "no coal plants" gaffe, a serious economic issue in coal-producing states, with ads running in the battleground states of Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Here's the Ohio version:

"No coal plants here in America," Biden says. "We're not supporting clean coal."

"No coal plants in America?" the announcer says in disbelief. "No jobs in Ohio? No energy independence for America?"

At the time, the Obama camp jumped to say that Biden's remarks were taken out of context -- that he was criticizing China for building old-fashioned dirty coal plants, and that Obama and Biden support investments in cleaner coal technologies.

That said, the McCain campaign clearly sees this gaffe as a wedge issue they can use in the swing states to undercut Obama's superior reputation on economic issues.

Here's today's rundown on the Congressional races: The Wall St. bailout is dominating the discussion in the down-ticket races, with many Republicans taking political damage from the bad economic news.

Bailout Could Sink McConnell
The Lexington Herald-Leader reports that the political fallout over the Wall St. bailout is damaging the political standing of Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, due in part to his fellow GOP Senator Jim Bunning undercutting McConnell's support with his own outspoken opposition. On top of that, the new Mason-Dixon poll has McConnell with a bare 45%-44% lead over Dem businessman Bruce Lunsford, and SurveyUSA has it as a 49%-46% lead.

Coleman Ad: Don't "Play The Blame Game" On Bailout
Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) has this new ad out reassuring voters on the Wall St. bailout, asking voters not to assess blame to anybody for the mess:

"We can point fingers, play the blame game, or pull together, restore confidence, and turn this country around," Coleman said. One is reminded of what Jon Stewart said after Katrina: Those people who say we shouldn't play the blame game are usually the people we should blame.

Read more »

The McCain campaign is up with a new radio spot hitting an earlier Obama ad for lying about his record on stem-cell research:

Here's the key text of the Obama ad that the McCain camp is objecting to:

ANNOUNCER: Stem cell research could unlock cures for diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer's, too. But John McCain has stood in the way ... he's opposed stem cell research. Picked a running mate who's against it ... And he's running on a platform even more extreme than George Bush's on this vital research. John McCain doesn't understand that medical research benefiting millions shouldn't be held hostage by the political views of a few.

The claim that McCain "has stood in the way" is only true in an extremely narrow sense -- he opposed embryonic stem-cell research before flip flopping on it around seven years ago, and has favored it since.

That said, it's true that the GOP platform opposes embryonic stem-cell research. What's more, McCain's current "fact check" ad indulges in a bit of deception: It implies that the McCain-Palin ticket supports this research. Palin opposes it, as Obama's earlier spot accurately noted.

Late Update: A commenter below notes that by forcing McCain to publicly declare his support for the research, he could be risking alienating religious right voters.

We now have two non-snap-polls that have measured a key question: Whether Obama gained or lost voter confidence on national security in the wake of the debate. Here's the operative number from the new Gallup poll:

Thirty-five percent said they now have more confidence in Obama's ability to deal with national defense, while a shade less (34%) said the same about McCain. Meanwhile, 29% said they had less confidence in Obama, less than the amount who said they now had more confidence in him. Another third (34%) weren't moved either way.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll measured the question a bit differently, and found that confidence in Obama's ability to "deal wisely with an international crisis" went up slightly, while it dropped slightly for McCain.

This could be key, because McCain was under enormous pressure to jar the electorate into seeing Obama as not merely unprepared, but risky and dangerous -- hence McCain's repeated use of that last word.

To be sure, it would be foolish to pretend that Obama doesn't have work to do to shore up his vulnerability in this area, particularly since the McCain team is preparing to unleash a barrage of adver-sleazements designed to paint Obama as dangerously unfit to be commander-in-chief. But that debate was a big opportunity for McCain to do something to dramatically undermine confidence in Obama on this front. These numbers suggest he may not have done anything of the sort.

This morning, Chuck Todd and the rest of MSNBC's political team crunches the polls and shifts its electoral map in favor of Obama, with a couple of real surprises:

Four new states have been added to our Toss-up category: three red states (Florida, Indiana, and North Carolina) and one blue state (Pennsylvania). This gives Obama a 212-174 edge, after his more narrow 233-227 lead last week.

What's interesting about these shifts is that while Obama is showing an improvement in fast-growing states (CO, FL, NV, NC, VA), he can't seem to put away the Northern tier states of slow-growing states (MI, PA, WI) or make progress in what some believe is still the all-important state of OH.

So it's now...

Likely Obama: CA, CT, DE, DC, HI, IL, ME, MD, MA, NY, RI, VT (157 electoral votes)

Lean Obama: IA, MN, NJ, NM OR, WA (55 votes)

Toss-up: CO, FL, IN, MI, NV, NH, NC, OH, PA, VA, WI (152 votes)

Lean McCain: MO, MT (14 votes)

Likely McCain: AL, AK, AZ, AR, GA, ID, KS, KY, LA, MS, NE, ND, OK, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, WV, WY (160 votes)

That Indiana is now a toss up rather than a "leans McCain" is a real surprise -- Obama's heavy play for the state had widely been seen as little more than an effort to force the Repubs to spend time and money on a broader map. The RNC is now sinking cash into ads there, and it's not out of reach for the Dems. And North Carolina and Florida are toss-ups, too!

Overall, the shifts are yet another sign of the extent to which the economic meltdown has completely stalled -- and even reversed -- McCain's momentum coming out of the convention and the announcement of his choice of Sarah Palin. What's more, early polling suggests that McCain's debate performance -- on national security, his strength -- won't change this trend.

McCain Campaign Orders Palin To Sedona For Debate-Cramming
The Wall St. Journal reports that Sarah Palin will be headed to John McCain's Sedona ranch this week for a few days of intensive debate preparation, in the wake of her problematic interview with Katie Couric. In particular, a McCain adviser said the goal will be for her debate answers to be "her words," and not campaign talking points that she's had trouble reciting properly.

Obama In Colorado, Biden Off The Trail
Barack Obama is campaigning in the key swing state of Colorado today, with a campaign event scheduled for 11:30 a.m. ET in Denver. Joe Biden does not have any public events.

McCain And Palin In Ohio
John McCain and Sarah Palin are holding another one of their joint rallies today, scheduled for 12 p.m. ET in Columbus, Ohio.

Biden Prepping For Debate
Joe Biden is reportedly receiving advice from Hillary Clinton and Dianne Feinstein for his upcoming debate with Sarah Palin, presumably on how to carry himself while debating a female politician. Some Dems are worried that if Biden goes after Palin too aggressively, he could come off as a bully picking on a female candidate.

Former McCain Campaign Manager: He Needs to Be Less Dramatic
Former McCain campaign manager John Weaver told the Los Angeles Times that McCain's reaction to the financial crisis may have backfired. "It was all very dramatic, but maybe the American public is tired of drama after the last eight years," said Weaver. "John needs to demonstrate he has a steady hand. He needs to be a bit more measured."

NYT: Pro-Obama Unions Encountering Race As An Obstacle
The New York Times reports that while unions canvassing for Barack Obama have had some success with economic issues, racism is still a problem. "I think race is playing a major part," said a painters' union activist in Wisconsin. "I think that's why some people say, 'Isn't he a Muslim?'"

Here's a wrap-up of the four major national tracking polls for today. With one new day of post-debate data within the three-day tracking polls, Barack Obama's lead is growing.

• Gallup: Obama 50%, McCain 42%, with a ±2% margin of error. Yesterday, Obama was up 49%-44%.

• Rasmussen: Obama 50%, McCain 44%, with a ±2% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.

• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 47%, McCain 42%, with a ±3.2% margin of error, compared to a 48%-43% Obama lead yesterday.

• Research 2000: Obama 50%, McCain 43%, with a ±3% margin of error. Yesterday, Obama was up 49%-43%.

Adding these polls together and weighting them by sample sizes, Obama is ahead by a margin of 49.7%-42.9%, up from a lead yesterday of 49.3%-43.8%.

These numbers entirely span the time since John McCain announced his quasi-suspension of his campaign to deal with the financial crisis, and they include one day of post-debate data. And it looks like that period of time has been very favorable for Barack Obama.

McCain Retracts Palin's Agreements With Obama On Pakistan
Appearing today on ABC's This Week, John McCain was forced to disavow Sarah Palin's agreement yesterday with Barack Obama about attacking al-Qaeda within the Pakistani border. McCain criticized the press for picking up on Palin's conversation with a voter on the street in Philadelphia: "Sticking a microphone while conversations are being held, and then all of a sudden that's -- that's a person's position."

McCain Camp: Obama Will Make Our Problems Worse
Top McCain adviser Steve Schmidt told the Washington Post that the campaign will press ahead with attacks against Barack Obama on the economy and national security, charging that his positions would "make the world more dangerous and America less secure," and that he would "make our economy worse." This does seem like a defensive position -- Schmidt can't actually point to a successful Republican record to run on.

Dem Ticket In Michigan Today
Barack Obama and Joe Biden, plus their wives, are holding a big rally today in Michigan, scheduled to begin at 1:30 p.m. ET.

GOP Ticket Off The Trail
John McCain and Sarah Palin don't have any scheduled public events for today.

Poll: Obama Won The Debate
Another poll says that Barack Obama won the debate on Friday. The new numbers from USA Today/Gallup: Respondents said Obama did a better job by a 46%-34% margin, and by a 52%-35% margin say he was the candidate who offered the best proposals for dealing with the country's problems.

Both Candidates Support Bailout -- Sort Of
The two presidential candidates are both indicating that they'll support the Wall St. bailout deal, but it hardly seems enthusiastic. McCain was asked on This Week whether he would support it, to which he said, "Hopefully, yes." Barack Obama said on CBS' Face The Nation, "My inclination is to support it."

McCain Defends Refusal To Look At Obama During Debate
John McCain said on This Week that it was "foolishness" to criticize him for refusing to look at Barack obama during the debate. "I've been in many, many debates," said McCain. "And a lot of the times I don't look at my opponents because I'm focusing on the people and the American people that I'm talking to. That's what the debate's all about."