Appearing earlier today on MSNBC, McCain surrogate Nancy Pfotenhauer gave an interesting response to poll data showing that the campaign is trailing in Virginia: They're actually winning in "Real Virginia," which is the part of the state outside of Northern Virginia that is "more Southern in nature":

This seems to be in line with Sarah Palin's declaration that the conservative areas where she campaigns are the "Real America," and also hearkens back to John McCain's bother Joe McCain calling Virginia's Democratic strongholds of Arlington and Alexandria "Communist country."

Overall, the McCain campaign seems to be pursuing a very extreme form of a base-centered strategy: Promoting turnout in GOP strongholds by routinely bad-mouthing Democratic areas as not being truly American and as something to be feared.

The campaign of El Tinklenberg, the Democratic challenger against Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), announced today that they've raised about half a million dollars in the time since she let loose on Hardball with her claims that Barack Obama may be anti-American and that the media should undertake a full investigation into which members of Congress are anti-American.

Tinklenberg still faces an up-hill battle, though, as this district voted 57%-42% for George W. Bush in 2004. So the question for him is whether there has been enough of a turn against Bush Republicanism -- and especially against Bachmann's extreme version of it -- for him to pull off an upset.

The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN are now getting serious about picking up on the story of John McCain's robo-slime campaign, all weighing in with pieces that endeavor to demonstrate the true breadth and scope of McCain's under-the-radar smear effort.

The Times piece is here. WaPo's is here. And you can watch CNN's report on the video below.

The Times piece hits directly hits on two key points: First, the calls are "misleading," as the paper puts it, perhaps too delicately. And second, the calls show McCain yet again jettisoning a formerly claimed principle as he faces the increasingly likely prospect of defeat. As the paper notes, McCain high-mindedly denounced such tactics when he was the target of them in 2000, and again during the GOP primary this year, when he described the robo-slime being directed at him as "scurrilous stuff."

It's worth stepping back to ponder what's really going on here. While McCain and Sarah Palin try to persuade you that they're running a relatively clean campaign and don't question Obama's patriotism or love of country, they are running an enormous shadow campaign to smear Obama in the ugliest of ways, one that's designed to portray him as a friend of terrorists, as a vaguely sinister other, as not genuinely committed to defending our country, and as callously indifferent to the lives of newborn babies.

Thus, while Palin was sweetly claiming yesterday that she knows "Obama loves America," her and McCain's campaign were funding thousands upon thousands of calls telling battleground state voters that Obama put "Hollywood above America" during the crisis negotiations, that Obama and Dems merely "say" they want to keep you safe and "aren't who you think they are," and that Obama has "worked closely" with a "domestic terrorist" whose group "killed Americans."

There are two McCain campaigns operating simultaneously right now. There's the one that McCain and Palin are running in front of the cameras, and then there's the subterranean robo-slime campaign, which is bombarding thousands upon thousands of voters with multiple messages that McCain would never associate himself with in the glare of the klieg lights. That's the real story here.

Meanwhile, here's CNN's robo-slime report (with a much-appreciated plug for TPM)...

Here's our daily composite of the five major national tracking polls. The presidential race may be starting to tighten up as we head into the final two weeks of the campaign, though Barack Obama is still ahead for now:

• Gallup: Obama 50%, McCain 46%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 51%-45% Obama lead yesterday.

• Rasmussen: Obama 50%, McCain 45%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 50%-46% Obama lead from yesterday.

• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 49%, McCain 42%, with a ±3.5% margin of error, compared to a 50%-40% Obama lead from yesterday.

• Research 2000: Obama 50%, McCain 43%, with a ±3% margin of error, compared to a 52%-42% Obama lead from yesterday.

• Zogby: Obama 48%, McCain 44%, with a ±2.9% margin of error, compared to a 49%-44% Obama lead yesterday.

Adding these polls together and weighting them by the square roots of their sample sizes, Obama is ahead 49.5%-44.3%, a lead of 5.2 points, compared to the 50.4%-43.9% Obama lead from yesterday.

Obama About To Break Advertising And Fundraising Records
Barack Obama is days away from breaking the TV advertising record set by George W. Bush in 2004 of $188 million, and has been outspending John McCain by a ratio of four to one, thanks to Obama's decision to opt out of public finance. And that's not all: the campaign is expected to announce in a few days that it raised over $100 million in September, setting an all-time record for a single month.

Obama In Missouri Today
Barack Obama is campaigning today in Missouri, with a 1 p.m. ET rally in St. Louis and a 5 p.m. ET rally in Kansas City. Joe Biden does not have any public events.

McCain In North Carolina And Virginia, Palin In Pennsylvania -- And Live From New York!
John McCain is campaigning today in two swing Southern states, with an 11 a.m. ET rally in Concord, North Carolina, and a 3 p.m. ET rally in Woodbridge, Virginia. Sarah Palin held a rally at 10:30 a.m. ET this morning in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and has a cameo appearance tonight on Saturday Night Live. Cindy McCain is holding a 5 p.m. ET rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

McCain: Obama's Tax Policies Are Welfare
At a rally on Friday, John McCain blasted Barack Obama's tax policies as being effectively a giant welfare program: "Sen. Obama claims that he want to give a tax break to the middle class, but not only did he vote for higher taxes for the middle class in the Senate, his plan gives away your tax dollars to those who don't pay taxes. That's not a tax cut; that's welfare."

Obama Today: McCain Thinks Out Of Touch On Taxes
During his rally today in St. Louis, Barack Obama will rebut McCain's charges on taxes. "He actually said it goes to, 'those who don't pay taxes,' even though it only goes to working people who are already getting taxed on their paycheck," Obama will say, according to pre-released excerpts. "That's right, Missouri - John McCain is so out of touch with the struggles you are facing that he must be the first politician in history to call a tax cut for working people 'welfare.'"

Obama And Hillary To Campaign Together On Monday
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will be campaigning together on Monday, with a rally in Orlando, Florida.

McCain Calls Joe The Plumber, Invites Him On The Trail
John McCain told a rally last night that he'd called Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher on the phone. McCain invited Wurzelbacher to come with him on the campaign trail, but no dates have been set.

Cindy McCain's Lawyer To NYT: Investigate Obama's Past Drug Use
Cindy McCain's attorney John Dowd sent a letter to the New York Times lambasting them for looking into her personal life. "It is worth noting that you have not employed your investigative assets looking into Michelle Obama," Dowd wrote. "You have not tried to find Barack Obama's drug dealer that he wrote about in his book, Dreams of (sic) My Father. Nor have you interviewed his poor relatives in Kenya and determined why Barack Obama has not rescued them. Thus, there is a terrific lack of balance here."

This is a must-watch: On MSNBC just now, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who has been a prominent McCain-Palin supporter on the cable talk shows, went on perhaps the most bizarre and McCarthyite rant about Obama that we've seen from a supposedly-respectable politician in this entire election.

Check out these clips:

Bachmann said she's "absolutely" concerned that Obama is anti-American. She attacked him for his association with, um, his wife, which she said raises questions about Obama's love for America. And -- in true Red-Scare form -- she called on reporters to investigate which members of Congress are secretly against America.

On top of all this, she also alleged that Saul Alinsky was a teacher to Obama in Chicago. Alinsky died in 1972.

Hmmm, maybe Bachmann has been writing all of McCain's robocalls in her spare time?

NRSC: We Are Not Pulling Out Of Colorado
The NRSC is denying reports that they are pulling out of the Colorado Senate race, a story that has been circulating on the blogs today. "Reports that we are pulling out of Colorado are false," NRSC spokesman John Randall told Election Central, adding that another ad is going up on the air.

DCCC Out-Raises NRCC In Loan Money, Too
The DCCC has taken out a $15 million loan in order to give themselves a financial boost in the home stretch of the election. This is nearly twice the the $8 million loan the NRCC took out in an attempt to even out their serious financial gap against the DCCC -- so the DCCC has responded in kind.

Read more »

Can it be that John McCain hired the same outfit to robo-slime Barack Obama that hit McCain himself with the scurrilous robocall campaign in 2000 that he decried at the time as "hate calls"?

Yes, according to Christopher Schoff, an official with the Democratic Party in Minnesota, also known as the DFL.

Schoff tells me he got one of McCain's calls on Tuesday night, the one saying Obama put "Hollywood above America." Only in this case, the call wasn't robo; because such calls are illegal in Minnesota, the McCain call was a live person reading from a script.

Schoff says he cut off the person reading to him and asked the name of the company. He was told it was DF King, in Brooklyn, and was sent to a supervisor.

Schoff says the supervisor then told him that the company had been subcontracted for the calls by a larger company called FLS Connect that had been hired by McCain's campaign to do the calls. (Calls to FLS weren't immediately returned, and it may be tough to nail all the particulars of this down completely before FEC filings are available.)

And who is FLS Connect, you ask?

Well, it turns out FLS, which has offices in Phoenix and St. Paul, is basically the same outfit that George W. Bush hired to robo-slime McCain during the 2000 South Carolina primary, something that McCain repeatedly denounced with great outrage.

In 2000, the Washington Post reported that the Bush team's phone operation was conducted by a firm called Feathers, Hodges, Larson and Synhorst. A press release in 2003 (via Nexis) indicates that this firm had by then become Feathers, Larson and Synhorst, or FLS for short.

On February 20, 2000, McCain thundered that the robocalls hitting him -- done by this outfit -- were "hate calls" that had "inundated" him. Now, if Schoff is right, McCain appears to have enlisted the same outfit for his robo-slime campaign.

How perfect! No one could have made this one up if they'd tried.

Lots more from HuffPo's Sam Stein, who got here first and has more details.

It never ends. Michael Cooper of The New York Times reports that John McCain and his advisers complained about robo-sleaze earlier this year, when the tactic was used -- natch -- against him.

Cooper writes that this past January, McCain and senior adviser Steve Schmidt were exorcised by calls that were directed at McCain, as part of the GOP primary in South Carolina. Cooper took down the quotes at the time; it's unclear if they were ever published until now.

McCain called the calls "scurrilous stuff." And Schmidt described robocalls as "slanderous and smearing."

But that was then. As Cooper notes, the McCain campaign's current robocall campaign is "just the latest instance of Mr. McCain embracing the very kind of negative or misleading campaign tactics he once denounced." Just the latest, indeed.

In two private conference calls this week with leading fundraisers, surrogates, and prominent supporters, senior Obama advisers expressed genuine worry that his lead in the polls is creating a complacency among supporters that the advisers are afraid will create a serious drag on fundraising and turnout, a person who was on both calls says.

Obama and his aides have publicly warned against complacency, but in general terms, and such gestures have been widely viewed as pep-talks. These private discussions, though, suggest that the worry is genuine, and that it has taken the specific form of worry about money and get-out-the-vote efforts.

"The calls each had the same theme, which struck me," the person who was on both calls says. "They were worried about Democrats being so confident of victory -- it's a recurring theme." The Obama campaign declined to comment on the calls.

On one of the calls, a key focus was money. "The big fear was that people will start thinking their donations don't count," the person who was on the calls says. Speaking of Obama's advisers, he continued: "They were really concerned that in the final stretch people will feel their $50 or $100 don't matter."

It's hard to imagine that this could become a major factor, given Obama's huge financial advantage, but it's probably good news for Obama supporters that his advisers are sweating every possibility.

On the second call, the person says, a key topic for senior Obama advisers was turnout -- specifically among young people, who may not have learned yet from bitter experience just now dramatically presidential campaigns can tighten up or shift in the home stretch.

"They're increasingly concerned about their supporters taking this victory for granted, particularly among people who are going through this for the first time," the person says. "The words they used were, `too confident of victory," and they worry that this will result in a slacking off in turnout."

Separately, Ben Smith reports that Obama himself got on a call with staff to tell them not to "get cocky."

A scorching new mailer authorized by the McCain campaign directly questions Obama's patriotism by saying he put the interests of "Hollywood above America" during the bailout negotiations, and ratchets up the "celeb" attacks by saying he "partied with Hollywood's elite" at a time of national crisis.

The mailer -- sent in by a reader in Virginia -- uses these attacks to stir fears of Obama as a vaguely sinister other with a questionable background, closing with this stark warning: "We need a President who puts America first. Barack Obama. Not who you think he is."

Mystifyingly, the mailer shows Obama alongside familiar bogeywoman Barbra Streisand, but also...Leo DiCaprio. Click on the images to enlarge:

The mailer, the latest in a huge wave of under-the-radar attacks from McCain that depart from the McCain campaign's public message, is an amped up version of the robocall we reported on the other day that made similar accusations. It was paid for by the RNC, but authorized by the McCain campaign.

Might the Obama campaign have acted prematurely when they pulled out of North Dakota a little over three weeks ago, when the polls there looked pretty bad for them?

Three polls over the last few days have now shown that Obama is now either ahead or tied in a state that hasn't voted Democratic since the LBJ landslide of 1964:

• Research 2000, released today: Obama 45%, McCain 45%, compared to a 53%-40% McCain lead from mid-September, shortly before the Obama camp packed up and left.

• DFM (D), released yesterday: Obama 44%, McCain 41%, within the ±4.4% margin of error.

• Fargo Forum, released on Monday: Obama 45%, McCain 43%, within the ±4% margin of error.

As of this afternoon, Pollster.com scores the state as Obama 44.6%, McCain 42.7%.

This is a state that voted 63%-36% for President Bush in 2004, and the Obama campaign had previously given up hope here. If the Obama campaign's internal polling shows anything like this, we may see a rethinking of their decision to pull out.

As we noted below, Sarah Palin appeared to describe some parts of the country as "pro-America" at a fundraiser last night, though the overall context was unclear.

Now The Huffington Post has obtained Palin's full remarks from the WaPo reporter who wrote the earlier story on the fundraiser. Here's what she said:

"We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C. We believe" -- here the audience interrupted Palin with applause and cheers -- "We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation.

"This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans. Those who are running our factories and teaching our kids and growing our food and are fighting our wars for us. Those who are protecting us in uniform. Those who are protecting the virtues of freedom."

Seems like Palin is saying that the "best of America," the "real America," the "pro-America" America, is in the small towns she visits, which perhaps means the rest of us are fake Americans, depending on what she meant by "real." It also seems worth pointing out that people who live in cities and suburbs have been known to join the armed services on occasion.

But as usual, it's virtually impossible to figure out what on earth the woman is talking about.

A very interesting argument to Appalachian voters from Jim Webb on the trail in Virginia today on why they shouldn't view Barack Obama as an outsider or a vaguely sinister other:

"There's a lot of comments that have been made about certain ethnic issues in this campaign," Webb said. "I would like to say we know Barack Obama's father was born in Kenya. Barack Obama's mother was born in Kansas by way of Kentucky. We are going to see on Election Day the election of the fourteenth president of the United States whose ancestry, family line goes back to the mountains of this area.

"Barack Obama understands you -- the first place he visited after he was officially nominated -- he can here to southwest Virginia. This will be his seventh trip to southwest Virginia. And you can trust him -- I trust him."

Hadn't heard that thing about Kentucky before.

Here's our daily composite of the five major national tracking polls. With one day of post-debate sampling now incorporated into the three-day tracking poll, there hasn't been much of a change so far in Barack Obama's big lead:

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

• Rasmussen: Obama 50%, McCain 46%, with a ±2% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.

• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 50%, McCain 40%, with a ±3.4% margin of error, compared to a 49%-41% Obama lead from yesterday.

• Research 2000: Obama 52%, McCain 42%, with a ±3% margin of error, compared to a 52%-41% Obama lead from yesterday.

• Zogby: Obama 49%, McCain 44%, with a ±2.9% margin of error, compared to a 49%-43% Obama lead yesterday.

Adding these polls together and weighting them by the square roots of their sample sizes, Obama is ahead 50.4%-43.9%, a lead of 6.5 points, pretty much the same as the 50.3%-43.7% Obama lead from yesterday.

*ed. note: Gallup has begun offering two different sub-samples of likely voters, one using a traditional likely-voter model and the other using a modified likely-voter model for an expected higher turnout. For all our composites and Poll Tracker entries, we will be using that second model under the expectation that newly-registered voters and other factors will contribute to a higher turnout this cycle.

This is a good one. In an interview with a local TV station in North Carolina, Sarah Palin offered glowing praise of what she rather delicately termed the "energy" of her rallies:

QUESTION: You've been at this particular part of your career now for several weeks. what's been your greatest surprise and greatest frustration so far?

PALIN: Oh, greatest surprise has been the energy at these rallies. Amazing people -- it's such a diverse group of people showing up at these rallies, just very energizing and supportive.

And that encourages us of course to get through the day and get that message out there about the change that's coming, about the tickets that have such contrasts in them. So the people who've been at these rallies have just been absolutely the most wonderful and encouraging surprise.

There's no quibbling with one thing she said: Her crowds are indeed "supportive." As for the "energy" at these rallies, the reporter who was assaulted at a recent Palin gathering might find that a bit of an understatement.

Late Update: Here's the video:

Coleman: I Won't Say War Was A Mistake, For The Sake Of The Dead
At a debate last night in the Minnesota Senate race, Sen. Norm Coleman (R) reiterated his position that he will not say the Iraq War was as mistake. Coleman put it in very stark terms: "I will not tell the parents of any kid who has died in Iraq that their son died because of a mistake. I simply will not do that."

GOP Poll: Mahoney Way Down
We usually don't cover internal polls, but this one probably deserves some attention. The campaign of House candidate Tom Rooney (R-FL) has put out a poll showing Rooney defeating scandal-plagued Democratic incumbent Tim Mahoney by a whopping 55%-29%. We'll probably see an independent poll of this race soon, and don't be too surprised if it also shows Mahoney losing.

Read more »

Pro-war Washington Post edit page editor Fred Hiatt throws in the towel and endorses Barack Obama for President. One key bit:

There are few public figures we have respected more over the years than Sen. John McCain. Yet it is without ambivalence that we endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president.

The choice is made easy in part by Mr. McCain's disappointing campaign, above all his irresponsible selection of a running mate who is not ready to be president...

The stress of a campaign can reveal some essential truths, and the picture of Mr. McCain that emerged this year is far from reassuring. To pass his party's tax-cut litmus test, he jettisoned his commitment to balanced budgets. He hasn't come up with a coherent agenda, and at times he has seemed rash and impulsive. And we find no way to square his professed passion for America's national security with his choice of a running mate who, no matter what her other strengths, is not prepared to be commander in chief.

This is a bit of a seminal moment, a signal that McCain's enormous goodwill among a certain class of Beltway insiders has been sapped -- irrevocably, perhaps -- by his sleazy campaign and his choice of Palin.

Not even McCain's embrace of Hiatt's position -- and Obama's opposition to it -- on perhaps the most important foreign policy question of the moment could prevent Hiatt from slipping away.

Check out this little nugget buried in a report about a fundraiser Sarah Palin spoke at last night:

Palin also made a point of mentioning that she loved to visit the "pro-America" areas of the country, of which North Carolina is one. No word on which states she views as unpatriotic.

Context here is everything, of course. We're trying to get the full quote, and will keep you posted.

Joe Klein adds an important point to the evolving story about John McCain's massive robo-sleaze campaign, pointing out that McCain was once outraged by this tactic -- when he was the victim of it, that is:

Back in 2000, in South Carolina, the robocalls -- and calls to local right-wing talk radio shows -- were about John McCain's "interracial child" and Cindy McCain's drug addiction. They were a craven, disgusting tactic by the George W. Bush campaign. McCain was, rightly, outraged by them.

Now McCain's campaign is making robocalls distorting Barack Obama's non-existent relationship with Bill Ayers...

Now this isn't quite the spew that McCain suffered in South Carolina, but hey, he's got three more weeks to descend to that.

Klein adds that "Senator Honorable" is now in the "sewer." Brutal. And, by the way, it's true: McCain did condemn robocalls in 2000. On February 20 of that year, according to Nexis, he called them "hate calls" and complained about being "inundated" by them.

But that was then. Today, they're perfectly acceptable -- as long as McCain is using them on someone else.

It's only the latest example of McCain jettisoning a previously held -- or previously claimed -- principle in the face of his more and more likely defeat.

Obama Ad: McCain Will Tax Your Health Benefits And Cut Medicare
The Obama campaign has another TV ad in targeted states, warning voters that their health benefits will be taxed under John McCain's plan and he'll cut Medicare too, in an effort to both court older voters and to neutralize the tax issue by turning it right back on the GOP:

"John McCain: Taxing health benefits, cutting Medicare," the announcer says. "We can't afford John McCain."

Hillary On Fox News: Dems Have To "Take Them On"
Josh Orton of MyDD reports that on a conference call with bloggers late yesterday, Hillary Clinton urged Democrats to go on Fox News, rather than boycott them: "I don't think we benefit from ignoring the reality that they're there," she said. "We have to try to take them on and do so in an effective manner." More from Hilllary here.

Obama In Virginia, Biden In New Mexico And Nevada
Barack Obama is holding a 12:30 p.m. ET rally in Roanoke, Virginia. Joe Biden is campaigning out West, with a 3:30 p.m. ET rally in Mesilla, New Mexico, and a rally later tonight in Henderson, Nevada.

McCain In Florida, Palin In Ohio And Indiana
John McCain is holding a 1:15 p.m. rally in Miami, Florida, and a 6 p.m. ET rally in Melbourne, Florida. Sarah Palin is holding an 11:30 a.m. ET rally in West Chester, Ohio, and a 5:30 p.m. ET rally in Noblesville, Indiana.

McCain Gets Grilled On Letterman
John McCain appeared last night on the David Letterman show, hoping to patch things up after he stood Dave up a few weeks ago. Instead, he was asked a series of tough questions about Sarah Palin's qualifications, and whether the logic of his accusations against Barack Obama regarding Bill Ayers could extend to McCain's own associations with G. Gordon Liddy.

Polls: Obama Ahead In Missouri, Tied In Ohio
A new Rasmussen poll in Missouri gives Barack Obama a 52%-46% in this perennial swing state, where he trailed in the polls until just recently, up from a 50%-47% lead in Rasmussen's polling a few days ago. Rasmussen also has Obama and McCain tied 49%-49% in Ohio, not significantly different from a 49%-47% Obama lead a few days ago.

Palin To Appear On Saturday Night Live
Sarah Palin will be appearing tomorrow on Saturday Night Live, just to show that she's a good sport about the way they've lampooned her over the past month and a half. It's not known yet whether Tina Fey will also be on the show -- or for that matter, whether anybody will be able to tell the difference.

The intense focus on micro-targeting is one of the key stories of Campaign 2008, and Ben Smith posts Obama's latest radio ad in Florida, which hits McCain on space exploration.

Space is a global issue, or perhaps even more, but also a local issue, too.

"Here in central Florida, America's space program is a way of life," Florida Senator Bill Nelson says in the spot. "So compare the two presidential candidates. Barack Obama wants a $2 billion increase for NASA, which would lessen the job losses at the Cape."

Nelson adds that McCain "wants to freeze NASA spending at last year's level. So layoffs would loom larger and NASA would continue to be starved of funds for future exploration."

It's another sign of Obama's leg up in the ad wars: His campaign's huge bankroll has allowed him to outdo McCain handily when it comes to flooding every corner of the key states with all manner of relentlessly targeted advertising.

Here's tonight's run-down of the Congressional races:

Bachmann Separates Herself From Bush, Both Physically And Figuratively
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who famously hugged President Bush at his 2007 State of the Union and didn't seem to want to let go, is now making some distance between herself and the unpopular president. At a debate earlier today, Bachmann boasted that she opposed Bush on the Wall St. bailout, and attacked her Democratic opponent El Tinklenberg: "He is more line with President Bush's policies than I am."

Smith Airs Another Ad With Wyden, Obama and Kennedy
Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR), whose ads have connected him to liberal icons like Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama as he seeks re-election this blue state, has yet another ad using video footage of Ron Wyden, his Democratic co-Senator, praising him and appearing to endorse him:

Wyden previously called on Smith to can the first ad that pulled this trick, because it incorporated Wyden's signature to really make it look like Wyden was for Smith. Now Smith has met Wyden halfway -- he's dropped the signature, but kept the video.

Read more »

From the presidential campaign to the lowliest down-ticket races, Republicans are throwing around a new attack line on Dems: That things may be bad now, but the Dems would only "make things worse."

This line came up in the RNC's infamous ad against Barack Obama from two weeks ago, which was mainly known for trashing the Wall St. bailout just as John McCain was trying to promote it:

"Barack Obama's plan: It'll make the problem worse," the announcer says.

More ads, and some analysis, after the jump.

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We've obtained yet another McCain campaign robocall, and this one levels perhaps the nastiest charge yet: It claims that Barack Obama callously denied newborns needed medical attention by opposing a measure to force doctors to preserve their lives when they survive botched abortions.

The call, which was sent in by a North Carolina reader, labels Obama "extreme" and to the left of Hillary, and charges Obama doesn't "share our values."

The call concerns the now-notorious Illinois legislation -- opposed by Obama -- that would have required doctors to provide life-saving care to such newborns. Give it a listen:

Click To Play

Script:

I'm calling on behalf of John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama and his Democrat allies in the Illinois Senate opposed a bill requiring doctors to care for babies born alive after surviving attempted abortions -- a position at odds even with John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama and his liberal Democrats are too extreme for America. Please vote -- vote for the candidates who share our values. This call was paid for by McCain-Palin 2008 and the Republican National Committee at 202 863 8500.

McCain himself brought up this charge for the first time at yesterday's debate, and this call suggests it's going to be a key closing attack for him. But as has been amply demonstrated already, the charge is highly dishonest.

So let's take stock. We now have documented four McCain/RNC robocalls, some known to be running in multiple states:

* One that questions Obama's patriotism by saying he put "Hollywood above America" during the financial crisis.

* One that says that Obama and Dems "aren't who you think they are" and claims they merely "say" they want to keep us safe.

* One that attaches him to "domestic terrorist Bill Ayers," whose group "killed Americans."

* And, now, the above, which dishonestly paints him as indifferent to the lives of babies.

These aren't the work of any fringe groups. Every one of these is paid for by the McCain campaign and the RNC. It looks like there's a huge wave of them blanketing the country. Seems pretty noteworthy.

Late Update: Steve Benen makes some important points about what it is we're really seeing here.

A reader in North Carolina sends in a harsh mailer that the Republican National Committee has dropped in the state featuring fellow Dems questioning Obama's ability to lead (click on the images to enlarge):

The two marquee quotes, natch, come from Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, and both, unsurprisingly, are from the primary -- a line the GOP has used against Obama before.

Separately, it's pretty astonishing just how much cash and resources the Republicans are being forced to dump into this southern state, one that hasn't voted for a Dem for president in over three decades -- favorite son Jimmy Carter, in 1976.

Here's yet more evidence that the Dems are poised for huge gains in Congress: The Cook Report has released a new set of updated rankings on 25 House races -- and all 25 are shifts in the Dems' direction.

Most of these show that a Dem incumbent who was leaning towards a win is now more likely to win, or that a Republican once thought solid or highly likely to win is now a weaker position, albeit still favored. But a few of these show serious changes in the expectations for the Dems to pick up seats.

For example, the open seat of moderate Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD), who lost his primary for re-election, is now a toss-up in a district that voted 62%-36% for President Bush in 2004 -- helped in no small part by the fact that Gilchrest has been campaigning for the Dem.

For what it's worth, only one Democratic seat has recently been shifted towards the GOP: The seat of scandal-ridden Florida Rep. Tim Mahoney.

Check out the full list of updates after the jump.

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This McCain campaign robocall tying Obama to William Ayers may be the worst one yet.

The McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee are pumping a robocall into multiple states that directly alleges that Obama has "worked closely" with "domestic terrorist Bill Ayers," whose organization has "killed Americans," according to multiple reader reports and an audio recording we listened to.

The caller begins by announcing that he's calling on behalf of McCain and the RNC. the call continues:

"You need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home, and killed Americans. And Democrats will enact an extreme leftist agenda if they take control of Washington. Barack Obama and his democratic allies lack the judgment to lead our country."

The call concludes by saying it was "paid for by McCain-Palin 2008 and the Republican National Committee."

An Ohio reader played us the call over the phone, and we'll have audio for you soon. A second reader, Bruce Shortz, a self-identified entrepreneurial businessman in New Mexico, confirms to us that he received a call with the same script, as did a third reader in Minnesota.

Indeed readers are reporting having received Ayers robocalls all over the country: In New Mexico, Colorado, Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina, and Missouri.

Okay, to recap: We now have three McCain robocalls, at least two of which are being pumped into multiple battleground states. One questions Obama's patriotism, charging he put "Hollywood above America." The second says that Obama and Dems "aren't who you think they are" and says they merely "say" they want to keep us safe.

And now we have a third one that says Obama "worked closely" with a "domestic terrorist" who bombed the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon and killed Americans. Needless to say, a major campaign is underway.

Separately, although we've received no reports of any such calls, the Obama camp may be running them as well, though The Huffington Post reports that McCain is outspending Obama on robocalls by three to one.

Late Update: Here's audio:

Click To Play

Late Late Update: This is interesting. Ben Smith reports that the call may have also reached into Northern Virginia, Maine, Florida and Missouri, too. That's massive.

The Obama campaign is hitting back at McCain over the two McCain robocalls we've reported on here today and yesterday, one saying that Obama put "Hollywood above America," and the other saying that Obama and Dems "aren't who you think they are."

Asked for comment on the calls, Obama spokesperson Tommy Vietor sends over this statement:

"John McCain's campaign has admitted that the economy is a losing issue for them, so he's chosen to launch dishonorable and dishonest attacks like this. John McCain can't defend the fact that he's voted with George Bush's disastrous policies 90% of the time and will continue the same Bush-McCain economic policies American families can't afford."

Not a single reader has reported any Obama robocalls.

By contrast, we have unconfirmed reader reports that the "Hollywood above America" call has reached seven states -- North Carolina, Missouri, Wisconsin, Colorado, Pennsylvania. Minnesota, Virginia, and Ohio. That suggests a major campaign is underway. More as we learn it.

Here's our daily composite of the five major national tracking polls. Going into last night's debate, Barack Obama's big lead over John McCain may have been narrowing a bit, though he was still solidly ahead:

• Gallup*: Obama 51%, McCain 45%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 52%-44% Obama lead yesterday.

• Rasmussen: Obama 50%, McCain 46%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 50%-45% Obama lead from yesterday.

• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 49%, McCain 41%, with a ±3.4% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.

• Research 2000: Obama 52%, McCain 41%, with a ±3% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.

• Zogby: Obama 49%, McCain 43%, with a ±2.9% margin of error, compared to a 48%-44% Obama lead yesterday.

Adding these polls together and weighting them by the square roots of their sample sizes, Obama is ahead 50.3%-43.7%, a lead of 6.6 points, compared to the 50.3%-43.3% Obama lead from yesterday. Two days ago, Obama's composite lead was 50.6%-43.1%.

Remember that this polling was all done before last night's debate, so it doesn't tell us about the post-debate environment. Instead, it gives us a baseline against which we can measure the changes in the coming days.

*ed. note: Gallup has begun offering two different sub-samples of likely voters, one using a traditional likely-voter model and the other using a modified likely-voter model for an expected higher turnout. For all our composites and Poll Tracker entries, we will be using that second model under the expectation that newly-registered voters and other factors will contribute to a higher turnout this cycle.

The McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee are pumping stark new robo-calls into Virginia that assert that Barack Obama isn't "who you think" he is and subtly question whether he and his fellow Democrats really want to keep us safe.

The insinuations in the call -- which was sent our way by a Virginia reader -- go considerably beyond the McCain campaign's official message about Obama and national security, meaning this is another under-the-radar effort to push a more lurid message than might be considered acceptable in broad daylight.

Give it a listen:

Click To Play

"Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats aren't who you think they are," the call says. "They say they want to keep us safe, but Barack Obama said the threat we face now from terrorism is nowhere near as dire as it was in the end of the Cold War. And Congressional Democrats now want to give civil rights to terrorists."

Note the effort to sow doubts by saying Obama and Dems "aren't who you think they are" and that they merely "say" they want to keep us safe.

The claim about Dems and civil rights for terrorists seems to be a reference to Congressional Dems' support for habeas for terror suspects. And the assertion about Obama and the Cold War appears to be a distorted reference to this recent claim by Obama:

"Iran, Cuba, Venezuela -- these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us."

The robocall closes with a stark suggestion that Obama and Dems can't be trusted on national security. "John McCain and his party allies understand the threats we face," it says. "When you vote, vote for the team you can trust to keep America safe."

Today's call comes after we reported here yesterday that the McCain campaign are pumping calls into multiple states claiming that Obama put "Hollywood above America," suggesting a massive last-minute robocall effort by McCain is underway as the race enters its final stretch.

Neither the McCain campaign nor the RNC immediately responded to a request for comment.

Here's today's run-down of the Congressional races:

Coleman Ad: I'm For Hope
Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) has this new ad in which he talks about how he's taken his negative ads down, and he believes in hope:

It should be noted that the NRSC is still continuing to run attack ads against Al Franken, thus allowing the negativity to continue while keeping Coleman's hands nominally clean. And he seems to acknowledge this, too: "I can't control every ad out there, but I'm proud to approve this one."

Dem Ad: Don Young Is Doling Out Pork For Other People
Check out this new DCCC ad against Don Young, which goes into the federal investigations against him and the suspicious circumstances surrounding earmarks like the Coconut Road in Florida. But the real message here is that Don Young is using his pork-granting superpowers to benefit other states:

"So what's Alaska getting?" the announcer says. "According to one non-partisan watchdog, one of America's most corrupt members of Congress."

Read more »

A bunch of you have written in to say that the cropped image in the Virginia GOP flyer depicting Dems as appeasers of terrorists, which we posted on below, is actually Osama Bin Laden.

Here's a stock picture of Osama, next to the flyer's pic:

If this is indeed the source of the flyer's picture, note that in the flyer's reproduction, the skin is darker, the words artfully cover up the nose, which is faded, and the beard appears much lighter, so that it's like a facial shadow.

Keep in mind that the chair of the Virginia GOP was the one who made national news the other day for comparing Obama and Osama by saying that "both have friends that bombed the Pentagon."

Given that, it seems fair to at least wonder if this is an Osama pic shaded to ambiguously resemble Obama.

As noted below, we asked a Virginia GOP spokesperson who the image is, and he couldn't immediately say. We've checked in with him again to ask if the pic is a photoshopped version of Osama, and we'll let you know when we hear back.

In the race's final stretch, much of the real sludge and slime that floats to the surface will be the work not of the campaigns but of under-the-radar operations run by state parties and the like.

Here, for instance, is a new mailer from the Republican Party of Virginia that has to be seen to be believed. It hits Dems -- and by extension, Obama -- for wanting to appease terrorists and rogue leaders.

But the key is the last page, which displays a man who looks like Obama but with the same dark and sinister aspect as the bad actors depicted elsewhere in the mailing. Note the words superimposed over his face (click on the images to enlarge)...

How about those eyes, huh? Here's the rest:

We asked Virginia spokesperson Gerry Scimeca whether the likeness to Obama was in fact the Illinois Senator, and he said he couldn't immediately say. Asked to defend the mailer, he said: "It's about the fact that the world is evil," he said, referring to the multiple bad actors that populate the planet. "Choosing a president is about standing up to them."

To our eyes, the ambiguity over whether the image is that of Obama is alone telling. Meanwhile, Raising Kaine has the lowdown on the mailer's multiple distortions.

John McCain's newest one-minute TV ad, set to air nationally, features McCain essentially admitting that the Bush years have been bad for the country -- -- a last ditch effort to dump the albatross (Bush) that has essentially defined this race and weighed him down from the start.

"The last eight years haven't worked very well, have they?" McCain says. "I'll make the next four better." McCain then proceeds to go after the opposition -- but curiously never saying "Obama" or "Democrats" by name -- on issues like taxes and energy.

This ad really does speak to the fundamental dynamic at work in this race: The country is in the hole, and the Republican Party has struggled to give voters a reason to let them continue in office. In an environment like this, it's hard for any GOP candidate to really argue with any plausibility that he can improve things.

New Obama Ad: McCain May Not Be Bush, But He Sure Votes With Him
The Obama campaign already has this new TV ad set to air on national cable, taking on John McCain for his declaration at the debate last night that he's not President Bush:

"You may not be George Bush," the announcer says, speaking in the most literal sense of McCain and Bush being two separate people. This is then followed by footage of what really counts: McCain boasting during the primaries that he's voted with Bush over 90% of the time.

Obama In New Hampshire And New York, Michelle In Pennsylvania
Barack Obama is holding a 10 a.m. ET event in Londonderry, New Hampshire, and will then head to New York City for the Al Smith Dinner. Michelle is holding a rally in Pittsburgh at 10 a.m. ET. Joe Biden is off the campaign trail today, but will appear on Jay Leno tonight.

McCain In Pennsylvania And New York, Palin In Maine And North Carolina
John McCain is holding a rally at 1 p.m. ET today in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, and will then head to New York for the Al Smith Dinner -- and a taping of the David Letterman show, in an effort patch things up after he ditched Dave last month. Sarah Palin will hold a rally at 10 a.m. ET in Bangor, Maine, in the hopes of taking away one electoral vote in a state that splits their votes by Congressional districts. Palin will then head to North Carolina, for a 3:15 p.m. ET rally in Elon.

Obama And McCain Meeting Again Tonight In New York
Barack Obama and John McCain will both be attending tonight's Alfred E. Smith Dinner in New York, an annual charity event held by the New York Archdiocese and a frequent stop for politicians. They will both speak at the dinner, starting at about 6:30 p.m. ET.

AP: Campaign Now Concentrated In Red States
The Associated Press reports that the candidates will now be focused entirely on swing states now that the debates are over -- in particular, swing states that voted for President Bush last time. McCain has been forced by recent polls to more vigorously defend states like Virginia, Colorado and Florida while Obama will be chasing GOP-leaning states like Missouri over the next few days.

Joe The Plumber Seems To Like McCain
Joe Wurzelbacher, aka "Joe The Plumber," told Katie Couric last night that John McCain delivered a solid performance and that he still doesn't know where Barack Obama stands. He particularly didn't like Obama on taxes. "But, you know, question, so he's going to do that now (raise taxes) for people who make $250,000 a year. When's he going to decide that $100,000 is too much, you know? I mean, you're on a slippery slope here. "

Tonight's debate reveals as clearly as you could want that the dynamic of this race is fixed, perhaps irrevocably, in Obama's favor, with little to no time left to change this fact.

That dynamic is this: People have decided that Obama is the guy who's offering real solutions for the economy; and they've rejected McCain's basic argument that Obama is unprepared for the gig of President. That has put McCain in an ever shrinking box: Anything he says that doesn't try to explain, in the most direct and substantive of terms, why his plans for the economy are better than Obama's come across as noise at best and stunts at worst.

Worse for McCain, anything he says that's off-topic allows Obama to reinforce the race's overall dynamic, by pointing out that McCain is desperate to avoid the subject that, judging by every poll, is foremost on the minds of voters right now.

This basic dynamic was fixed nearly two weeks ago. It's a product of the extraordinary depths of public anxiety created by the meltdown and the enormous gaffe McCain's advisers subsequently committed when they admitted that they were looking forward to moving the conversation past the economy and back to character attacks on Obama. This was a self-created bear-trap for McCain, and he's been trying to shake it off his leg ever since. But it's only getting tighter.

The signs of this were everywhere tonight.

Read more »

The first snap polls on the debate are out, and they're giving a resounding win to Barack Obama.

In the CBS poll of undecided debate-watchers, 53% say Obama won, only 22% say McCain won, and 24% say it was a tie.

The CNN poll was just read on the air, surveying all debate-watchers in general. It shows 58% saying Obama won, to 31% saying McCain won. Barack Obama's personal ratings are 66% favorable to 33% unfavorable, way ahead of McCain's score of 49%-49%.

Late Update: Some more numbers from the CNN poll were just read on TV. Obama was seen as stating his ideas more clearly by 66%-25%, was seen as the stronger leader by 56%-39%, and was more likable by 70%-22%. McCain did win in one category: He's the candidate who launched more attacks on his opponent, by a whopping 80%-7%.

Late Late Update: Independents, who made up 30% of CNN's sample, gave it to Obama 57%-31%, essentially the same as the overall margin for Obama.

Sheer desperation: John McCain hits Barack Obama for allegedly voting to let babies die.

The reference, of course, is to Obama's opposition to a measure in Illinois that would purportedly have provided care for babies born amid abortions -- something that was already legally required, anyway. The bill was widely viewed by critics as a sneak attack on Roe v. Wade.

To our ears, this is a more despicable smear than just about anything we've seen, worse than Ayers or anything else. It wreaks so overwhelmingly of desperation and dishonesty that it's incredible that McCain actually agreed to it when Steve Schmidt or whoever told him it would work and he really, really would score big points if he lobbed this attack tonight.

Chapter and verse on this ridiculous attack here and here.

Interestingly, the big exchange over William Ayers that everyone wrung their hands over takes place, and it's mostly a non-event, a rehash of stuff we've heard before that quickly gets overtaken by other matters.

This is bad news for McCain: It's hard to see how his big confrontation over the "domestic terrorist" changes anything, in any way.

Ayers didn't come up as part of any dramatic moment: Moderator Bob Schieffer kinda sorta alluded to it in the midst of an exchange over the things Sarah Palin says about Obama at her rallies. And McCain grabbed onto it like a piece of driftwood, repeating his now familiar line about how he doesn't care what some "washed up old terrorist" does -- and then proceeded to explain why he's such an important figure in American history.

Obama hit back, ably, in a tone of incredulity, pointing out (again) that he was in shortpants when Ayers did what he did, and that Ayers won't have any role in his administration.

McCain did get in the last word, which is making Dems wring their hands a bit right now, but really: This was a non-event. Nothing. Probably won't move anything, and could even help Obama.

Obama goes there: He hits McCain for the ugly and hateful tone that has gripped his and Sarah Palin's rallies, and excoriates Palin, directly, for not doing anything to rein that tone in:

If we want to talk about Congressman Lewis, who is an American hero, he unprompted by my campaign, without my camp's awareness, made a statement that he was troubled with what he was hearing at some of the rallies that your running mate was holding, in which all the public reports indicated were shouting when my name came up, things like "terrorist" and "kill him," and that your running mate didn't mention, didn't stop, didn't say hold on a second, that's kinda out of line. And I think Congressman Lewis' point was that we have to be careful about how we deal with our supporters.

Feeding the "erratic," "angry" and "out of control" meme.

Late Update: It's worth pointing out that Obama's decision to directly go after Palin is probably driven by her unexpectedly high negatives of late.

McCain just unleashed a broad attack on Obama that the McCain campaign clearly labored greatly over in advance: Joe The Plumber, someone Obama encountered on the trail recently, doesn't want Obama to hike his taxes and spread it around with his redistributionist agenda, because this would sap Joe The Plumber's ability to buy a small business.

Obama countered by pointing out that McCain's lying: Obama's plan won't hike taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year.

It's worth pointing out that the McCain campaign has been trying to convince the Joe-The-Plumbers of the world for months and months that Obama wants to raise their taxes.

Now, I don't know what the Joe The Plumber McCain is referring to thinks. But more broadly, the Joe-The-Plumbers of the world aren't buying: Yesterday's New York Times poll found that more respondents think McCain will hike their taxes than Obama will.

Maybe if McCain repeats the words "Joe The Plumber" enough times, this will change, but I doubt it.

The debate is underway, and both candidates are asked why their plan is better than the other guy's. Obama hits the specifics of his plan much more directly.

Many Dems think that Obama's strongest suit in the closing days of the race is to explain, as specifically as possible, how he'll make people's lives better, and if he sticks to that in the face of McCain's attacks -- which are now underway -- he'll win.

Here's a quick run-down on the rules for tonight's debate, the final such meeting between Barack Obama and John McCain.

The rules are the same as their first debate. The moderator, Bob Schieffer in this case, will pitch a question to one of the candidates, who will then have two minutes to respond. The other candidate will then get two minutes of his own to respond, followed by five minutes of more free-form discussion of the topic.

The official subject area for tonight is domestic issues, but don't be surprised if Schieffer injects some foreign policy into it, just as Jim Lehrer asked questions about the economic crisis in a debate that was officially billed as being on foreign policy.

This debate will have a subtle difference from the last one: The candidates and Schieffer will be seated at a table together, rather than having them standing at distant podiums. This could serve to give the free-form sections a more natural, conversational feel. And if John McCain does choose to talk about Bill Ayers, right up close and personal, it could turn into an even more dramatic moment than it would have been otherwise.

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

Barack Obama has worked hard to convey to voters that issues like health care and the economy have a personal dimension to him, and he goes up with a new, positive spot in Pennsylvania that casts education as a personal issue, too:

"For me the American dream began in a room like this," Obama says, directly addressing the camera from a classroom. "Our family didn't have much money. But education made everything possible."

The spot tempers the message a bit by stressing parental responsibility: "But the truth is, government can't do it all. As parents, we need to turn off the TV. Read to our kids. Give them that thirst to learn."

(Via Politico)

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

GOP Pulls Out Of Only Possible Senate Pick-Up
The NRSC is pulling out of the Louisiana Senate race, which had been the only real opportunity for the GOP to pick up a Senate seat from the Democrats this year -- they are now playing 100% on defense. A Republican source confirmed to Election Central that their ads will be pulled.

Safe GOP Congressman Uses Jeremiah Wright In Attack Ad
Here's a new attack ad from Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), remidning voters in this deep-red district that his opponent supports Barack Obama -- who in turn has an agenda shaped by Jeremiah Wright:

The odd thing here is that Scalise is considered an absolutely safe bet for re-election, even by the standards of a Democratic wave that many observers are expecting this year. Which means that he either knows something the rest of us don't, and thinks he could be in serious danger -- or he's just a bully.

Read more »

Here's an advance look at a new paid ad campaign that the Service Employees International Union is debuting tomorrow that departs from the "McSame" message by painting McCain as worse than Bush:

The SEIU official who sent us the ad confirms that this will have roughly $100,000 behind it. But the SEIU's new spot will go up tomorrow not on TV but on multiple news Web sites around the country.

The rub here is that the ad will be geographically targeted. So while it will air on CNN's site, for instance, it will only be seen by CNN.com readers in select battlegrounds. Meanwhile, it will also post on geographically specific news sites, such as the Web sites of the Boston Globe, the Indy Star, the Miami Herald, and others, as well as on multiple blogs.

The Republican National Committee is hitting households in North Carolina with a tough new mailer that contains a striking juxtaposition: It combines an image of someone with a white hand on his heart next to a flag pin, along with the following slogan: "It used to be easy to recognize patriotism."

The mailer was sent our way by a North Carolina reader (click on the images to enlarge):

To be sure, the mailer's main patriotism hit is an attack on Obama and Joe Biden over Biden's recent claim that it's "patriotic" for top-earners to pay higher taxes for the good of the country.

"Obama-Biden calls paying higher taxes `patriotic,'" the mailer says. "Sounds mixed up. But it shouldn't be surprising -- Barack Obama loves high taxes."

So the mailer isn't directly questioning Obama's patriotism. But the mailer's imagery seems like a clear allusion to the viral smears holding that Obama doesn't wear a flag pin and refused to put his hand on his heart during the pledge of allegiance. That seems particularly clear given the slogan about it being harder to recognize patriotism these days, which also seems like a subtle attack on Obama's "otherness."

What's more, this mailer comes to light on the same day that we learned of an RNC-McCain robocall in multiple states accusing Obama of putting "Hollywood above America," suggesting that a broad attack is underway on this front.

The RNC didn't respond to a request for comment.

Here's yet another piece of evidence that John McCain has really fumbled in his reactions to the economic crisis: By a more than 2-1 margin, registered voters in the new Pew poll say he's done a bad job explaining how he would handle it.

Do you think (candidate) has done an excellent, good, only fair, or poor job of explaining how he would handle the current problems with financial institutions and markets?

Obama: Excellent/Good 48%, Fair/Poor 47%
McCain: Excellent/Good 29%, Fair/Poor 67%

The poll also shows that registered voters trust Obama over McCain to handle the crisis by 47%-33%. In the overall horse race, Obama leads 49%-42% among likely voters.

This would all suggest that if McCain's pseudo-suspension was in any way meant to create the impression that he was up to handling the economy, it clearly didn't work.

A scorching new mailer from AFSCME keeps up labor's economic assault on John McCain, directly blaming McCain and Bush for presiding over "the greatest financial meltdown since the Great Depression."...

The AFSCME official who sent us the mail piece says it'll be dropped today on undecided and swing households in 17 battleground states. Another forthcoming AFSCME mailer hitting McCain on health care is after the jump.

Meanwhile, in other outside-group news, Catholics United has a very interesting new mail piece that pushes a liberal pro-life vision that espouses improved health care and education, among other things. We're told it will go out to targeted Catholic households in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Read more »

Here's our daily composite of the five major national tracking polls. Barack Obama is holding on to his big lead over John McCain, which has remained relatively unchanged since the financial meltdown became big news:

• Gallup*: Obama 52%, McCain 44%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 53%-43% Obama lead yesterday.

• Rasmussen: Obama 50%, McCain 45%, with a ±2% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.

• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 49%, McCain 41%, with a ±3.4% margin of error, compared to a 48%-42% Obama lead from yesterday.

• Research 2000: Obama 52%, McCain 41%, with a ±3% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.

• Zogby: Obama 48%, McCain 44%, with a ±2.9% margin of error, compared to a 49%-43% Obama lead yesterday.

Adding these polls together and weighting them by the square roots of their sample sizes, Obama is ahead 50.3%-43.3%, a lead of seven points, compared to a 50.6%-43.1% Obama lead from yesterday.

*ed. note: Gallup has begun offering two different sub-samples of likely voters, one using a traditional likely-voter model and the other using a modified likely-voter model for an expected higher turnout. For all our composites and Poll Tracker entries, we will be using that second model under the expectation that newly-registered voters and other factors will contribute to a higher turnout this cycle.

Scranton's Times-Tribune, which reported yesterday that a man yelled "kill him" about Barack Obama at a Sarah Palin rally, now says the Secret Service is getting involved:

The U.S. Secret Service is investigating a threatening remark directed at Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama during a political event in Scranton.

The agency followed up on a report in The Times-Tribune that a member of the crowd shouted, "Kill him!" after one mention of Mr. Obama's name during a rally Tuesday for Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin...

Times-Tribune employees who covered the rally were interviewed today by the Secret Service.

Spokesman Darrin Blackford said the agency takes the threat seriously and will make an arrest if it can determine who shouted the remark.

Yesterday here at TPM we'd been wondering what exactly the responsibility of Palin's Secret Service detail is in such situations, and I guess this is our answer.

Ben Smith has just posted a remarkable account offered by a Republican consultant who conducted a midwest focus group on an unreleased adver-sleazement created by an unnamed third party group.

Check out what one white male in his 50s who voted for Dole, Bush, and Kerry had to say about Obama:

"I'm gonna hate him the minute I vote for him. He's gonna be a bad president. But I won't ever vote for another god-damn Republican. I want the government to take over all of Wall Street and bankers and the car companies and Wal-Mart run this county like we used to when Reagan was President."

And even better, check out what one woman who is in her late 50s and is a Clinton-loving Democrat had to say:

"Well, I don't know much about this terrorist group Barack used to be in with that Weather guy but I'm sick of paying for health insurance at work and that's why I'm supporting Barack."

This is a person who actually believes that Obama was in a "terrorist group," and she's still backing Obama.

Relatedly, a remarkable finding in the new New York Times poll: While 64% said they'd heard a lot or some about William Ayers, only nine percent cited it as an association that bothers them.

Given these numbers, it's hard to imagine that McCain will hit Obama over it at the debate tonight. But McCain's in a box: If he doesn't, and if his campaign continues to play the Ayers card, he'll get hit over and over for not being willing to bring him up to Obama directly.

Here's today's run-down on the Congressional races:

House Dems Spend Millions In One Day, GOP Way Behind
The DCCC spent a whopping $8.25 million yesterday, according to FEC records, with the vast majority of it being spent on offense in GOP-held districts. By contrast, the NRCC only spent $746,106.17, with most of it coming from an expenditure of over $500,000 to defend Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL).

Dems Going On The Air In Deep-Red Districts
The DCCC has been feeling bold thanks to strong national poll numbers and a huge cash advantage over the NRCC. The Dems' latest spending shows that they're intervening in some usually GOP districts: Against Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ), Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN), and Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE). Here's their ad in Souder's district, which voted 68%-31% for George W. Bush in 2004:

"For too long now, Souder has been been looking out for himself," the announcer says. "Hoosiers need to look in a new direction."

Read more »

The McCain campaign and the RNC are pumping new robocalls into North Carolina that question Barack Obama's patriotism by charging that he and his fellow Dems put "Hollywood above America," another sign that Republicans are seriously worried about losing the traditionally red state to Obama.

The robocalls -- which we obtained from a North Carolina reader -- hit Obama for attending a celebrity fundraiser in Hollywood while efforts to address the financial crisis got underway in Washington.

A second round of robocalls, also from McCain and the RNC, hits Obama as a tax-hiker, and stops just short of criticizing the big bailout package that McCain has repeatedly taken credit for helping get passed. Both the McCain campaign and the RNC declined to comment.

(Update: Readers in Missouri, Colorado and Wisconsin are now reporting they received the "Hollywood above America" call.)

Here's the first call questioning Obama's patriotism:

Click To Play

The audio doesn't represent the complete call, because our reader started taping once it began.

"Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats got caught putting Hollywood above America," the call says. "On the very day our elected leaders gathered in Washington to deal with the financial crisis, Barack Obama spent just 20 minutes with economic advisers, but hours at a celebrity Hollywood fundraiser. Where are the Democrats' priorities?"

The call closes with a disclaimer saying it was paid for by "McCain-Palin 2008 and the Republican National Committee."

The fundraiser referred to in the call appears to be this one in mid September, which netted Obama $9 million.

The calls are only the latest example of the McCain campaign claiming to take the high road while it does the opposite. In mid-summer, senior McCain adviser Charlie Black claimed that the campaign wasn't interested in talking about Obama's patriotism.

The second robocall is a more straightforward hit on Obama over taxes, but it edges up to criticism of what it calls the "Wall Street bailout."

Read more »

The Obama campaign kicks off the pre-debate spin war with a memo from spokesperson Bill Burton that has a sly twist to it:

In tonight's debate, Chuck Todd of NBC News says, McCain needs to "figure out how to disqualify Barack Obama." Time Magazine's Mark Halperin writes, "McCain will have to produce a major memorable moment." The NY Daily News says the debate is "do-or-die for McCain's campaign." However they put it, people agree, John McCain needs a game-changer.

On the big issues, this debate is one last chance for John McCain to do what he has failed to do throughout this entire campaign: Explain to the American people how his economic policies would be any different at all than the failed Bush agenda he has supported every step of the way. It's his last chance to somehow convince the American people that his erratic response to this economic crisis doesn't disqualify him from being President.

As you can see, the pundits here are saying that McCain needs to make tonight's debate about Obama, but the Obama camp is turning this around and keeping up the pressure on McCain by arguing that whatever happens tonight, it will be about the Arizona Senator.

That the Obama campaign can credibly argue this, in the midst of a race that everyone fully expected to be all about Obama's character and readiness, is yet another sign of how close this contest is to being over. Full memo after the jump.

Read more »

The McCain campaign can't seem to stop thrashing around in the thicket of mixed messages it keeps blundering into each day. Here's Sarah Palin, in an interview with Rush Limbaugh yesterday:

"You seem to understand the stark choice we have and the real danger the country faces in the future if the Obama-Biden ticket is elected. And I'd just like to know, do you see it that way?"

"I do," she responded.

Palin agrees that electing Obama represents "real danger." She may not have seen John McCain's appearance the other day, in which he explicitly dialed down all the fear-mongering his campaign and supporters have been indulging in:

"He's a decent person, and a person you do not have to be scared [of] as President of the United States."

It would be nice if this question came up at tonight's debate: Does McCain believe an Obama presidency would be "dangerous"? Should we fear it?

Given that we keep hearing that McCain has supposedly stopped with the fear-peddling and nefarious sliming of Obama, this seems like a question McCain should be pressed to answer directly.

Tonight: The Final Debate
Barack Obama and John McCain will meet tonight for their final debate, held at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. The debate begins at 9 p.m. ET, and will be moderated by Bob Schieffer. Both candidates are under a lot of pressure tonight, but much more so for McCain -- Obama needs to consolidate his lead, while McCain needs to overcome his serious deficit in the polls.

Michelle Obama In Indiana, Joe Biden In Ohio
Barack Obama is off the campaign trail for today, doing the final preparations for tonight's debate. Michelle Obama is campaigning on his behalf at a 12 p.m. ET rally in Fort Wayne, Indiana, before heading to Hempstead for the debate. Joe Biden is swinging through Ohio, with a 10:30 a.m. event in Athens, a 2 p.m. ET event in Lancaster, and a 6 p.m. ET event in Newark.

The Palins Campaigning In New Hampshire
John McCain is spending the day making final preparations for the debate, while Sarah and Todd Palin are campaigning in New Hampshire, where the polls have given Barack Obama the lead. Sarah Palin is holding an 11 a.m. rally in Dover, a 2 p.m. rally in Laconia, and a 7 p.m. ET rally in Salem. Alaska's First Dude Todd Palin is touring a factory in Berlin at 11:15 a.m. ET.

McCain Accidentally Stops By Premiere Of W
John McCain left his New York hotel last night and encountered something he probably didn't expect: The premiere of Oliver Stone's movie W, with the theater located right next to his motorcade. McCain quickly got in his car and sped away from there.

Hillary To Attend Debate
In an expression of support for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton will be attending tonight's debate in her home state. Look for reporters to try to comments from her both before the debate and in the spin room afterwards.

Michelle Obama Hosting Chuck Hagel's Wife At Debate
In another public gesture that they are reaching out to moderate Republican voters, the Obama campaign announced that Michelle Obama will be bringing along a guest with her to tonight's debate: Lilibet Hagel, the wife of Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel. Sen. Hagel has taken many steps that have hinted at support for Obama -- most notably accompanying the Democratic candidate on his overseas trip a couple months ago -- but he himself has not made an official public endorsement.

Palin: Dems "Wearing Thin" In Talking About Bush
At a fundraiser last night in New York, Sarah Palin complained about the Democrats talking too much about George W. Bush. "Our opponents spend so much time pretending they are running against the current president. I think it's wearing pretty thin," said Palin. "The American people are really waking up and saying no, the status quo is not one of the boxes to check."

The Obama campaign goes up in Virginia with its first ad featuring Senator Jim Webb, who offers a strong and personal defense of Barack Obama on guns and assures Virginians that Obama will protect our country's "greatness."

We obtained the radio spot, and it's a strong one, starting off with an "important message to Virginia sportsmen and working families":

Click To Play

In the ad, Webb, a Vietnam vet and gun enthusiast, recounts his own gun history -- his dad gave him his first rifle when he was eight -- and goes on to explain that gun-love runs in his veins.

"Our family tradition of hunting and shooting are a way of life to me, and no government will ever take that away," Webb says. "I am an NRA member and I know that my friend Barack Obama will protect our second amendment rights. So don't be misled about Barack Obama...I trust him to protect our right to keep and bear arms."

The repetition of the word "trust" is interesting, as is Webb's description of Obama as "my friend." Webb's military and gun cred are being pressed into service to deflect attacks on Obama as a risky unknown, and Webb is personally vouching for his fellow Senator.

Indeed, guns are really a proxy for the ad's meta-message, which is that Obama can be trusted to honor patriotic values and to keep America strong and great. "I trust him to stand with me to protect American jobs and our greatness as a nation," Webb says. "He's a good fit for me."

Here's a very curious result from the new CBS/New York Times poll: More registered voters think John McCain would raise their taxes than think Barack Obama would, a sign that the Obama campaign's constant assault on McCain's health plan -- and its taxation of health benefits -- has been paying off.

Here's the relevant question:

If he were elected President, do you think (candidate) would raise taxes on people like yourself, or wouldn't he do that?

Obama: Would 46%, Would Not 41%
McCain: Would 51%, Would Not 38%

Taxes are usually a slam-dunk issue for the Republicans, but this poll suggests that Obama has done well more than neutralize the issue. It may even be playing in his favor.

In the horse-race, Obama has a lead among likely voters of 53%-39%, up from a 48%-45% lead a week ago. Among independents, McCain led 49%-39% a week ago, but Obama has shot up to a 51%-33% lead.

Check out this new ad from Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), who is facing a tough challenge from former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove (D). This ad ties Musgrove, who is a pro-life social conservative and economic populist, to the liberal Democratic leadership in Washington -- and apparently to the Village People, too:

"The largest gay-rights group in the country," the man in the cowboy outfit says with a grin.

None of the liberal interest groups named in the ad have donated directly to Musgrove. But the issue for the Wicker campaign is that the DSCC is spending a whole lot of money -- some of it raised from these same groups -- on TV ads promoting Musgrove or attacking Wicker.

"The DSCC is set to spend $5.5 million in advertising on behalf of Ronnie Musgrove for Senate," Wicker spokesman Ryan Annison told Election Central. "They know that if he is elected, he will support their liberal Democrat leadership."

Here's tonight's run-down of the Congressional races:

Coleman Rebrands Himself As The "Hope" Candidate
Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN), who dramatically announced that he was canceling his negative ads when poll data showed him falling behind Al Franken, is aggressively rebranding himself with some familiar language. The new example: Coleman kicked off a bus tour this morning with the title "The Hope Express." It should be said: Coleman has quite a bit of audacity.

GOP Keeps Up The Attacks Against Franken
Norm Coleman's declaration that he didn't want to run negative ads doesn't seem to have bothered the NRSC, who are making up the difference for him. Here's their new attack ad against Al Franken:

"Al Franken: He'd make things worse," the announcer says. This slogan has come up in multiple ads from the GOP. It's not clear just how effective it could be for an incumbent party to admit that things are bad, and then argue that the other guys shouldn't get elected because they would make it worse.

Read more »

The new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, which shows Barack Obama ahead of John McCain 50%-41% among likely voters nationwide, shows that Obama has passed a key threshold: A plurality of registered voters, 49%, now say he has the right experience to be president, compared to 42% who say he does not.

It might not sound impressive at first, but it's a big changed compared to their previous poll from three weeks ago. At the time, only 37% said Obama was experienced enough, and a clear majority of 53% said he was inexperienced.

McCain is seen as experienced by a much greater majority -- 80% of registered voters -- but the number for Obama still suggests that one of the major arguments that Republicans have made against him hasn't been working anymore.

The poll also illustrates just how much the economy has affected the campaign, with 69% of respondents naming it as their number-one issue. Thus Obama's 48%-36% advantage over McCain on the economy is able to trump McCain's 48%-39% advantage on handling an international crisis.

The creativity of some of McCain-Palin's supporters continues to dazzle and amaze. Here's the latest -- at a rally yesterday morning, a McCain-Palin supporter shouted out: "Obama Bin Laden."

You can hear it at the 12-second mark, just before Palin launches into her now-familiar (and false) claim that McCain is too modest to discuss his POW service:

It's impossible to know whether Palin heard it. The above vid makes it seem like the person who shouted it was far away from her, but the video posted by this DailyKos diarist suggests otherwise.

Earlier today we heard a McCain-Palin supporter shout "kill him" at a Palin rally. TPM Reader MLC asks a very good question about all this: "Where is the Secret Service in all of this? What obligation does the Palin detail have if they actually hear something at one of her rallies?"

With the big unions unleashing their final pushes in the battleground states, the Communication Workers of America is blitzing the battleground states with over 120,000 mailers painting McCain as a stooge of big corporations and sharply contrasting him to Obama on the economy.

A CWA official sends over the mailers. The first takes a shot at "the pundits," calling on voters to "ignore" them and instead focus on the two candidates' records, which are contrasted in a tidy chart (click on the images to enlarge)...

The second piece focuses only on McCain and hits him over his "fundamentals" gaffe...

Late Update: CWA spokesperson Candice Johnson gets in touch to point out that the mailers are really a small part of the story when it comes to the work the unions are doing in the battlegrounds.

"CWA is focused on one-on-one worksite contacts, phone calls, and canvassing," she emails. "These mailers are really the tip of the iceberg. We deliver a lot of information to our members on the issues that they care about."

Multiple TPM Readers are flagging this blood-curdling moment at a Sarah Palin rally in Pennsylvania today, courtesy of the Times-Tribune:

Chris Hackett addressed the increasingly feisty crowd as they await the arrival of Gov. Palin.

Each time the Republican candidate for the seat in the 10th Congressional District mentioned Barack Obama the crowd booed loudly.

One man screamed "kill him!"

No word on whether Hackett, who was -- ahem -- warming up the crowd for Palin, suggested that this isn't really considered acceptable political rhetoric.

Buried in the new ABC/Washington Post poll of Ohio is a fascinating number that sheds some light on what the Obama camp has accomplished with new media organizing.

The poll finds that an astonishing 17% of Ohio voters say they've received a text message or email from the Obama campaign.

Ohio has 8.2 million registered voters now. So that means the Obama campaign has reached around 1.4 million voters by text or email in Ohio alone.

What makes that even more impressive is that these voters aren't merely passive recipients of texts and emails -- some of them are organizing, too.

Tim Tagaris, the former Web director for Chris Dodd and Ned Lamont, knows about online organizing, and he says this is a very big deal, which means it is a very big deal.

Here's our daily composite of the five major national tracking polls. Barack Obama's big lead over John McCain is the same as it was yesterday:

• Gallup*: Obama 53%, McCain 43%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 53%-43% Obama lead yesterday.

• Rasmussen: Obama 50%, McCain 45%, with a ±2% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.

• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 48%, McCain 42%, with a ±3.4% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.

• Research 2000: Obama 52%, McCain 41%, with a ±3% margin of error, compared to a 52%-40% Obama lead from yesterday.

• Zogby: Obama 49%, McCain 43%, with a ±2.9% margin of error, compared to a 48%-44% Obama lead yesterday.

Adding these polls together and weighting them by the square roots of their sample sizes, Obama is ahead 50.6%-43.1%, a lead of 7.5 points, identical to the 50.6%-43.1% Obama lead from yesterday.

*ed. note: Gallup has begun offering two different sub-samples of likely voters, one using a traditional likely-voter model and the other using a modified likely-voter model for an expected higher turnout. For all our composites and Poll Tracker entries, we will be using that second model under the expectation that newly-registered voters and other factors will contribute to a higher turnout this cycle.

The Obama campaign goes up with a new radio ad in Wisconsin pushing back in detail on the William Ayers smear -- the first spot, to our knowledge, that mentions Ayers by name:

Click To Play

The spot offers the most detailed paid media pushback yet offered by the Obama team on Ayers:

"Bill Ayers is a professor of education who once served with Obama on a school reform board -- a board funded by conservative Republicans tied to McCain. When Ayers committed crimes in the 60s, Obama was eight years old. Obama condemned those despicable acts. Ayers has had no role on Obama's campaign, and will have no role in his administration."

The new ad comes as McCain is indicating that he'll confront Obama over Ayers at tomorrow's debate.

We knew John McCain's strategy has been to paint Barack Obama as a risky unknown, but this line, from his speech this morning unveiling his new economic proposals, seems like it's taking things to a whole new level:

"He is an eloquent speaker, but even he can't turn a record of supporting higher taxes into a credible promise to cut taxes. What he promises today is the opposite of what he has done his entire career. Perhaps never before in history have the American people been asked to risk so much based on so little."

Electing Obama would be the biggest risk undertaken by the American people, ever. And McCain advisers have reportedly been whispering that they're saving the worst for the last 10 days of the campaign. Full McCain remarks after the jump.

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In an interview that John McCain gave to local radio in St. Louis, McCain says that he was "astonished" to hear Barack Obama say recently that he was reluctant to bring up Ayers to Obama's face, and promises that he'll raise the subject at tomorrow's debate.

The key news in the interview -- which was flagged by Mark Halperin and which you can listen to here -- is that McCain is already laying the groundwork to blame Obama for his apparent decision to confront Obama over Ayers tomorrow.

Asked by his radio host if he'll bring up the former Weatherman, McCain says:

"Oh, yeah. Y'know, I was astonished to hear him say that he was surprised for me to have the guts to do that, because the fact is that the question didn't come up in that fashion. So, y'know, and I think he's probably ensured that it will come up this time. And, look Mark, it's not that I give a damn about some old washed-up terrorist..."

It's Obama who has "probably ensured" that McCain will bring up Ayers. What's so lovely about this is that McCain is now portraying his apparent decision to hit on the Ayers association as driven by a need to defend his honor.

You see, McCain wouldn't have brought it up, but Obama questioned his manhood, so he's now forced to overcome his reluctance to talk about Ayers in order to defend himself. It's the old warrior's code that's making him do it.

Here's today's run-down of the Congressional races:

Mahoney's Re-Election Chances Downgraded
In a move that shouldn't really surprise anybody, the pundits are reclassifying Congressman Tim Mahoney's (D-FL) re-election chances in the wake of revelations that he had an affair with a former staffer and allegedly paid over $121,000 in hush money. Stuart Rothenberg has changed the race from from "Toss-UP/Tilt Democratic" to "Pure Toss-Up," and Charlie Cook has shifted it from "Lean Democratic" to "Lean Republican."

Another Poll Shows Al Franken Ahead In Minnesota
The new Quinnipiac poll in Minnesota gives Al Franken a slender lead in the Minnesota Senate race: Franken 38%, Sen. Norm Coleman (R) 36%, and Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley at 18%, with a ±3% margin of error. Quinnipiac's previous poll from three weeks ago gave Coleman a 49%-42% lead in a two-way race, but a lot has happened since then with the economy. It should also be noted that a recent Rasmussen poll did not show Barkley definitively siphoning more votes from one major candidate or the other.

Read more »

This got some attention late yesterday, but we wanted to flag it here anyway, because it's a fun one. Take a look at Sarah Palin, at a rally, lecturing a bunch of people she took for "hecklers." It's a revealing moment...

Palin's first instinct was to rebuke these "hecklers" by questioning their patriotism, suggesting completely out of the blue that they might be reluctant to show sufficient gratitude towards our veterans. But then her husband gently let her know that these people weren't hecklers at all. They were supporters who were yelling for her to speak louder.

"They just can't hear you back there," Todd told his wife. "That's why they're yelling louder."

Put aside the awful sanctimony on display here. What's interesting is how automatically Palin slipped into playing this culture war grievance card. It's automaton-like -- her default setting. Her eagerness to get on this high-horse is unmistakable -- she seems gratified to have found a target for her faux patriotism, phony outrage and sanctimonious grievance-mongering. Just unbearable.

Senior McCain officials, hoping to dispel the sense of confusion that's emanated from the campaign over when -- or whether -- McCain would be unveiling new economic proposals, are continuing to insist that the plan has always been for McCain to announce those plans today.

Here's the latest version of events given to The New York Times by senior McCain economic adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin:

Mr. Holtz-Eakin disputed talk of disarray in the McCain campaign and said that despite reports that Mr. McCain was to announce his new economic policies on Monday and then pulled back in the midst of campaign confusion, the plan had always been for Mr. McCain to unveil the proposals on Tuesday.

But if the plan had "always" been for McCain to announce them today, why did another senior adviser -- spokesperson Tucker Bounds -- say this under 48 hours ago:

"We do not have any immediate plans to announce any policy proposals outside of the proposals that John McCain has announced, and the certain proposals that would result as economic news continues to come our way."

What changed between the times that Bounds said no new proposals were coming and Holtz-Eakin saying the plan had "always" been to release new proposals today? Well, Barack Obama made headlines with his own specific proposals, for one thing.

Either way, whichever McCain adviser offered the true version of events, the two conflicting accounts by definition amount to confusion in McCain's ranks over what to do, politically and substantively, about the economy.

Micro-targeting is the name of the game in this election, and the AFL-CIO is about to unleash one of its most micro-targeted pushes yet -- a blitz of mailers defending Obama on gun rights that's aimed strictly at union households made up of gun owners.

Here is the first mailer, a piece going to some 80,000 gun owners in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. It offers a stout defense of Obama on gun rights and ties it directly to an economic message (click on the images to enlarge):

"I want to protect two things: My job and my gun," union member Mike Day says in the mailer. "That's why I'm supporting Barack Obama."

The union's decision to depart from a strictly economic message and to edge into the culture wars is driven in part by a stepped up campaign in the battlegrounds by the National Rifle Association, which has run ads accusing Obama of conspiring to take away people's guns.

The new mail piece is the latest in a broad effort by the AFL-CIO to reach very specific voting blocks in the swing states. Last week the union unleashed a wave of mailings targeting union households with veterans, and union officials promise an intensified -- and targeted -- campaign of mailers, phone calls and door-knocking in the race's final stretch.

Polls: Obama Way Ahead In Four Battleground States
A new set of polls from Quinnipiac gives Barack Obama very strong leads in four key swing states: He's up 52%-43% in Colorado, 54%-38% in Michigan, 51%-40% in Minnesota, and 54%-37% in Wisconsin. Three of these four states have gone Democratic in the past two elections -- though by close margins -- and Colorado would represent a pick-up in the Dem column away from the GOP.

McCain To Unveil New Economic Proposals Today
John McCain will use his rally today in Pennsylvania as a platform to unveil new proposals on the economy, billed as his "Pension And Family Security Plan," an issue area that has in large part contributed to Barack Obama's lead in the polls. The plan will combine capital-gains tax cuts with a proposal to have the government buy out variable-rate mortgages and replace them with more manageable fixed-rate loans.

Obama Off The Trail, Biden Swinging Through Ohio
Barack Obama has no public events today, probably due to final preparations for tomorrow's debate. Joe Biden is touring Ohio today, with multiple events: A 10:30 a.m. ET rally in Warren, a 4 p.m. ET rally in St. Clairsville, and a 7:15 p.m. ET rally in Marietta.

McCain And Palin In Pennsylvania
John McCain and Sarah Palin are both campaigning today in Pennsylvania, a large swing state that has been slipping away from them in the polls. McCain is holding an 11:30 a.m. rally in Blue Bell, and Palin has a 2 p.m. ET rally in Scranton.

RNC Spending More And More Money On Ads
The Republican National Committee has shelled out $5 million to run two of their TV ads against Barack Obama -- one that attacks him as a Chicago machine politician, and the other that tags him as a big spender. The RNC has raised roughly $50 million more than the DNC, which has essentially made up for Barack Obama's cash advantage over John McCain's individual campaign committee.

McCain Camp Caught Lying About Crowd Sizes Again
The McCain campaign has again been caught puffing up the number of people who attend their rallies. The campaign claimed that 25,000 people attended John McCain's Virginia Beach rally -- but the venue only holds 16,000, and the fire marshall estimated that only 12,000 people were in attendance.

On Fox News this afternoon, senior McCain adviser Tucker Bounds did an unusual thing: He telegraphed a punch that he claimed John McCain is likely to throw at Wednesday's debate, asserting that it's likely that McCain will confront Barack Obama over William Ayers.

"Well, so much of a debate is determined by the moderator and the questions that are posed to the candidates," Bounds said, when asked if McCain would be going after Obama on his associations. "I expect that it could come up. And I expect John McCain will ask Barack Obama to speak truthfully about his relationship with friend and unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers."

We'll believe that when we see it. It's unlikely that Bounds would alert the Obama camp in advance to an attack as potentially important and newsmaking as this one could be. And as much as McCain's supporters would love him to confront Obama about Ayers, it could cut against McCain if Obama effectively counters by wondering aloud why McCain wants to talk about something that happened when Obama was in shortpants when we have a massive economic crisis on our hands.

In other words, how such a moment would play is entirely unpredictable and probably too risky, though McCain and his team may decide they have nothing to lose but McCain's honor.

(Via HuffPo)

Here's tonight's run-down of the Congressional races:

Foley Successor Embroiled In Own Allegations of Misconduct
Democrats could end up losing a key Florida House seat that they picked up in 2006: The district of the infamous former GOP Rep. Mark Foley. Freshman Democrat Tim Mahoney reportedly agreed to pay $121,000 to a former female staffer and alleged mistress, after she threatened to sue him. Mahoney is facing a competitive challenge from GOP candidate Tom Rooney.

Dem Ad: Norm Coleman Is "Shameless"
The DSCC has this new ad against Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN), lampooning his recent announcement that he'll suspend negative advertisement as a ploy to avoid responsibility for his own misleading attacks and personal scandals:

"Suit from Neiman Marcus: $1,400. Misleading attack ads paid for by you and your allies: $6.8 million," the announcer says. "Calling for a suspension of negative ads after smearing your opponent? Shameless."

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Despite a top surrogate's suggestion over the weekend that McCain would be unveiling new economic proposals, we learned this morning that in fact John McCain wasn't planning to announce anything of this kind. Instead, in a big speech today, McCain revealed that the new change to his campaign was that he'd more aggressively take the fight to Obama.

Now it turns out the whole plan all along was for McCain to offer new proposals. And he'll be offering them tomorrow.

That's what the McCain campaign just announced on a conference call with reporters moments ago, a few hours -- coincidentally, we're sure -- after Obama made headlines with proposals of his own.

"John McCain has consistently talked about the actions necessary to preserve their financial and economic futures, as we've gone through this terrible crisis, and he'll continue to do so tomorrow," said economic adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin. "And that's the plan, it's always been the plan, and he will lay it out, and we should look forward to hearing from him."

Late Update: Holtz-Eakin said on the call that specific proposals would be forthcoming. "He will both sketch out a vision that has been in the process of being fully depicted since the beginning of the campaign, and also be offering new specific measures," he said on the call. I've edited the above to reflect that.

Late Late Update: If the plan all along was for McCain to announce "new specific measures" tomorrow, it seems odd that McCain spokesperson Tucker Bounds said this just yesterday:

"We do not have any immediate plans to announce any policy proposals outside of the proposals that John McCain has announced, and the certain proposals that would result as economic news continues to come our way."

Howard Kurtz has an interesting piece today on something that's often struck us here at TPM: The degree to which the advent of blogs and other new vehicles for covering political campaigns make it less and less defensible for big news orgs to dump huge amounts of money into putting newspaper reporters on the road with candidates.

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Barack Obama just wrapped up his speech on the economy in Toledo, Ohio, and it needs to be said that this was an exceptionally strong speech, and perhaps even a key moment in the campaign.

Notably, Obama -- who has been sounding optimistic tones about the crisis -- began prepping the electorate for the tough road we face ahead after he's elected president. The speech seemed to embody the notion that his victory is a foregone conclusion in a way that was a bit more direct in tone than in past speeches.

In so doing, Obama also tried to give voters a stake in electing him and a clear sense of how an Obama presidency would improve their lives, in keeping with the sense among Dem strategists that making an economic case with specificity is the way to win. He unveiled a new series of measures to bail out "Main Street," including a temporary tax credit for firms that create new American jobs over the next couple years and a 90-day foreclosure moratorium.

"If Congress does not act in the coming months, it will be one of the first things I do as President of the United States," Obama said. "This plan will help ease those anxieties, and along with the other economic policies I've proposed, it will begin to create new jobs, grow family incomes, and put us back on the path to prosperity."

Obama then rolled out an argument about what we face ahead. "I won't pretend this will be easy or come without cost," he said. "We'll have to set priorities as never before, and stick to them."

As many observers have noted, Obama faces a choice: Whether to strike optimistic tones about our future that might play well politically, or to address our future more realistically and hence make it easier to govern. Today Obama tacked towards the realistic, and used that to pivot on to another attack on Bush.

"George Bush has dug a deep hole for us. he said, in an ad-libbed line not in the prepared remarks. "It's gonna take a while for us to dig our way out."

In a particularly ambitious moment, Obama also promised to try for nothing less than a paradigm shift in the way we view our relationship to the economy, calling for "promoting a new ethic of responsibility" and for a serious bid to break our "cycle of debt."

"It's a serious challenge," he also said. "But we can do it if we act now, and if we act as one nation."

All in all, it was a very significant speech, and a very credible bid to close the deal with voters.

Many Democrats believe that the strongest suit Barack Obama can play on the economy in the race's home stretch is specificity, and right now in Toledo, Ohio, Obama is delivering a big speech on the economy that does just that.

He's unveiling a new set of proposals in a speech designed to strongly signal that he feels people's pain. From the prepared remarks...

We can't wait to help workers and families and communities who are struggling right now -- who don't know if their job or their retirement will be there tomorrow; who don't know if next week's paycheck will cover this month's bills. We need to pass an economic rescue plan for the middle-class and we need to do it now. Today I'm proposing a number of steps that we should take immediately to stabilize our financial system, provide relief to families and communities, and help struggling homeowners. It's a plan that begins with one word that's on everyone's mind, and it's spelled J-O-B-S.

Obama's proposals include a temporary tax credit for firms that create new American jobs over the next couple years and a 90-day foreclosure moratorium for some homeowners.

Separately, Hillary, in an appearance today in Pennsylvania, stays relentlessly on Obama's message and reminds us how damn good the Clintons are at speaking to folks' economic concerns with this memorable play on Sarah Palin's "drill, baby, drill" line:

"Jobs, baby, jobs."

Late Update: We've put the full prepared speech after the jump, in place of the excerpts we had originally.

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In another indication that Barack Obama is gaining steam in Republican-Leaning states, a new SurveyUSA poll is giving Obama a big lead in Missouri, a perennial swing state where John McCain has been ahead for much of this year.

The numbers: Obama 51%, McCain 43%, with a ±4.3% margin of error. SurveyUSA's previous poll from late September gave McCain a 48%-46% lead, and on the whole the most recent polls haven't given either a candidate an edge of more than just a few points.

The poll shows Obama holding down a solid 89% of self-identified Democrats, and winning independents by a 46%-41% margin.

Here's our daily composite of the five major national tracking polls. Barack Obama still holds a solid lead over John McCain, with the overall margin is unchanged from yesterday:

• Gallup: Obama 51%, McCain 41%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 50%-43% Obama lead yesterday.

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

• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 48%, McCain 42%, with a ±3.4% margin of error, compared to a 49%-41% Obama lead yesterday.

• Research 2000: Obama 52%, McCain 40%, with a ±3% margin of error, compared to a 53%-40% Obama lead from yesterday.

• Zogby: Obama 48%, McCain 44%, with a ±2.9% margin of error, compared to a 49%-43% Obama lead yesterday.

Adding these polls together and weighting them by the square roots of their sample sizes, Obama is ahead 50.1%-42.5%, a lead of 7.6 points, compared to a 50.4%-42.8% Obama lead yesterday. The undecideds have increased by a total of 0.6%, but it's come equally out of both candidates' scores.

Late Update: Gallup has begun offering two different sub-samples of likely voters, one using a traditional likely-voter model and the other using a new model that has been modified for an expected higher turnout. We will be using that second model, under the expectation that newly-registered voters and other factors will contribute to a higher turnout this cycle. Plugging today's Gallup results for likely voters -- Obama 53%, McCain 43% -- into our calculations yields a revised composite of Obama 50.6%, McCain 43.1%. We'll be switching over to that likely-voter number in our composites from now on.

Warming up the crowd for John McCain in Virginia Beach today, Sarah Palin said:

See, as a senator, John has confronted the corrupt ways of Washington and the wasteful spending and the abuses of power. As president, he's gonna end those once and for all.

Today of all days is an odd one for Palin to claim that McCain-Palin will end "abuses of power" in Washington, since the first line of the findings section of the Troopergate report released on Friday said...

For the reasons explained in section IV of this report, I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act.

Whoever didn't cut that line from her speech today is either incompetent or very, very brazen. Special thanks to TPM Reader BR for the catch.

Looks like John McCain is playing defense in another state that hasn't voted for a Dem for president since LBJ's landslide in 1964. From the Indianapolis Star...

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican nominee for vice president, will hold a rally in the Indianapolis area Friday...

Palin's visit will come a little more than a week after McCain's opponent, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, held a rally that was attended by about 21,000 people at the State Fairgrounds. Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, was in Southern Indiana in September.

The Real Clear Politics polling average has McCain up by a scant 3.8 points in the state. Multiple observers have rated Indiana a toss-up, but the real tell is that Palin is now heading there. With time running out, that's one less rally Palin can do in a "real" battleground state.

A new pair of Marist polls gives Barack Obama the lead in the two big swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania -- and it may well be that Pennsylvania no longer should even be called a swing state.

In Ohio: Obama 49%, McCain 45%, with a ±3.5% margin of error. A month ago, Obama had a 47%-45% lead.

In Pennsylvania: Obama 53%, McCain 41%, well outside the ±3.5% margin of error, compared to a 49%-44% Obama lead a month ago. This is consistent with other polls that have shown Obama taking a double-digit lead here.

The polls also show that Obama's favorability ratings are much better than McCain's. In Ohio, Obama is at 60% favorable and 37% unfavorable, compared to 54%-44% favorability for McCain. In Pennsylvania, Obama is at 65%-34%, and McCain at 55%-43%.

Here's today's run-down of the Congressional races:

Chambliss Spokesperson: "Bomb Obama" Remarks By Supporters "Inappropriate"
Michelle Grasso, the campaign spokesperson for Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), gave Election Central this statement late on Friday in response to reports that a Chambliss supporter yelled "Bomb Obama" at a local Senate debate: "Last night was definitely a rowdy crowd and lots of inappropriate things were said by some people in attendance, Senator Chambliss believes that we must focus on the issues - our economy is hurting and we must focus our energy on helping our citizens who are loosing their jobs, savings, and homes."

DSCC Ad Has Stevens Saying He Might "Serve A Little Time In Jail"
A new DSCC TV ad features the audio of FBI tapes from Sen. Ted Stevens' (R-AK) corruption trial. Stevens says in a worst case scenario he "might have to serve a little time in jail."

"The worst that can happen to us is we run up a bunch of legal fees, and might lose," Stevens is heard saying. "We might have to pay a fine, we might have to serve a little time in jail."

Read more »

McCain advisers have been promising a new, feisty, rebooted John McCain, and in a speech that he'll give in Virginia later this morning, we get our first glimpse of it.

According to the prepared remarks, McCain will indeed say "we've got them just where we want them" and seek to frame the race in the largest of terms:

Let me give you the state of the race today. We have 22 days to go. We're 6 points down. The national media has written us off. Senator Obama is measuring the drapes, and planning with Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid to raise taxes, increase spending, take away your right to vote by secret ballot in labor elections, and concede defeat in Iraq. But they forgot to let you decide. My friends, we've got them just where we want them...

I know you're worried. America is a great country, but we are at a moment of national crisis that will determine our future. Will we continue to lead the world's economies or will we be overtaken? Will the world become safer or more dangerous? Will our military remain the strongest in the world? Will our children and grandchildren's future be brighter than ours?

My answer to you is yes. Yes, we will lead. Yes, we will prosper. Yes, we will be safer. Yes, we will pass on to our children a stronger, better country. But we must be prepared to act swiftly, boldly, with courage and wisdom.

That litany of questions seems designed to deal with the McCain campaign's utter failure to project a level of seriousness and largeness of spirit appropriate to the enormity of the moment -- or, as Bill Kristol put it today, the fact that the McCain camp has continued to look "smaller."

Kind of hard to look big when you're refusing to condemn comparisons of Obama to Osama and your campaign is still running with an attack line as silly and small-minded as the William Ayers shtick, though.

Full McCain remarks after the jump.

Late Update: Instaputz does us all a public service and puts McCain's words into a picture.

Late Late Update: Here's the video:

Read more »

This seems like it might make a bit of news today. At the end of an interview with a small TV station in Virginia yesterday afternoon, John McCain declined to condemn a Virginia Republican's comparison of Barack Obama to Osama Bin Laden, saying he needed "more context" first.

McCain was asked about comments by Virginia GOP chairman Jeff Frederick, who told McCain campaign volunteers that Obama and Osama "both have friends that bombed the Pentagon." Here's McCain's response:

QUESTION: The chair of the Republican Party in Virginia has said, quote, in Time magazine, "both Barack Obama and Osama Bin Laden have friends that have bombed the Pentagon. That is scary." Is that appropriate for a state party chair to be saying?

MCCAIN: "I have to look at the context of his remarks. I have always repudiated any comments that have been made that were inappropriate about Senator Obama. The fact is that William Ayers was a terrorist and bomber and unrepentant. I don't care about that. But Senator Obama ought be the candid and truthful about his relationship with Mr. Ayers in whose living room Senator Obama launched his campaign and Senator Obama said he was just a guy in the neighborhood."

(Via Raising Kaine.) As you can see, McCain's questioner read him the whole quote. What more context would he need?

McCain's campaign over the weekend issued a statement kinda sorta distancing itself from the Virginia Republican's comments: "While Barack Obama is associated with domestic terrorist William Ayers, the McCain campaign disagrees with the comparison that Jeff Frederick made." Now McCain himself has proven unable to even do that.

Respectful...

Late Update: Here's the video:

McCain In Speech Today: "We've Got Them Just Where We Want Them"
In his stump speech today in Virginia Beach, John McCain will seek to fire up his supporters in the face of the latest bad polls numbers. "My friends, we've got them just where we want them," McCain will say, according to pre-released excerpts.

Barack Obama In Ohio, Michelle In Minnesota, Biden In New Hampshire
Barack Obama is campaigning today in Toledo, Ohio, where he will be making a major speech on the economy, scheduled to begin at 1:30 p.m. ET. Michelle Obama is in Minnesota, with a 1 p.m. ET event in Rochester and a 5 p.m. ET rally in St. Paul. Joe Biden is in New Hampshire today, with a 10 a.m. ET event in Rochester and a 1:30 p.m. ET event in Manchester, and will then head back to Delaware to address the state Democratic Party's Jefferson-Jackson Dinner at 7 p.m. ET.

McCain And Palin In Virginia, Plus McCain In North Carolina
John McCain and Sarah Palin are holding a joint rally at 11 a.m. ET in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The two will then split off for different events: McCain has a 2:15 p.m. ET rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, and Palin has a 2 p.m. ET rally in Richmond, Virginia.

Hillary In Pennsylvania Today
Hillary Clinton is on the campaign trail again today, with events in Pennsylvania in support of the Democratic ticket. Hillary will hold a "Conversation With Working Families" at 11 a.m. ET in Philadelphia, and will then hold a campaign rally in Horsham at 12:30 p.m. ET.

NYT Profiles Obama-Slanderer Andy Martin
The New York Times has a detailed profile today of Andy Martin, the man believed to have originated way back in 2004 the smears against Barack Obama as being a secret Muslim. The picture that emerges is astoundingly odd: Martin is a vocal anti-Semite who says an Obama presidency could threaten Israel, and is trained to practice law but has not been licensed to practice on mental-health grounds -- though he has been a prolific filer of lawsuits.

Virginia GOP Chairman Compares Obama To Osama Bin Laden
Virginia GOP chairman Jeff Frederick compared Barack Obama to Osama Bin Laden, while addressing McCain campaign volunteers on Saturday, on the grounds that "both have friends that bombed the Pentagon." In a statement, the McCain campaign only partially backed away from Frederick's remarks: "While Barack Obama is associated with domestic terrorist William Ayers, the McCain campaign disagrees with the comparison that Jeff Frederick made."

Poll: Obama Ahead In North Dakota
A new Forum Poll in North Dakota gives Barack Obama a 45%-43% lead, within the ±4% margin of error, in a red state that hasn't voted Democratic since the LBJ landslide of 1964. All the other recent polls have given McCain the lead here, but it does seem possible that the economy is pushing even this state towards the Democrats.

Check out this latest gaffe from John McCain: He boasted that he intends to "whip" Barack Obama's posterior at the debate this Wednesday.

"We're going to spend a lot of time and after I whip his you-know-what in this debate, we're going to be going out 24/7," McCain told a crowd of volunteers at the campaign's national headquarters in Virginia.

For the record, none of us here at TPM think McCain actually intended the potentially-nefarious alternative meaning of whipping Obama. We just think it was a painfully awkward and stupid thing to say.

Here's our daily composite of the five major national tracking polls. Barack Obama's lead may have contracted slightly since yesterday -- but the overall difference is very small, and he remains well ahead:

• Gallup: Obama 50%, McCain 43%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 51%-42% Obama lead yesterday.

• Rasmussen: Obama 51%, McCain 45%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 52%-45% Obama lead from yesterday.

• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 49%, McCain 41%, with a ±3.4% margin of error, compared to a 50%-40% Obama lead yesterday.

• Research 2000: Obama 53%, McCain 40%, with a ±3% margin of error, compared to a 52%-40% Obama lead from yesterday.

• Zogby: Obama 49%, McCain 43%, with a ±2.9% margin of error, compared to a 48%-44% Obama lead yesterday.

Adding these polls together and weighting them by the square roots of their sample sizes, Obama is ahead 50.4%-42.8%, a lead of 7.6 points, compared to a 50.8%-42.5% Obama lead yesterday.

Late Update:Gallup has begun offering two different sub-samples of likely voters, one using a traditional likely-voter model and the other using a new model that has been modified for an expected higher turnout. We will be using that second model, under the expectation that newly-registered voters and other factors will contribute to a higher turnout this cycle. Plugging today's Gallup results for likely voters -- Obama 51%, McCain 45% -- into our calculations yields a revised composite of Obama 50.7%, McCain 43.2%. We'll be switching over to that likely-voter number in our composites from now on.

Sen. Graham: John Lewis Is "Playing The Race Card"
Appearing today on CBS' Face The Nation, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) hit back at Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) for comparing John McCain to George Wallace, and saying that McCain and Sarah Palin were fomenting an atmosphere of violent emotions against Barack Obama. "We're not going to be intimidated by this playing the race card," Graham said, going on to say that the campaign cannot be held responsible "for what one person says at a rally."

NYT: GOPers Unhappy With McCain Campaign
The New York Times reports that many Republicans are unhappy with the McCain campaign's current approach, and the lack of a coherent narrative. "You're starting to feel real frustration because we are running out of time," said Michigan GOP chairman Saul Anuzis. "Our message, the campaign's message, isn't connecting." In particular, there is serious disagreement about how to approach issues like the economy, and whether to go after Obama over Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Obama Off The Trail, Biden Campaigning With Bill And Hillary
Barack Obama has no public events today. Joe Biden is holding a big rally today in Scranton, Pennsylvania, featuring Bill and Hillary Clinton, scheduled to begin at 3:15 p.m.

McCain Off The Trail, Palin in West Virginia, Ohio and Virginia.
John McCain does not have any public events scheduled for today. Instead, Sarah Palin is campaigning today in Huntsville, West Virginia, in St. Clairsville, Ohio, and in Norfolk, Virginia.

McCain Camp Backs Away From Minister's Rally Invocation
The McCain campaign was forced yesterday to release a statement backing away from an Iowa minister's invocation at a rally yesterday, in which he asked God to prevent an Obama victory on the grounds that people of other religions were praying for it to happen. The statement from campaign spokesperson Wendy Riemann said that "questions about the religious background of the candidates only serve to distract from the real questions in this race."

Poll: Obama Well Ahead In Colorado
A new survey of Colorado from Public Policy Polling (D) gives Barack Obama a healthy lead in this swing state. The numbers: Obama 52%, McCain 42%, outside of the ±2.7% margin of error

Poll: McCain Has Narrow Edge In Ohio
A new University of Cincinnati poll gives John McCain a 48%-46% advantage in Ohio, within the ±3.3% margin of error. The previous poll from a month ago gave McCain a 48%-42% lead.

Poll: Obama Takes Small Lead In Nevada
A new Mason-Dixon poll in Nevada gives Barack Obama a 47%-45% in this perennial swing state. The previous poll from two months ago gave McCain a 46%-39% lead.