Here's our daily composite of the six major national tracking polls. Barack Obama already-solid national lead may be inching up even further:

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

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

• ABC/Washington Post: Obama 53%, McCain 44%, with a ±2.5% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.

• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 50%, McCain 43%, with a ±3.3% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.

• Research 2000: Obama 52%, McCain 40%, with a ±3% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.

• Zogby: Obama 51%, McCain 42%, with a ±2.9% margin of error, compared to a 51%-41% Obama lead yesterday.

Adding these polls together and weighting them by the square roots of their sample sizes, Obama is ahead 51.6%-42.8%, a lead of 8.8 points, compared to the 51.6%-43.1% Obama lead from yesterday.

RNC Ad Hits Obama's Inexperience, Warns That Things Could Get Worse
The new RNC ad, which will run in targeted states, continues an odd theme we've noticed in their advertising. The announcer admits things are bad, but warns that it could get even worse under Barack Obama:

"Some now say this storm cannot get worse -- our nation is so off course that Barack Obama's quick rise to power and inexperience should not matter," the announcer says. "But what if the storm does get worse, with someone who's untested at the helm?"

Obama Out West; Biden In Virginia
Barack Obama is back on the campaign trail today, with a 10:30 a.m. ET rally in Reno, Nevada, a 3 p.m. ET rally in Las Vegas, Nevada, and a 9 p.m. ET rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Joe Biden is campaigning in Virginia, with an 11 a.m. ET rally in Suffolk.

McCain In New Mexico; Palin In Iowa And Indiana
John McCain is campaigning today in New Mexico, with a 12 p.m. ET rally in Albuquerque and a 6 p.m. ET rally in Mesilla. Sarah Palin has a 12 p.m. ET rally in Sioux City, Iowa, a 3:30 p.m. ET rally in Des Moines, Iowa, and a 7:15 p.m. ET rally in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Lieberman: I've Been Respectful To Obama!
In a sign that he's looking to patch things up with the Dems after this election is over, Joe Lieberman told a group of Connecticut reporters that he's always been respectful of Barack Obama: "When I go out, I say, 'I have a lot of respect for Sen. Obama. He's bright. He's eloquent.'" This seems rather odd in light of the documented occasions where Lieberman has done precisely the opposite, like when he said Obama doesn't put his country first.

Lieberman: "Thank God" Palin Won't Have To Be President On Day One
During the same conference call with Connecticut reporters, Lieberman also offered this strong defense of Sarah Palin: "Thank God she's not going to have to be president from day one. McCain's going to be alive and well."

NYT: Florida Emblematic Of McCain's Troubles
The New York Times reports this morning on the problems that John McCain has had in Florida, a state that he once took for granted but where he has now fallen behind Barack Obama in most polls. "Mr. McCain is in this spot today in part because of the conclusion by his campaign this summer that Florida, if competitive, was not as tough as it once was, and that there were more pressing states," the Times says. Oops.

Poll: Obama Narrowly Ahead In Ohio
The new University of Cincinnati poll gives Barack Obama a 49%-46% lead in Ohio, with a ±3.3% margin of error. Their previous poll from two weeks ago gave McCain a 48%-46% lead.

In keeping with his effort to close out the race with as much specificity on the economy as possible, Obama goes up in key states with a two-minute spot in which he directly addresses voters and tells him how he'll improve their lives:

In the spot, Obama pivots away from his longtime campaign criticism of the Bush administration and re-frames the election as being about the future.

"At this defining moment in our history, the question is not, `are you better off than you were four years ago?'" Obama says. "We all know the answer to that. The real question is will our country be better off four years from now?"

The ad also returns to his core themes of ending "mindless partisanship" and restoring "our sense of common purpose."

A spokesperson for McCain's national campaign is pushing back on our story yesterday reporting that McCain's Pennsylvania communications director was giving reporters an incendiary version of the attack hoax story before the facts were in.

But Keith Olbermann does a nice job of skewering the push-back. From the Countdown transcript:

Tonight, McCain`s spokesman, Brian Rogers, denied the campaign gave out those quotes, telling COUNTDOWN, they came from the police and were attributed to the McCain camp because of sloppy reporting.

An account that doesn't explain why two television stations both quoted the McCain campaign, or the fact that one of them, KDKA Pittsburgh specifically followed the McCain quotes with the line, quote, "Police, however, have not confirmed that."

And tonight, COUNTDOWN asked the reporter from the other station, WPXI to check his notes. He says he got those quotes first, 4:08 p.m. yesterday from McCain`s Pennsylvania communications director.

So now we have two stations -- WPXI and KDKA -- who both independently say they got the same story and the same quotes linking the "B" to "Barack" from the McCain campaign.

Yet the McCain camp is actually asking you to believe that both reporters -- independently -- made the same mistake and wrongly attributed the McCain PA spokesperson's quotes to the cops. That'll work.

Despite all the talk about Sarah Palin energizing the Republican base, the new Newsweek poll seems to suggest that by this point the base would rather have somebody else, if given the chance.

Check out this question asked of Republicans, looking ahead to the 2012 election:

If John McCain is not elected president, which one of the following three possible candidates would you be most likely to support for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012?

Mitt Romney 35%
Mike Huckabee 26%
Sarah Palin 20%

Palin might have started out this campaign very popular with the base, but after all her gaffes and controversies, it looks like a lot of Republican voters would rather stick with a safer choice.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has gone into damage-control mode, rolling out a new ad in which she subtly acknowledges that the controversy surrounding her McCarthyist rantings about Barack Obama, which have put her narrowly behind conservative Democrat El Tinklenberg in the polls in this Republican-leaning district:

"I may not always get my words right, but I know that my heart is right," Bachmann says. "Because my heart is for you, for your children, and for the blessings of liberty to remain for our great country."

Make no mistake -- Bachmann could still win this thing, as she has the luxury of running in a district that voted 57%-42% for George W. Bush in 2004. The key indication of this ad is that she's realized there is a serious problem here, and may stop some of her public buffoonery and focus on patching things up with offended constituents.

The Huffington Post obtains one of the ugliest specimens of McCain robo-slime yet, recorded by fellow McCain POW Orson Swindle:

"Democrats attempt to cut off crucial troop funding. Accuse our troops of war crimes. And Senator Biden predicts Senator Obama will be tested. A weak president will indeed be tested. Obama and Democrat's politics endanger American lives. They are not qualified to lead our military and our country. When you vote, vote for the team that puts leadership, character and country first. John McCain."

HuffPo has the audio.

It's worth noting an interesting phenomenon: The tidal wave of McCain robo-slime has now become so overwhelming that the individual calls no longer make news, no matter how disgusting they are.

What we're seeing here is another case of DSD syndrome -- Defining Slime Down. The press isn't interested in robo-slime-gate anymore. The calls aren't news. So now that McCain has weathered the first round of bad press attending his initial wave of calls, he will now be able to keep the calls going under the radar, at ever slimier levels, right through Election Day, without the big news orgs reporting on it anymore.

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

AFL-CIO Takes Aim At Bachmann
The AFL-CIO is now going into the race against Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), smelling blood in the water thanks to her McCarthyist rant on Hardball and new poll data showing her narrowly losing to conservative Democrat El Tinklenberg. Here's their new mailer:

"Michele Bachmann helped break the economy," the mailer says sternly. "Working families can't afford another term."

Obama Tapes Ad For Merkley
Barack Obama has taped an ad for Jeff Merkley, the Dem nominee against Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR), asking the voters in this blue state to "choose real change" with Merkley:

This is the first ad that Obama has done for a down-ticket candidate during the general election, and was likely done in direct response to Smith's own efforts to tie himself to Obama and other major Dem names like Ted Kennedy and John Kerry.

Read more »

John McCain's Pennsylvania communications director told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established -- and even told reporters outright that the "B" carved into the victim's cheek stood for "Barack," according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.

John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain's Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, "You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson."

Verrilli also told TPM that the McCain spokesperson had claimed that the "B" stood for Barack. According to Verrilli, the spokesperson also told KDKA that Sarah Palin had called the victim of the alleged attack, who has since admitted the story was a hoax.

The KDKA reporter had called McCain's campaign office for details after seeing the story -- sans details -- teased on Drudge.

The McCain spokesperson's claims -- which came in the midst of extraordinary and heated conversations late yesterday between the McCain campaign, local TV stations, and the Obama camp, as the early version of the story rocketed around the political world -- is significant because it reveals a McCain official pushing a version of the story that was far more explosive than the available or confirmed facts permitted at the time.

The claims to KDKA from the McCain campaign were included in an early story that ran late yesterday on KDKA's Web site. The paragraphs containing these assertions were quickly removed from the story after the Obama campaign privately complained that KDKA was letting the McCain campaign spin a racially-charged version of the story before the facts had been established, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.

The story with the removed grafs is still right here. We preserved the three missing grafs from yesterday:

Read more »

Here's our daily composite of the six major national tracking polls. Barack Obama is essentially maintaining his big lead in the polls:

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

• Rasmussen: Obama 52%, McCain 45%, with a ±2% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.

• ABC/Washington Post: Obama 53%, McCain 44%, with a ±2.5% margin of error, compared to a 54%-43% Obama lead from yesterday.

• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 50%, McCain 43%, with a ±3.4% margin of error, compared to a 48%-43% Obama lead from yesterday.

• Research 2000: Obama 52%, McCain 40%, with a ±3% margin of error, compared to a 51%-41% Obama lead from yesterday.

• Zogby: Obama 51%, McCain 41%, with a ±2.9% margin of error, compared to a 52%-40% Obama lead yesterday.

Adding these polls together and weighting them by the square roots of their sample sizes, Obama is ahead 51.6%-43.1%, a lead of 8.5 points, compared to the 51.5%-43.1% Obama lead from yesterday.

On a conference call with reporters just now, in which the Obama campaign laid out a cautious but very optimistic picture of the campaign as it now stands, they also announced some amazing figures about early voting -- showing the Dems translating their advantage in voter registrations into a real advantage in banked voted.

In key swing states like Colorado and North Carolina, more registered Democrats are casting early votes than registered Republicans. Democrats now make up 56% of the early vote in North Carolina, compared to 48% back in 2004. Registered Dems now lead the early vote in Colorado with a 39% plurality, compared to a 42% Republican plurality in 2004. And though they started out behind, the Dems are on track to overtake the Republicans in Florida early voting on Monday.

Obama field director Jon Carson anticipated the obvious skeptical argument: That the early voters don't really change anything, because those people would have otherwise showed up on Election Day anyway. Carson then focused on a different number, of "new Democrats" and "new Republicans" -- that is, people who are either newly-registered voters or voted only sporadically in the past.

And the early votes from new Democrats are leading the votes from new Republicans. For example, 40% of all early Democratic votes in Nevada have come from new Dems, versus only 30% of GOP early votes from new Republicans.

"A higher percentage of our vote is new Democrats," Carson said, "and we have a lot more new Democrats."

Wow. By now you've all heard about Ashley Todd, the 20-year-old McCain volunteer who claimed that she was assaulted in Pittsburgh on Wednesday night by an attacker who scratched a "B" in her cheek after learning that she was for McCain.

The story was flacked madly last night by Drudge, even though few if any details had been established or independently confirmed.

Well, take a look at this banner headline, from Pittsburgh's KDKA:

A Pittsburgh police commander says a volunteer for the McCain campaign who reported being robbed and attacked near a bank ATM in Bloomfield has confessed to making up the story. Police say charges will be filed. More details to follow.

More soon.

Late Update: KDKA's full story has now been posted. It's based on anonymous sources. So it's still unclear what the story is. Stay tuned.

Late Late Update: It's worth keeping in mind what Fox News executive vice president John Moody had to say about what this would mean if this story proved a hoax:

"If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain's quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting."

Worth keeping an eye on Fox's coverage of the latest turn in the story.

Late Late Late Update: Police are set to hold a press conference to discuss the news, reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Latest Update: There are now conflicting reports on whether Todd confessed or police simply concluded the mugging story was a hoax.

Later Than Latest Update: Some extraordinary new details about her confession from the AP:

Ashley Todd, 20-year-old college student from College Station, Texas, admitted Friday that the story was false and was being charged with making a false report to police, said Maurita Bryant, the assistant chief of the police department's investigations division. Police doubted her story from the start, Bryant said.

Todd, who is white, told police she was attacked by a 6-foot-4 black man Wednesday night.

She now can't explain why she invented the story, Bryant said. Todd also told police she believes she cut the backward "B" onto her own cheek, but did not provide an explanation of how or why, Bryant said.

A new set of polls from Strategic Vision (R) has some good news for John McCain, with him taking back leads in Florida and Ohio, and holding on to his lead Georgia. But all his work in Pennsylvania has only managed to make a small dent in Obama's lead:

• Florida: McCain 48%, Obama 46%, within the ±3% margin of error. Two weeks ago, Obama had a 52%-44% lead.

• Georgia: McCain 51%, Obama 45%, with a ±3% margin of error. Two weeks ago, McCain was up 50%-43%.

• Ohio: McCain 48%, Obama 45%, with a ±3% margin of error. Two weeks ago, Obama had a 48%-46% edge.

• Pennsylvania: Obama 50%, McCain 43%, outside of the ±3% margin of error. This is better for McCain than the 54%-40% Obama lead from two weeks ago, but he still hasn't managed t drag Obama to below 50%.

The most recent polls in Florida and Ohio have been a mixed bag, though on balance they've favored Obama. McCain has a small lead in most new Georgia polls, though an Insideradvantage poll from this morning put Obama up by one point. And every poll out there has been giving Obama a significant lead in Pennsylvania.

We now have a second independent poll showing Democratic candidate El Tinklenberg narrowly ahead of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), whose once-safe re-election bid has been seriously complicated by her McCarthyesque comments on Hardball.

The new numbers from the University of Minnesota: Tinklenberg 45%, Bachmann 43%, with a ±4.7% margin of error. This corresponds closely with last night's SurveyUSA poll, which put Tinklenberg ahead 47%-44%.

This is still very much a conservative district, with GOP Sen. Norm Coleman holding a 44%-30% lead over Al Franken in the three-way Senate race, even as Franken has taken a narrow lead statewide. But it turns out that Bahcmann's blatant extremism isn't playing well here: Nearly 40% of respondents say Bachmann's comments make them less likely to vote for her, compared to only eight percent who say they're more supportive because of it.

National GOP Pulls Out Of Colorado Senate Race
A national GOP source has confirmed to Election Central that the NRSC is pulling out of the Colorado Senate race, where GOP candidate Bob Schaffer has been trailing in the polls for this Republican-held seat. With this seat now effectively ceded to the Democrats, the Dems are one step closer to 60 Senate seats.

Dems Accuse Republican Of Committing Voter Fraud In New Ad
This new DCCC turns the current allegations from Republicans about ACORN voter fraud right back at them, by directly accusing the Republican candidate against Rep. NIck Lampson (D-TX) of having personally committed voter fraud:

"John McCain says voter fraud may be destroying the fabric of democracy," the announcer says, setting up a line of attack in a district that McCain should carry handily. "And in Houston, Pete Olson is running for Congress while a prosecutor in Virginia investigates him for voter fraud back East!"

Read more »

For the first time ever, a new poll has Barack Obama ahead of John McCain in Georgia, on the heels of a recent trend that showed the race tightening here.

The new numbers from InsiderAdvantage: Obama 48%, McCain 47%, within the ±3.8% margin of error.

On the one hand, this poll could be an outlier. But other recent polls have shown McCain ahead by only two to eight points in this deep-red state, and the gap has narrowed from previous larger McCain leads.

From the pollster's analysis: "While this is a tight race, the problem for McCain is that all but 3 percent of whites have made their decision and approximately 8 percent of black voters have continued to say they are undecided or voting 'other.' This will likely move closer to 95 percent for Obama when all said and done. Obama has room to go up."

Still more stunning numbers in the new NPR poll, which is the final poll of the Presidential race by the Dem firm of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner:

* Obama holds a double-digit lead -- 11 points -- in the 15 core battleground states. To put this in perspective, the pollsters note, Bush won these states by 4 points in 2004.

* Obama leads by 12 among battleground state independents.

* Obama is leading among battleground state Catholics.

Perhaps the most important finding is this one:

McCain made a decision to contest "change" and devalue "experience" and "national security." That was a costly choice, as change has become dominant over experience by two-to-one as a voting criteria and "keeping the country safe" is proving no more important than the economy and reform in shaping people's vote.

In other words, McCain's efforts to reshape the race to his advantage have proven a complete failure.

An Indiana reader reports to us that John McCain is now up on the air on network TV in the state -- a significant development, because it suggests that McCain is being forced to spend valuable cash on defense in yet another red state as time runs out.

Tim Horst, a church musician, says he saw McCain's "Joe the Plumber" ad -- which attacks Obama on taxes -- running on WEVV, a CBS affiliate in southern Indiana, for the first time this morning. That's network TV, not national cable, so the spot represents a buy in the state.

Previously, the Republican National Committee had been advertising Indiana, but the McCain campaign hadn't spent any money here.

The Indiana spot is the latest sign that McCain is shifting cash out of blue toss-up states and into red tossups or even reliably red states. As we reported here yesterday, McCain is scaling down his ad buys in Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Colorado, and upping them in Virginia and Florida -- and, now, Indiana. Here's the spot:

Neither WEVV nor the McCain campaign had a comment. We'll bring you more on the size of the buy if we can get it.

The Obama campaign has set up a very useful, interactive map that allows you to track McCain's robo-slime and mail sleaze state by state. Check it out here.

We couldn't help but notice that it's awfully similar to the McCain slime map that we set up here at TPM the other day. It does pretty much the same thing as the Obama map does. You can view ours here.

Check them out -- they're both good stuff, particularly for those who take a bit of perverse pleasure in slime-wallowing. And no hard feelings: When it comes to tracking the slime, the more the merrier.

McCain Ad: An Obama Crisis "Doesn't Have To Happen"
The new McCain ad, which will air in key states, uses Joe Biden's gaffe about how Barack Obama will be tested in an international crisis, so as to warn voters that Obama is too much of a risk -- with some truly incredible imagery:

Images flash across the screen of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, crowds of chanting Arabs, tanks, and gun-toting militia-men. To which the announcer replies: "It doesn't have to happen. Vote McCain."

The Highest-Paid McCain Staffer: Palin's Makeup Artist!
The New York Times reports that Amy Strozzi, the traveling makeup artist for Sarah Palin, is in fact the top-paid staffer on the campaign. Strozzi was paid $22,800 during just the first two weeks of October, compared to only $12,500 for top foreign-policy adviser Randy Scheunemann.

Obama Off The Trail; Michelle In Ohio; Biden In Virginia And West Virginia
Barack Obama is off the campaign trail today, visiting his ailing grandmother in Hawaii. Instead, Michelle Obama is campaigning on his behalf in Ohio, with an 11:30 a.m. ET rally in Columbus and a 3:30 p.m. ET rally in Akron. Joe Biden is holding a 10:30 a.m. ET rally in Charleston, West Virginia, a 3:45 p.m. ET rally in Danville, Virginia, and a 6:45 p.m. ET rally in Martinsville, Virginia.

Hillary Campaigning For Obama In Colorado
Hillary Clinton is also campaigning on Barack Obama's behalf today, with a 5:30 p.m. ET rally in Aurora, Colorado.

McCain In Colorado, Palin In Pennsylvania And Missouri
John McCain is campaigning today in Colorado, with a 12 p.m. ET rally in Denver, a small-business event at 4:30 p.m. ET in Colorado Springs, and an 8 p.m. ET rally in Durango. Sarah Palin is delivering a policy speech on special-needs children at 9 a.m. ET at the Pittsburgh Airport Marriott, and will then hold a 1 p.m. ET rally in Springfield, Missouri. Then at 7:30 p.m. ET, she's scheduled to drop the ceremonial first puck at a hockey game in St. Louis.

Poll: Obama Ahead In Indiana
A new SurveyUSA poll gives Barack Obama a 49%-45% in Indiana, with a ±4% margin of error, compared to a 48%-45% McCain lead from three weeks ago. The most recent three polls of this race now give Obama the lead in a state that hasn't gone Democratic since the 1964 LBJ landslide.

Palin Denies The $150K Clothing Story
In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Sarah Palin denied the story that the RNC had paid $150,000 for her campaign wardrobe -- contrary to the RNC's own admission of it, and their line that the clothes will be donated to charity. "That whole thing is just, bad!" said Palin. "Oh, if people only knew how frugal we are."

The first independent poll is out in Minnesota's Sixth District, which has been put into contention thanks to Rep. Michele Bachmann's (R-MN) McCartheyesque rant on Hardball last week -- and it shows a race that could be tightly contested all the way to Election Day.

The new numbers from SurveyUSA: Democratic candidate El Tinklenberg 47%, Bachmann 44%, and Independence Party candidate Bob Anderson 6%, with a ±4% margin of error.

Bachmann could still win this thing, as the district voted 57%-42% for George W. Bush in 2004. But the race has really been upended. After Bachmann's remarks on national television, and then her ham-fisted attempts to deny she ever said them, Tinklenberg has raised $1.45 million from donors across the country -- and the DCCC committed $1 million on top of that. And the NRCC has pulled their ad reservations, leaving Bachmann to fight this one out on her own.

Meanwhile, the Family Research Council's PAC put out a statement condemning the NRCC for pulling out of this race and that of Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO), another champion of the Christian Right: "It appears that the NRCC is abandoning social conservative candidates and the issues for which they stand, particularly if they are championed by some of the most promising female legislators in the Congress. This is no time to cut and run from a fight."

The new CBS/New York Times poll has nothing but bad news for John McCain. Barack Obama is ahead 52%-39% among likely voters in the horse-race, but the internals are perhaps even worse.

The poll shows the extent to which McCain's negative campaign has backfired. Obama's favorability rating stands at 52% favorable to 31% unfavorable, way ahead of John McCain's 39%-46% rating. In terms of the candidates' personalities, 62% of registered voters said they felt comfortable with Obama, while only 34% said they feel uneasy about him. The numbers for McCain: 47% comfortable, 49% uneasy.

Obama also has an edge on who is more trusted to handle a crisis, with 49% of registered feeling confident and 47% feeling uneasy about him. McCain is at 46% confident to 51% uneasy.

And this question suggests that McCain's attacks on Obama over income redistribution could be big loser:

Do you think it is a good idea or a bad idea to raise income taxes on households and businesses that make MORE than $250,000 a year in order to help provide health insurance for people who are not covered by health insurance?

Good Idea 62%
Bad Idea 33%

Still more McCain robo-slime: The latest McCain campaign robocall hits Obama's health care plan as a "massive government takeover of health care" that will jeopardize Medicare and Social Security.

For good measure, the call, which is running at least in Wisconsin, says Obama and Dems will slow "development of life saving drugs." Here's audio:

Click To Play

Script

...because Barack Obama and the Democrats have jeopardized our Medicare and Social Security with their proposed massive government takeover of health care, and will be reducing access to doctors and slowing development of life-saving drugs. Don't let the inexperience and poor judgement of Barack Obama and his Democrat allies put our livelihood at risk. This call was paid for by the Republican National Committee and McCain-Palin 2008 at 866 558-5591.

It's pretty craftily worded. Note how the call insinuates that Obama and Dems will slow development of life saving drugs in addition to passing their plan, as if that's actually an Obama policy goal. That's a twist on the stock GOP line, which is that the plan itself would have that effect.

The Huffington Post first got word of this call from readers, and we just obtained the call from a reader in Wisconsin.

Separately, Ben Smith reports that the attorney general in Indiana, where robo-sliming is illegal, is looking into McCain's calls. That may not come to anything, though, because readers in that state have reported that the calls were read from live humans at a call center, but we'll see.

Late Late Update: HuffPo gets another robocall sliming Obama as weak on terror, this one recorded by Tom Ridge.

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

New Tinklenberg Ad: "Michele Bachmann Represents The Worst Of Washington"
El Tinklenberg, the Democrat running against Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), has this new TV ad declaring that Bachmann "represents the worst of Washington," and replays part of her McCarthyesque comments on Hardball:

Tinklenberg has already rolled out a positive ad introducing himself, and now has an interesting challenge: How to spend the $1.45 million he's received in online donations since her Hardball appearance, with less than two weeks to go in the election. The campaign is confident they can get in their spending through TV, radio and expanded phone banks.

Charlie Cook: House Dems On Track For Gains In The Mid-Twenties
The Cook Political Report released its latest set of ratings, notably moving three open GOP-held seats in Minnesota, New Jersey and New Mexico from "Toss Up" to "Lean Democratic." Cook's analysis also points to another big years for the Democrats: "All the signs of another big 'wave' election are apparent, and our current outlook is a gain of 23 to 28 seats for House Democrats."

Read more »

This is pretty impressive: Hillary's political action committee has now donated a half-million bucks to House and Senate Dem candidates across the country, a Hillary aide tells us.

The Hillary aide adds that Hillary and her PAC, which is called HillPac, has donated the $500,000 in cash to over 75 Dem candidates in over 30 states across the country.

HillPac had largely been out of business while she ran for President. But late last month, Hillary reactivated the PAC with an initial round of donations of about $75,000 in checks to 14 candidates across the country.

Now that Hillary has hit the half-million mark in donations, it's yet another sign that Hillary, after being temporarily sidelined by her loss to Obama, has returned to electoral politics in a big way.

Here's our daily composite of the six major national tracking polls. Barack Obama's already-big lead has inched up again:

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

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

• ABC/Washington Post: Obama 54%, McCain 43%, with a ±2.5% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.

• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 48%, McCain 43%, with a ±3.4% margin of error, compared to a 47%-42% Obama lead from yesterday.

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

• Zogby: Obama 52%, McCain 40%, with a ±2.9% margin of error, compared to a 52%-42% Obama lead yesterday.

Adding these polls together and weighting them by the square roots of their sample sizes, Obama is ahead 51.5%-43.1%, a lead of 8.4 points, compared to the 51.3%-43.1% Obama lead from yesterday.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has developed an intriguing habit amid her efforts to deal with the fallout over her McCarthyesque rant on Hardball last week.

In mainstream public forums, she either tries retract the things she said or denies she said them. But then she turns around and goes on right-wing media outlets, where she repeats various versions of the original whacked-out McCarthyite stuff in order to gin up winger support and money.

This kind of thing might have been doable as recently as five or six years ago. But these days, it's a bit tougher to get away with, what with little innovations like YouTube and The Google.

Check out our examples, after the jump.

Read more »

In a possible new sign that the electoral map is swinging further to Barack Obama, a new Montana State University poll gives him a narrow lead in Montana, a state that has voted Dem only twice in the last 50 years.

The numbers: Obama 44%, McCain 40%, with a ±5% margin of error. The undecided number here is awfully high, and McCain could very well win this, but it does seem like the state is up for grabs. For example, McCain took a strong lead here in September, but a Research 2000 poll from this past weekend gave him a close lead of 49%-45%.

Obama's choice of the huge Grant Park as the venue for his election night festivities has generated a local flap of sorts in Chicago, with Mayor Richard Daley seeming to criticize Obama's pick.

Daley says the pick will create a logistical nightmare, and is suggesting the indoor United Center as a better, easier alternative. Daley is complaining that the Obama camp rejected this idea, generating some stories out of Chicago clouding the coming festivities that the Obama camp decidedly doesn't want right now.

It turns out, though, that Daley's suggestion and criticism is a non-starter: Obama couldn't use the United Center at any rate, because it's booked that night. Celine Dion is playing there on November 4th.

The AFL-CIO tries to broaden the map for Obama, dropping a big blitz of mail attacking McCain and Bush on the economy in West Virginia, a state that went for Bush over Kerry in 2004 by double digits.

Click to enlarge:

McCain doesn't appear to be biting on such stuff yet, though: He has cut a radio ad specifically geared for the state, but for now it doesn't appear to be running.

In another sign that John McCain is on the defensive as time runs out, the McCain campaign is shifting its ad money out of blue tossup states and into red tossups and even traditionally red states, according to ad maven Evan Tracey.

McCain has dramatically slashed his ad spending in Wisconsin and New Hampshire and reduced it in Pennsylvania, suggesting that he's either losing hope or giving up hope in winning in three states that went for John Kerry in 2004, or that he doesn't have ample enough resources for them.

He's also reduced his spending in Colorado, which went for Bush but is showing a lead for Obama, suggesting he may be losing hope there, too.

"There's definitely a scaling back in those states," says Tracey, who tracks national ad spending for the Campaign Media Analysis Group and gave TPM some numbers so we could flesh out and synthesize disparate reports about various spending shifts into a big picture.

By contrast, McCain has increased his ad spending in Virginia, long a reliably red state, and in Florida, where Bush won and McCain was long expected to prevail without too much trouble. "They are definitely shifting some resources here for the endgame," Tracey says.

We asked Tracey to compare ad spending in each state on Monday of this week, or October 20th, with Monday of last week, or October 13th. The idea was to get a sense of McCain's more immediate spending shifts as the race winds down.

Here's what he found:

Read more »

The Obama camp has unleashed a tough new robocall in North Carolina featuring a Navy veteran and self-described former McCain supporter who pushes back on McCain's attacks, hammering McCain for questioning Obama's patriotism and for "viciously attacking Obama's character."

The call stars Lenny Julius of Emerald Isle, NC, a 67-year-old Vietnam veteran who reportedly served on the same ship as McCain for a time and has revered him as a "hero" and a "great man" in the past but now says he's running a "dishonorable campaign" of "vicious personal attacks."

Give it a listen:

Click To Play

Script:

Hi, this is Lenny Julius, and I'm calling for Barack Obama. I live in Emerald Isle, North Carolina. And like you, I've been concerned about mail and phone calls from John McCain that viciously attack Barack Obama's character and question his patriotism.

I used to support John McCain. In fact, I served with him in the Navy. But this year he's running a dishonorable campaign. This election should be about policies and ideas, not about vicious personal attacks.

Barack Obama will turn the page on negative politics and he'll stand up for the middle class. That's why this year, even though I used to back John McCain, I'm voting for Barack Obama, and I'm calling to ask you to do the same. Paid for by Campaign for Change, a project of the North Carolina Democratic Party, 919 783-5996, and auth--

Though the call's audio cuts off at the word "authorized," the Obama campaign confirms to me that Obama authorized the call.

The call was received by a blogger who writes on North Carolina Public Radio's site.

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

Dems Throw Over $12 Million Into House Races
The DCCC launched a massive financial assault on the Republicans yesterday, with over $12.6 million in spending for over 50 races in the latest set of FEC filings. The single biggest expenditure was $643,000 against Rep. Jon Porter (R-NV). Six-figure amounts were spent on an astonishing 40 House races. By contrast, the NRCC only spent $1.07 million in the latest filings.

Poll: Murtha Now In Tight Race
A new Susquehanna poll shows that Jack Murtha could be in trouble in his usually-safe seat in the wake of his public comments about his constituents being racist rednecks. The numbers: Murtha 46%, retired Army Lt. Col. Bill Russell (R) 41%, with a ±4.9% margin of error.

Read more »

Wow, now this takes Republican gloom to a whole new level.

It appears that the McCain campaign and Congressional Republicans are now in strategic agreement: Each says the other is going to lose on Election Day -- and each is citing that to win voter support for themselves.

The McCain campaign has been arguing that he should be elected because divided government is healthier than one-party control. This argument, of course, presumes a Republican loss in the Congressional races -- or at the very least, that the GOP is certain to remain in the minority.

Now the National Republican Senatorial Committee is making a similar argument, in reverse -- on behalf of the GOP's Senate candidates.

Ben Smith reports that the NRSC is running an ad on behalf of Senator Elizabeth Dole that argues against electing Dem challenger Kay Hagan because of the specter of total Democratic control of Washington.

"If Hagan wins," the ad says, "they get a blank check." This, of course, seems to presume an Obama victory.

As one Democrat joked to us: ""Republicans launch new campaign theme: All the rest of us are gonna lose, so elect me."

Still more stunning numbers, from today's Quinnipiac poll of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania:

By smaller margins of two to six points, voters say they trust McCain more than Obama to handle foreign policy...

Senator Obama...is winning among all age groups in all three states. He wins women by more than 20 points in Ohio and Pennsylvania and is competitive among men in all three states. Whether voters went to college or not, they are voting for him.

"Perhaps the most remarkable development is that Obama is doing significantly better among white, born again evangelicals in Ohio and Pennsylvania than did Democratic nominee John Kerry four years ago. He also is winning Roman Catholics in those states, historically the key swing voter group in the electorate and synonymous here with the blue-collar vote.

McCain is now preferred on foreign policy by only two to six points -- way too close for comfort on his signature issue. Now, it's true that the foreign policy numbers shift depending on how the question is asked. For instance, if you phrase the question around who is better prepared to handle terrorism or international crises, you might get different numbers.

Still, the fact that McCain's foreign policy advantage is nearly non-existent in the three biggest battlegrounds -- despite McCain's attacks on Obama as basically unable or perhaps unwilling to prevent terrorists from blowing you up -- is pretty startling, and may help explain why he's doing so well with blue-collar whites in those states, too.

Readers: You are the reason that John McCain was unable to keep his robo-slime campaign under the radar, where he wanted it to remain.

You are the ones who made it possible to flush the slime out of the sewer, by telling us what you saw and heard. Many thanks for doing that. It may yet prove that the robo-slime story has had a real impact on this race.

So we wanted to reiterate: Please keep it going. Keep telling us what you see, and what you hear. And not just robo-slime. Everything.

Tell us what you are seeing on the ground from the operations of both presidential campaigns in your states. Mailers, ads, surrogate action, odd or revealing local coverage, materials being spread by independent third-party groups -- we want to hear about it all.

If you see something of interest, please shoot us a note by clicking on the "tips" link in the upper right corner of this site.

Only 13 days to go.

Polls: Obama Ahead In Florida, Ohio And Pennsylvania
A new round of Quinnipiac polls gives Barack Obama the lead in the three largest swing states. Obama is ahead 49%-44% in Florida, 52%-38% in Ohio, and 53%-40% in Pennsylvania. The Ohio result seems like an outlier compared to other recent polls showing a tight race, but the others are not unreasonable.

Obama In Indiana, Then Off To Hawaii; Biden In North Carolina
Barack Obama is holding a rally at 11 a.m. ET this morning in Indianapolis, before leaving the campaign trail to visit his ailing grandmother in Hawaii. Joe Biden is campaigning in North Carolina, with a 10:30 a.m. ET rally in Charlotte, a 2:15 p.m. ET rally in Winston-Salem, and a 7 p.m. ET rally in Raleigh.

McCain In Florida; Palin In Ohio And Pennsylvania
John McCain is kicking off his officially-themed "Joe The Plumber" rallies, with a 9 a.m. ET rally in Osmond Beach, Florida, and a 6 p.m. ET rally in Sarasota, Florida. Sarah Palin is holding a 1 p.m. ET rally in Troy, Ohio, and a 7:15 p.m. ET rally in Beaver, Pennsylvania.

Mellencamp In New Radio Ad: Obama Is The One For Small-Town Voters
The Obama campaign has a radio ad in Indiana featuring the state's favorite son John Mellencamp, whose famous "I was born in a small town" lyrics puts him in a good position to subtly rebut any objections to Obama's own "small town" gaffe from April:

Click To Play

"But now I'm seeing small towns across America dying," Mellencamp says. "Folks losing their jobs and their homes. Eight years of George Bush have really hurt. And John McCain is just more of the same."

Another Poll Shows Narrow Obama Lead In North Carolina
A new poll from North Carolina-based Marshall Marketing gives Barack Obama a 48%-46% in this newly-minted swing state, within the ±4.5% margin of error. In their previous poll from two weeks ago, McCain had a 48%-46% edge.

Obama At Rally: "This Looks Like The Real Virginia To Me"
At a rally yesterday in Leesburg, Virginia, Barack Obama rebutted the "Real Virginia" comments of McCain surrogate Nancy Pfotenhauer. "I know some folks may not think so, but this looks like the real Virginia to me," Obama said. "This looks like authentic Virginia and y'all look like a bunch of Virginians."

Schwarzenegger: Palin Will Be Ready By Inauguration Day
In an interview aired yesterday evening on CNN, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger did his best to defend Sarah Palin's qualifications. When asked whether Palin is ready and qualified, the Terminator answered: "By the time that she is sworn in I think she will be ready."

Is the McCain campaign worried about West Virginia, a state that Obama is making a play for but that most experts assumed was solidly in the GOP column?

A reader points out to us that McCain appears to have cut a paid radio ad, and posted it on the McCain campaign's YouTube page, that's specifically geared to run in that state:

The spot appears to be a remake of an earlier spot geared to run in other states that the McCain campaign has been advertising in.

"Clean coal is important to America -- and to West Virginia," the new spot says. "For West Virginians coal means thousands of jobs...But Obama, Biden, and their liberal allies oppose clean coal."

It's unclear if the West Virginia ad is actually running. But the spot has clearly been created for a West Virginia audience, suggesting that if it isn't running, it's the can and ready to roll if necessary.

We tried to learn more, but a McCain campaign spokesperson didn't have a comment. We'll bring you more when we get it.

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

Bachmann Doubles Down On Obama = Anti-America
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has dug in further on her position that Barack Obama is against America. Bachmann appeared today on the Hugh Hewitt radio show, and had this to say: "And so, he [Chris Matthews] was using the word "Anti-American" and I told Chris, what I question are Barack Obama's views. Because Barack Obama's views are against America." And here's what she said on the Mike Gallagher show: "What are Barack Obama's policies? Are they for America, or will they be against traditional American ideals and values?"

House GOP List Sees Double-Digit Losses
U.S. News has obtained the NRCC's internal "Death List" of seats they consider to be probably lost to the Democrats. Ten seats are listed as "likely gone," another nine are tagged as "leaning Democratic," and another 22 are "pure toss-up." It's unknown whether this list was drafted before or after the party cut off support for Michele Bachmann.

Read more »

Whoa. We've just obtained a McCain campaign robo-slime call that slams Dems as "dangerously weak on crime" and hits Barack Obama and his "liberal allies" for having a "disturbing history of coddling criminals."

Worse, the call even insinuates that Obama isn't inclined to protect your kids -- in fact, the call directly alleges that Obama has voted against "protecting children from danger."

A reader in Wisconsin sends in the audio, and a second reader in Indiana reports hearing the call:

Click To Play

Script:

Hello, I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC, because Democrats are dangerously weak on crime. Barack Obama has voted against tougher penalties for street gangs, drug-related crimes, and protecting children from danger. Barack Obama and his liberal allies have a disturbing history of coddling criminals. so we can't trust their judgment to keep our families safe. This call was paid for by the Republican National Committee and McCain-Palin 2008 at 866 558-5591. Thank you, bye

It's unclear what the bit about not protecting kids is a reference to.

This is the third call we've documented today: There was one starring Rudy Giuliani, who suggested that Obama opposes jailing murderers and rapists. And there was a second hitting Obama over the "bitter" comments.

In other words, another huge wave of McCain robo-slime has been unleashed.

Here's our daily composite of the six major national tracking polls. Barack Obama's lead just keeps getting bigger:

• Gallup: Obama 52%, McCain 44%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 52%-42% Obama lead yesterday.

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

• ABC/Washington Post: Obama 54%, McCain 43%, with a ±2.5% margin of error, compared to a 53%-44% Obama lead yesterday.

• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 47%, McCain 42%, with a ±3.4% margin of error, compared to a 47%-41% Obama lead from yesterday.

• Research 2000: Obama 51%, McCain 41%, with a ±3% margin of error, compared to a 50%-42% Obama lead from yesterday.

• Zogby: Obama 52%, McCain 42%, with a ±2.9% margin of error, compared to a 50%-42% Obama lead yesterday.

Adding these polls together and weighting them by the square roots of their sample sizes, Obama is ahead 51.3%-43.1%, a lead of 8.2 points, compared to the 50.5%-43.1% Obama lead from yesterday.

A Republican source has confirmed to Election Central that the NRCC is indeed pulling all its advertising for Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), whose antics since her McCarthyist rant on Hardball have quickly put this once-safe incumbent in serious danger. Several hundred-thousand dollars worth of TV time had previously been reserved on Bachmann's behalf, but now it has all been cancelled, as Huffington Post first reported.

Bear in mind that Bachmann was heavily favored to win re-election before this whole mess happened, but since then her Democratic opponent has received $1.3 million in online donations and another $1 million in commitments from the DCCC. The national party is now directing its attention to other races.

Bachmann could still potentially win, as this district voted 57%-42% for George W. Bush in 2004. But she's now on her own. It's a rare thing for a national party to totally cut off an incumbent, so this should give you an idea of just how unpopular Bachmann is among Washington Republicans right now.

We've just learned of yet another nasty McCain campaign robocall: This one hits Barack Obama over his "bitter" comments about guns and religion, and repeatedly denounces Dems as "elitists" who "don't understand us."

A reader in Wisconsin who taped the call sends in the audio, and another reader in North Carolina reports hearing it today:

Click To Play

Mary Ann Benavides, a psychologist in Wisconsin, and Chris Jones, the director of communications for a real estate tech company in North Carolina, confirm to us that they received the call.

Here's the script:

I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC, because Barack Obama says Midwest folks like us cling to our guns because we're bitter. And elitist Democrats who want to control Washington have tried to completely ban handguns and most hunting rifles. The NRA said that Barack Obama would be the most anti-gun president in American history. These elitist Democrats just don't understand us, and we can't trust them with our second amendment rights. This call was paid for the the Republican National Committee and McCain/Palin 2008.

The Republican National Committee didn't return a call for comment.

This "bitter" robocall comes after we reported today that the McCain campaign unleashed a Rudy Giuliani robocall attacking Obama on crime. And we're getting reports of yet another McCain call hitting him on crime.

It's very clear that the McCain campaign has unleashed a new wave of robo-slime today.

Separately, HuffPo reports that GOP Senator Gordon Smith is now denouncing the calls.

A new round of CNN polls in five red states has some very good news for Barack Obama: He's leading in four out of the five, with a huge lead in Virginia.

• Nevada: Obama 51%, McCain 46%, with a ±3.5% margin of error. Three weeks ago, Obama was up 51%-47%.

• North Carolina: Obama 51%, McCain 47%, with a ±4% margin of error. Two weeks ago, it was a 49%-49% tie.

• Ohio: Obama 50%, McCain 46%, with a ±3.5% margin of error. Two weeks ago, Obama was ahead 50%-47%.

• Virginia: Obama 54%, McCain 44%, outside of the ±4% margin of error. This is basically unchanged from Obama's 53%-43% lead a week ago.

• West Virginia: McCain 53%, Obama 44%, outside of the ±4% margin of error. A month ago, McCain was only up 50%-46%, so this is the one sliver of good news for him in here.

All five of these states voted twice for George W. Bush, and the four where Obama is ahead add up to 53 electoral votes. John McCain pretty much needs to hold on to all 53 of them, or else it will be exceedingly difficult for him to pull off a victory.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), whose re-election has been put in serious danger thanks to her McCarthyist rant on Hardball -- not to mention her ham-fisted attempts at denying she ever said it -- is now admitting that she misspoke.

But it gets even better: Bachmann is blaming Chris Matthews for her gaffe, telling a Rotary Club event in her district yesterday that she had never seen Hardball and should have avoided the trap Matthews laid for her:

"When I was on Hardball with Chris Matthews last week, I do believe firmly that a trap was laid, but I stepped into it," Bachmann said. "And I made a misstatement, and I made a comment that I would take back."

Oddly enough, Bachmann admitted to misspeaking, but still said that she did not question Barack Obama's patriotism -- not that she didn't mean to question his patriotism, but that she didn't do it.

National Republicans are feeling very frustrated with Bachmann right now, worried that her public buffoonery could end up costing them a seat that they barely had to worry at all about even one week ago.

It was perhaps predictable that the task of recording the worst of McCain's robo-slime -- the worst so far, at least -- would fall to Rudy Giuliani.

Giuliani has recorded a new McCain robocall in which he suggests, in effect, that Barack Obama doesn't think sex offenders, drug dealers and murders should have to go to jail, according to Jennifer Henderson, a stay-at-home mom in Maine who tells us she received the call.

Readers in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio, and Colorado also report receiving the same call. Here's audio:

Click To Play

Script:

Hi, this is Rudy Giuliani, and I'm calling for John McCain and the Republican National Committee because you need to know that Barack Obama opposes mandatory prison sentences for sex offenders, drug dealers, and murderers.

It's true, I read Obama's words myself. And recently, Congressional liberals introduced a bill to eliminate mandatory prison sentences for violent criminals -- trying to give liberal judges the power to decide whether criminals are sent to jail or set free. With priorities like these, we just can't trust the inexperience and judgment of Barack Obama and his liberal allies. This call was paid for by the Republican National Committee and McCain-Palin 2008 at 866 558 5591.

Note that Rudy claims Obama "opposes mandatory prison sentences" for rapists and murders, Rudy is actually referring to Obama's opposition to specific mandatory minimum sentences. By dropping the word "minimum," he's insinuating that Obama opposes mandatory prison sentences in general.

This just might be the sleaziest exercise in robo-slime yet. Congrats, Rudy!

Late Update: Ben Smith has a very interesting example of a new genre in McCain slime. Every day a new innovation!

Late Late Update: The Obama campaign sends over a response from Tom Nee, president of the National Association of Police Organizations. Read it after the jump.

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New national numbers from Fox News: Obama 49%, McCain 40%, among likely voters.

The poll finds, as several others have, that Obama now holds an edge on whose tax plan is preferred, 49%-37%.

It also finds that Obama leads by four points, 45%-41%, when respondents are "who they would go to for advice if they had to make the toughest decision of their life."

Still another key number:

McCain has a 47 percent -- 41 percent edge among people who say terrorism is extremely important.

That's uncomfortably close for McCain, who has spent months attacking Obama as a coddler of terrorists, and the spread is dwarfed by Obama's 22-point edge on the economy.

The McCain campaign is now charging that the terrorists want Obama to win, while pretending they're not really saying that.

The McCain campaign just held a curious conference call with reporters in which McCain advisers made the insinuation. It's a claim that's at odds with folks who know what they're talking about, such as journalist Ron Suskind and counter-terror big Richard Clarke, who have both written that Al Qaeda actually prefers pro-war GOP rule.

The McCain camp also unleashed yet another clumsy attack on the media, hitting The Washington Post for failing to report a recent quote from a Hamas official who praised Obama-Biden.

On the call, McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann seized on an article in today's WaPo reporting that some members of al Qaeda are pulling for McCain to win.

"If we're gonna talk about who has got support from terrorist groups in this election, I'm gonna read some quotes," Scheunemann said. "I'm not going to characterize them. I will let others judge whether they amount to expressions of support or opposition."

Scheunemann proceeded to read a recent quote from a Hamas adviser, in which he said that Palestinians would do better under an Obama administration's foreign policy. He then chastised the WaPo for not reporting that quote.

"The Washington Post did not find the time to write a story about that," Scheunemann said. "Not a single story."

When discussing this topic, it's always useful to recall that journalist Ron Suskind reported that CIA analysts concluded that Bin Laden had released a tape of himself on the eve of the 2004 election in order to help Bush stay in power, partly because his presidency made such a handy recruiting tool.

And Clarke, for his part, recently surmised that Al Qaeda might try to swing the election to McCain, perhaps with a terror attack.

One especially fun moment on the call came when McCain adviser Jim Woolsey badly undercut the campaign call's message. Woolsey said that Al Qaeda supporters who praise McCain are actually doing it to hurt him, because praise from Al Qaeda is the "kiss of death."

At that point, a reporter quite naturally asked whether the same could be said of Hamas advisers who praise Obama, prompting Woolsey to pull a homina homina homina and dodge the question.

Late Update: TPM alum Spencer Ackerman has some absolute must-reading on this topic.

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

National House Committees Shell Out Big Money, NRCC Finally In The Game
Both parties' national House committees shelled out big bucks in the newest federal filings. The DCCC spent nearly $4 million in yesterday's FEC filings, with the biggest expenditure going for $450,000 against Rep. Robin "Liberals Hate Real Americans" Hayes (R-NC). The NRCC, which has held on to its much smaller war chest until the home stretch of the campaign, spent $4.1 million, with the biggest payment going for over $450,000 to defend Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA).

DCCC Going On The Air Against Bachmann
The DCCC will be going on the air against Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), with this ad attacking her for blaming the financial crisis on too much regulation of Wall St. -- and pointing out how much money she's received from Wall St. interests:

The DCCC has committed to spending $1 million on this race, sensing an opening in the wake of Bachmann's statements on Hardball that the media should investigate Barack Obama and other members of Congress for possible anti-American views, followed by her truly awkward attempts at denying she said it.

Read more »

Let Freedom Ring, a conservative outside group formed in 2004, is spending over $1.2 million on a pair of ads attacking Barack Obama in multiple battleground states, newly-filed FEC reports show.

The records show that the group has plunked down over $800,000 on this spot hammering Obama over the financial meltdown and over Fannie and Freddie, charging that Obama is "benefitting politically from the financial crisis" and has been "part of the problem."...

The records show the group is spending over $400,000 on this spot hitting Obama as "chicken" for his present votes in Illinois:

JC Callahan, Let Freedom Ring's administrator, confirms the expenditures to us and adds that the spots will run in multiple battleground states. More details to follow.

Late Update: The group confirms that the buy is in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, and Colorado.

Reading McCain's Ayers slime from a script into the phone was too much for one young woman, reports West Virginia's Charleston Gazette:

Chaylee Cole, a student at Fairmont State University, lost her part-time job in Weston last Friday after refusing to make telephone calls attacking Barack Obama...

"I was working at the call center," Cole said. "We got a campaign ad talking about how Obama had been part of terrorist attacks on the Capitol, the Pentagon and a judge's home and had ties with Bill Ayers.

"Last Thursday, I told them I did not want to read it," Cole said. "They said, 'Either you read it or you go home.' I told them I wasn't going to read it."

A man in Wisconsin also quit his call-center job over the Ayers call, local news there reports.

More stunning numbers in the new Ipsos/McClatchy poll:

On taxes, for example, likely voters now prefer Obama over McCain by a margin of 8 percentage points. This is despite a concerted effort by McCain and running mate Sarah Palin to cast Obama as a tax-and-spend liberal who'd raise taxes on ordinary folks such as Joe the Plumber, an Ohio man whom McCain cited repeatedly in the last debate and since then in ads and on the campaign trail.

On family values, a subject Republicans have used to court Christian conservatives and suburban moderates since the 1980s, likely voters now prefer Obama over McCain by 8 points. That's up from 3 points in mid-September...

Likely voters still prefer McCain over Obama on the issues of national security and foreign policy. However, McCain's advantage on national security, 12 percentage points, had narrowed sharply from the 23- to 28-point edge he'd had in weekly Ipsos/McClatchy polls since Labor Day.

Obama holds the advantage on taxes and family values, and is cutting deeply into McCain's advantage on national security, even though McCain's entire campaign is all about painting him as a tax-and-spend liberal who is culturally different from you and me in some sinister way and doesn't have the toughness or even inclination to prevent you from getting blown up by terrorists.

New McCain Ad: "I'm Joe The Plumber"
The new TV ad from John McCain, set to air in key states, features everyday people proclaiming their solidarity with Joe The Plumber against Barack Obama's tax policies:

One man reacts indignantly: "Obama wants my sweat to pay for his trillion dollars in new spending?" The effort here is to make it seem as if Obama would raise taxes on everyone, not just the top earners.

Obama In Virginia, Biden In Colorado, Michelle In Florida
Barack Obama is campaigning in Virginia today, with a 12:15 p.m. ET rally in Richmond and a 5:30 p.m. ET rally in Leesburg. Michelle Obama is campaigning in Florida, holding an 11:30 a.m. ET rally in Jacksonville and a 2:30 p.m. ET rally in Gainesville. Joe Biden is in Colorado, with a morning event in Colorado Springs and a 4:15 p.m. ET rally in Pueblo.

McCain In New Hampshire, Then Campaigning With Palin In Ohio
John McCain is holding a 9 a.m. ET rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, while Sarah Palin starts her day with a 9 a.m. ET rally in Findlay, Ohio. The two will then meet for a pair of joint rallies in Ohio, one at 3:30 p.m. ET in Green, and one at 6:30 p.m. ET in Cincinnati.

Woman Quits Call-Center Job After Refusing To Read Obama-Ayers Script
It turns out a good number of anti-Obama calls coming from the McCain campaign are being made by hired callers, not volunteers or pre-recorded robocalls. We know this because a woman quit her job at a West Virginia call center when she refused to read the stock script associating Obama with Bill Ayers.

African-Americans Making Up Large Portion Of Early Votes
The Wall St. Journal reports that black voters are making up a disproportionately high number of early votes cast so far, a development that could have real ramifications in swing Southern states like Florida and North Carolina. If the Obama campaign can bank votes from minority communities, their field operations can concentrate on turning out other voters on Election Day.

Palin: "Only Our Side Has A Woman On The Ticket."
Campaigning yesterday in Nevada, Sarah Palin played the gender card against Democrats efforts to win women voters. "Our opponents think that they have the women's vote all locked up, which is a little presumptuous," Palin said. "Little presumptuous, since only our side has a woman on the ticket."

RNC: We'll Give Palin's Campaign Wardrobe To Charity
The RNC says they will donate the $150,000 in clothing they've bought for Sarah Palin to charity after the election. Working women might lack health care and jobs, but at least they'll get a designer label.

The Obama campaign plans to unleash a robocall in Wisconsin tomorrow that hits back hard against John McCain's robocalls in the state -- it features a small business owner from Green Bay, Wisconsin, that says she's been turned against McCain by his "sleazy" roboslime campaign against Obama.

An Obama adviser sent us the call, which features Jeri Watermolen, a small business owner from Green Bay, who claims that she "used to support McCain but has switched her support to Obama" because of the "sleazy phone calls and mail" attacking Obama that McCain has put out.

Here's a script:

Hi, this is Jeri Watermolen, calling for the Campaign for Change. I live in Green Bay and, like you, I've been getting sleazy phone calls and mail from John McCain and his supporters viciously -- and falsely -- attacking Barack Obama. I used to support John McCain because he honorably served our country -- but this year he's running a dishonorable campaign. We know McCain will continue many of Bush's policies, and now he's using George Bush's divisive tactics. In fact, he hired the Bush strategists whose attacks even McCain once called hateful.

Barack Obama will turn the page on these negative politics and stand up for the middle class. That's the change we need, and it's why I have changed my mind about John McCain. Join me in voting for Barack Obama. Paid for the Campaign for Change, a project of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, 608-255-5172, and authorized by Obama for America.

You can listen to the call here.

In the latest step in their plan for an upset win in Pennsylvania, the McCain campaign is reportedly scaling back its planned ad buys in five other states -- New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Colorado, Maine and Minnesota -- to free up money for Pennsylvania and a few other key swing states.

The campaign is spreading out the advertising time it's already bought in these states for the coming week, and will instead stretch it across the final two weeks of the campaign. It's unclear whether the campaign has committed to buying this time and can't back out, or whether they view it as a compromise between staying the course or pulling out entirely.

The key here is what the McCain campaign thinks it can do in Pennsylvania. The state has 21 electoral votes, and it hasn't voted Republican since 1988. If they can overcome their current steep deficit and poach it out of the Democratic column, they could afford to lose Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado and Virginia and still pull out a win if they can hold on to all the other Bush 2004 states.

AmericaBlog flags a stunning finding in the new NBC/Wall St. Journal poll:

Now, Palin's qualifications to be president rank as voters' top concern about McCain's candidacy -- ahead of continuing President Bush's policies, enacting economic policies that only benefit the rich and keeping too high of a troop presence in Iraq.

Respondents were read a list of things and were asked to pick the two that most concern them about McCain. Thirty-four percent named Palin, versus only 23% for the runner-up, which was that it seems likely he'd continue Bush's policies.

That would seem to suggest that Palin may have become a greater liability for McCain than Bush.

Separately, the poll's toplines show Obama with an expanded lead of 10 points over McCain among registered voters, 52%-42%.

Some must-watch video: Joe Biden positively erupts on the campaign trail in Colorado today, hammering away at John McCain over robo-slime-gate and demanding that McCain "bring down those robocalls!"...

"If he's really serious when he said this morning on one of the shows that this election is all about the economy, then I say, `John, stop your ads. Bring down those robocalls,'" Biden bellowed. "If it's about the economy, argue the economy!"

Biden built to his climax: "John, stop these calls!"

Thus using McCain's robo-slime to reinforce the Obama camp's chosen frame for the final month of the race: Anytime McCain steers the discussion towards Obama's bio or character, it's only because he's afraid to debate the economy. It's a frame that shows no signs of cracking or weakening.

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

Bachmann: It Is "Absolutely A Lie" That I Questioned Obama's Patriotism
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) told the Washington Times that people are lying about her McCarthyite rant on Hardball last week. "I did not question Barack Obama's patriotism, I did not say he was anti-American," Bachmann said. "And the other accusation is that I was calling for members of Congress to be investigated on their anti-American views. That's absolutely a lie."

House GOPer's Ad: Dem Opponent Favors Driver's License For 9/11 Hijacker
Check out this new TV ad from Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL), who is facing a very tough re-election battle. The ad accuses Democratic challenger Suzanne Kosmas of favoring driver's licenses for illegal-alien terrorists -- using a picture of 9/11 hijacker Muhammad Atta:

Feeney's problems here stem from his having been implicated in the Jack Abramoff scandals, and he's gone so far as to tape an ad in which he abjectly apologized for it. The Democrats have released internal polling showing him losing in a landslide, but he clearly thinks that playing the terrorism card could help him recover in this GOP-leaning district.

Read more »

Here's our daily composite of the six major national tracking polls. Barack Obama continues to lead John McCain by a healthy margin, with a slight dip in McCain's support today:

• Gallup: Obama 52%, McCain 42%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 52%-43% Obama lead yesterday.

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

• ABC/Washington Post: Obama 53%, McCain 44%, with a ±3% margin of error, the same as yesterday's numbers. This is the second day of the ABC/WaPo tracking poll, and the first day we're including it in the Composite.

• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 47%, McCain 41%, with a ±3.4% margin of error, compared to a 47%-42% Obama lead from yesterday.

• Research 2000: Obama 50%, McCain 42%, with a ±3% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.

• Zogby: Obama 50%, McCain 42%, with a ±2.9% margin of error, compared to a 50%-44% Obama lead yesterday.

Adding these polls together and weighting them by the square roots of their sample sizes, Obama is ahead 50.5%-43.1%, a lead of 7.4 points, compared to the 50.5%-43.7% Obama lead from yesterday, when the ABC/WaPo numbers are included in yesterday's total.

Looks like Obama's big labor backers are entering the robocall game, too, as a way of keeping up the economic assault on John McCain in the swing states.

Working America, an arm of the AFL-CIO, is out with a new robo in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan that slams McCain as a "disaster for the middle class" who has gone out of his way to "get rid of the rules for the fatcats on Wall Street."

Here's audio:

Script:

Hi, this is Sue with an important message from Working America about the current economic crisis. You should have just received a piece of mail from us, explaining how Republican Sen. John McCain's economic policies have been a disaster for the middle class. John McCain has gotten us into this economic crisis. He supported sending our jobs overseas, and he supported getting rid of the rules for the fatcats on Wall Street. In the meantime, he has done nothing to help struggling families on Main Street. Now he wants to continue the same falied policies. Working families can't afford four more years of this. Please join me in voting against John McCain on Nov. 4. Thank you for your time.

An AFL-CIO official confirmed the call is genuine. (Via the National Political Do Not Call Registry)

Late Update: Working America executive director Karen Nussbaum says there are roughly half a million calls going out primarily to households in those four states. She says the calls are only going to Working America members, who signed up with the group to "get information about economic issues."

That these recipients of the calls are Working America members, of course, doesn't change the fact that these are potentially undecided swing voters who are getting automated calls, just as the recipients of McCain's calls are. But Nussbaum rejects the idea that these are in any way comparable to McCain's robocalls, which she blasted as "attack robocalls" filled with "innuendo."

The Obama campaign goes up on the air in Virginia with a new spot that launches one of its most direct hits yet on McCain's temperament and steadiness under pressure:

The ad uses the growing unease with McCain's handling of the economic crisis, which is reflected in multiple polls, to undercut the Arizona Senator's own claim to being more prepared to handle crises than the unseasoned Obama.

"Senator McCain and Governor Palin talk about experience. A steady hand," the ad says. "But in this economic crisis, it's McCain who's careened from stance to stance. Been erratic. Poured gasoline on the economic mess."

One thing the meltdown did was enlarge the playing field on which the battle is playing out over who's better prepared to handle crises in a general sense, a category where Obama has now gained a pronounced edge. Indeed, the new Pew poll, among others, suggests an interesting paradox in this race: The focus away from national security and on to the economy has actually improved Obama's numbers on national security by improving perceptions of his overall preparedness.

The new Pew poll finds Barack Obama with a big lead against John McCain, and also finds that he's made big in-roads on national security issues.

The top-line numbers: Obama leads McCain by 14 points, 53%-39%, among likely voters, compared to a 49%-42% result a week ago and a 46%-46% tie back in early September.

On issues, Obama has vastly expanded his lead on the economy since the early September numbers. Back then Obama had an 11-point advantage, 47%-38%, but since then -- with the financial crisis and the presidential debates intervening -- Obama now leads by 21 points, 53%-32%, on the issue.

On Iraq, McCain led by seven points in early September, 48%-41%, but now it's Obama with a six-point advantage, 48%-42%. McCain still leads on who is most trusted to prevent a terrorist attack, but the gap has narrowed: McCain led before by 25 points, 56%-31%, compared to an 11-point lead now, 49%-38%.

The Obama campaign has now announced their venue for Election Night: Grant Park in Chicago.

Here's the campaign's statement:

Obama Campaign Announces Location for Election Night Event

CHICAGO - The Obama-Biden campaign today announced that the location for the Election Night event on Tuesday, November 4 will be Chicago's Grant Park on Hutchinson Field.

Grant Park is regularly used as an open-air venue for concerts, charity events and sporting activities such as the Chicago Marathon and Taste of Chicago.

Looks like another Republican has been caught making the "Real America" slur against liberals -- and then trying to fib his way out of it.

At a McCain rally over the weekend in North Carolina, Rep. Robin Hayes (R-NC) -- who is in a very tough race against Democrat Larry Kissell -- reportedly told the crowd: "Liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God."

A spokesman for the Hayes campaign categorically denied that Hayes said any such thing. But then this audio of Hayes saying exactly that began to circulate:

Confronted with the audio, Hayes fessed up in a statement: "I genuinely did not recall making the statement and, after reading it, there is no doubt that it came out completely the wrong way. I actually was trying to work to keep the crowd as respectful as possible, so this is definitely not what I intended."

In order to run a campaign like the one John McCain and Sarah Palin have run, the first order of business is to shed your capacity for embarrassment. Case in point: In a speech today, Palin attacked Obama over Pakistan during a rundown she was offering of the "crisis scenarios" Obama might face as President:

Now, Senator Obama, too, having advocated sending our U.S. military into Pakistan without the approval of the Pakistani government, invading the sovereign territory of a troubled partner in the war against terrorism, gotta call that scenario number two.

Recall, though, that Palin got into trouble last month when she inadvertently agreed with Obama's position on this during an exchange with a voter, Michael Rovito, in a Philadelphia pizza joint:

"So we do cross border, like from Afghanistan to Pakistan you think?" Rovito asked.

"If that's what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should," Palin responded, before moving on to greet other voters.

This wasn't some passing, barely-noticed campaign moment -- it was big news, and McCain was forced to disavow Palin's remarks on national television. As noted in this space before, whoever lets this sort of thing into her speeches is either incompetent or very, very brazen.

One has to wonder whether McCain and the Republicans are, in a sense, victims of their own success in playing the slime game.

They've thrown so much vicious stuff at Barack Obama via robocalls, mailers, ads, and the like -- and they've succeeded in doing it so comprehensively -- that it seems likely that it has lost its potency, if it ever had any at all. It seems fair to speculate that the paper slime currency that the GOP has been printing at such a furious rate has lost all its value.

Call it DSD syndrome -- Defining Slime Down.

Take, for instance, the mailer below from the Republican National Committee that's getting attention today (even though HuffPo first posted it five days ago). It shows a plane about to hit an airport and says: "Barack Obama thinks terrorists just need a good talking to."

Is this really going to shock anyone? Is it going to move voters in any meaningful numbers? Doubtful.

Multiple polls show that one of these attacks -- the one on Obama's association with William Ayers -- has been a flop. I suspect that if there were polling on the GOP's more generic efforts to insinuate that Obama is linked to or sympathetic towards terrorists in various other ways -- such as in the mailer below -- it would find the same.

Either way, at this point, when McCain or the RNC links Obama to terrorists in one way or another it's just a dog bites man story.

For the first time in a month, a new poll gives Barack Obama a slim lead in the very red state of Indiana, which hasn't voted Dem since 1964 and where George W. Bush won a 60%-39% landslide in 2004.

The numbers from Public Policy Polling (D): Obama 48%, McCain 46%, within the ±2.6% margin of error. As usual, the economy is the driving force here, with 60% of voters saying it's their most important issue, and this group going to Obama 59%-34%.

Obama advisers insist that they have a real shot at an upset here, partly because McCain started organizing on the ground so late here -- Obama has been here ever since the primary, and McCain has had nearly no presence at all, in part taking it for granted and partly relying on the GOP governor's re-election campaign to do his GOTV for him.

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

Bachmann's Challenger Goes On The Air
Rep. Michele Bachmann's (R-MN) Democratic opponent El Tinklenberg is taking advantage of the huge windfall of donation he's gotten in the wake of Bachmann's Red-Scare-inciting Hardball appearance -- he's raised $700,000 in the last few days, and counting -- and is spending $188,000 to air this new spot introducing himself to voters:

This is very much a GOP district -- it voted 57%-42% for George W. Bush in 2004 -- but the Tinklenberg campaign hopes to capitalize on voter backlash against Bush Republicanism in general and against Bachmann's extremism in particular. Meanwhile, CQ has changed its rating on the race from "Republican Favored" to "Leans Republican."

Bachmann Denies Questioning Obama's Patriotism
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is firing back at critics of her McCarthyite statements on Hardball last week. "Despite the way the blogs and the Democratic Party are spinning it, I never called all liberals anti-American, I never questioned Barack Obama's patriotism," Bachmann writes in a guest op-ed for the Politico. Here's what Bachmann said, via Nexis: "Absolutely. I'm very concerned that he may have anti-American views."

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CNN got a lot of people going late yesterday by reporting that top Republicans had effectively given up on Colorado, Iowa, and New Mexico. One top McCain insider was quoted by CNN as saying these states are "gone."

That would be a big deal, if true, because it would put tremendous pressure on McCain to win Pennsylvania in order to put together an electoral college victory -- but Pennsylvania has all but slipped away for good, polls show.

But Republicans are now pushing back hard on the story here and here,

As usual, the real tell will be ad spending: Until the RNC and/or McCain yanks their ads in those states, they haven't ceded them in any meaningful sense. If you all see signs of diminished ad buys in these (or any other) states, let us know by clicking on the "tips" link in the upper-right-hand corner of this site.

Late Update: RNC spokesperson Liz Mair emails over the following: "RNC efforts are ongoing in these states, and Barack Obama would assume otherwise at his own peril."

Obama's cash on hand numbers are in, and they're astounding: He entered October with $133.6 million in the bank.

That comes after the news that he raised $153 million in September.

Combine Obama's cash on hand with the DNC's cash on hand number -- $27.4 million -- and you have a total Dem cash number of $161 million.

Meanwhile, McCain's cash on hand number entering October was $46.9 million, well under half of Obama's.

Combine that with the RNC's cash on hand, which is $77.5 million, and you get $124.4 million in total GOP funds -- less than Obama's cash on hand alone, not even counting the DNC.

That puts the Dems nearly $40 million ahead of the GOP at the beginning of October, a significant financial advantage as time runs out.

An AFL-CIO official sends over some detail about its planned get-out-the-vote operation, which the labor federation will be announcing a bit later this morning.

If AFL makes good on its vow, which is to mount the biggest operation in its history, it will be lending an enormous boost to Obama in the battleground states.

AFL promises to deploy an army of 250,000 volunteers in 20 states, including shifting resources to new toss-up states like North Carolina and Indiana, its spokesperson, Steve Smith, says.

AFL is also promising a new, micro-targeted approach to very specific swing constituencies, such as working class veterans, retirees and gun owners -- groups which have already been targeted by the union and will receive what the AFL official calls "intense communication" in the final stretch.

Such micro-targeting may be paying off already. Smith tells us that AFL's internal polling shows improvement among those very groups, with Obama building a sizable lead over McCain among active gun owners, veterans, and Appalachian voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Obama Cancels Campaign Events To Visit Ill Grandmother
Barack Obama is canceling his campaign events on Thursday and Friday, in order to visit his ailing grandmother in Hawaii. Madelyn Dunham's health has taken a turn for the worse, and the situation serious enough to merit the candidate canceling two days of campaigning during the final two weeks of the campaign.

Obama In Florida, Biden In Colorado
Barack Obama is campaigning in Florida today, with a 10:30 a.m. ET policy summit on jobs in Lake Worth, and a 5:45 p.m. ET rally in Miami alongside Michelle Obama. Michelle Obama is also holding an 11:45 a.m. ET rally in Pensacola. Joe Biden is swinging through Colorado today, with a 12:30 p.m. ET rally in Greeley and a 4:30 p.m. ET rally in Commerce City.

McCain In Pennsylvania, Palin In Nevada
John McCain is campaigning today in Pennsylvania, a state where he hopes to overcome a serious gap in the polls and take 21 electoral votes away from the Democratic column. First McCain has a 10 a.m. ET rally in Bensalem, followed by a 2 p.m. ET rally in Harrisburg, and a 5:30 p.m. ET rally in Moon Township. Sarah Palin is campaigning in Nevada, with a 12:30 p.m. ET rally in Reno and a 4:45 p.m. ET rally in Henderson.

McCain Banking On Pennsylvania
CNN reports that the McCain campaign is increasingly viewing Colorado as a goner for them -- even as they dispatched Sarah Palin there yesterday for a full day of campaigning -- and are looking at a way to win the Electoral College by snatching a Kerry state away from Obama. The strategy is now relying heavily on Pennsylvania, where Obama is ahead in the polls by around ten points.

McCain Campaign Making Appeal For Divided Government
The McCain is falling back on a new argument for the home stretch of the campaign: That a Republican should be elected president as a check on what is expected to be a large Democratic majority in Congress. "That argument is a bank shot," McCain strategist Charlie Black told the Boston Globe. "We're reminding them that by considering Obama they're delivering a monopoly to liberal Democrats."

McCain: My Robocalls Are True, Obama's Ads Are Lies
Appearing this morning on CBS's The Early Show, John McCain defended his robocall saying that Barack Obama has "worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers." "That robocall is absolutely accurate," McCain said. "And, by the way, Sen. Obama's campaign is running robocalls as we speak. He's running an ad that distorts -- that's untrue about my immigration position, about stem cell research, and about several other issues."

A new round of Rasmussen polls tonight shows Barack Obama and John McCain splitting some of the key swing states this election -- and on the whole, that's good news for Obama:

• Colorado: Obama 51%, McCain 46%, with a ±3% margin of error, compared to a nearly-identical 52%-45% Obama lead from a few days ago.

• Florida: McCain 49%, Obama 48%, with a ±3% margin of error, compared to the 51%-46% Obama lead from a week ago.

• Missouri: Obama 49%, McCain 44%, with a ±3% margin of error, compared to a 52%-46% Obama lead from last week.

• North Carolina: Obama 51%, McCain 48%, with ±3% margin of error, compared to a 48%-48% tied race from a week ago.

• Ohio: McCain 49%, Obama 47%, with a ±4% margin of error, compared to a 49%-49% tied race from last week.

All five of these states voted for George W. Bush in 2004. And at the rate things are going for John McCain -- with it looking less and less likely that he'll be able to pick up a Kerry state -- he'll essentially need to sweep all of them.

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

Dems Preparing For Major Offensive Against Bachmann
The DCCC now plans to spend $1 million against Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) in the wake of her McCarthyite rant on Hardball, sensing that voters back home might end up turning against her extremism. A TV ad should be coming in the next few days. Meanwhile, the Cook Political Report has changed its rating on Bachmann, downgrading her by two whole positions from "Likely Republican" to "Tossup."

Democracy Corps: Congressional Dems Poised For Another Wave
A new set of polling from Democracy Corps, the strategy firm headed up by James Carville and Stan Greeberg, finds Democrats running strong in the 50 most-competitive House seats currently held by the GOP. Democrats lead 48%-46% in the full set of battleground district, and lead 51%-43% in the tier making up the most competitive seats of the 50. At the rate things are going, Democrats could pick up even more seats in the cycle right after they already enjoyed a wave -- a rare occurrence in politics.

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Prominent McCain surrogate Rudy Giuliani today urged the media to look into Barack Obama's past drug use -- even though he explicitly said last November that it shouldn't be an issue and even said he respected Obama's candor for having written about it.

On Fox News today, Rudy echoed the McCain campaign's new line, asking why the press, in light of the Times's recent profile of Cindy McCain, hadn't investigated Obama's youthful indiscretions (which the Times already has done).

"God forbid somebody would do some reporting on Barack Obama's use of drugs," Rudy said this afternoon, artfully dropping the fact that it was past drug use.

But last fall, when Rudy was a GOP primary candidate and Obama's past drug use came up in a different context, Rudy explicitly said it shouldn't be an issue, as a way of arguing that his own manifold indiscretions should be overlooked.

"I respect his honesty in doing that," Rudy said then, referring to Obama's writings about his past use of drugs. "I think that one of the things we need from our people who are running for office is not this pretense of perfection. And the reality is all of us that run for public office, whether its governor, legislator, mayor, president, we are all human beings. If we haven't made mistakes don't vote for us."

Later in today's Fox interview, Rudy did say that he didn't think the press should probe Obama's past drug use or Cindy McCain's. But let's get real: Rudy was deliberately amplifying the McCain campaign's new message that Obama's should now be on the table -- even though he explicitly said such foibles, and Obama's in particular, were irrelevant, back when his own were at issue.

Two new polls give Barack Obama solid leads in Virginia, which hasn't voted Democratic since the LBJ landslide of 1964.

The numbers from Rasmussen: Obama 54%, McCain 44%, outside of the ±3% margin of error. A week ago, Obama had a narrow lead of 50%-47%, and it was 50%-48% for Obama two weeks ago.

The new poll from SurveyUSA: Obama 51%, McCain 45%, with a ±3.9% margin of error. Two weeks ago, SurveyUSA had Obama up 53%-43%. The internals this week show Obama winning 42% of the white vote, well ahead of John Kerry's 32% in 2004.

Relatedly, Chris Bowers argues persuasively over at Open Left that the overall map is such that that McCain needs to sweep -- yes, sweep -- victories in seven Bush states in order to avoid losing: Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia. That puts individual state polls like these into much-needed perspective.

Sarah Palin may have condemned robocalls yesterday as intrusive and a drain on people's attention spans, but that didn't stop her from recording her own robocall on behalf of the McCain campaign.

Carol Johnson, a retiree from Spooner, Wisconsin, and a second reader from Nevada, report to us that they received robocalls starring Palin herself.

Palin's robocall touted both her and McCain as "mavericks" who have a feel for people's economic suffering, vowed that they would reform Wall Street and Washington, and hit Barack Obama and Joe Biden for not "listening" to the American people.

Click To Play

Here's the script:

Hi, this is Sarah Palin. One of our local campaign volunteers just called you, and I wanted to follow up and ask for your support. You know our opponents may talk a lot, but they haven't done much listening. I know what it's like to be a hard-working mom. I know how hard it is to make ends meet during tough times like this. John McCain and I know our country is hurting, and we know how to turn it around. We'll get our economy back on track. we'll cut your taxes and lower prices at the pump and at the grocery store. John McCain and I are the mavericks who will reform Washington, Wall Street., and all the wasteful government in between. I hope John McCain and I can count on your support on November 4. We won't let you down. Paid for by McCain-Palin 2008 at 703-418-2008.

Palin's call would seem to be at odds with her own public statements about the tactic. In a Q and A with reporters late yesterday, she said she'd prefer that the campaign not resort to such calls at all, describing them as "kind of draining in terms of Americans' attention span."

"They get a bit irritated with just being inundated," Palin added.

The McCain campaign didn't immediately comment.

Late Update: I should have mentioned that Carol Johnson, the reader who tipped us off to his call, is a member of an anti-robocall group called the National Political Do Not Contact Registry (NPDNC), which tipped us off to this call and which you can read about here.

The Obama-backing labor federation Change to Win is about to drop some 750,000 mailers in the battlegrounds slamming John McCain and George W. Bush for having "wrecked our economy," with a fun play on the question, "how do they look themselves in the mirror?".

A Change to Win official sends over an advance copy (click on the images to enlarge):

Change to Win says this is their second largest mail drop to date; it's going out to a dozen battleground states.

It really is worth noting that between mailers, ads, phone calls and shoe-leather house-to-house organizing, the big unions did play a key role in staking out an aggressively populist left-flank for Obama -- and against McCain -- in the key states, well before the meltdown hit.

It looks like yet another McCain campaign stunt may be proving a flop, at least in two key battleground states.

Check out these great numbers buried in a new Suffolk University poll of Ohio and Missouri, which tests the impact of McCain's frequent claim that Barack Obama wants to pick Joe the Plumber's pocket in order to further his shadowy socialist and redistributionist agenda:

In Ohio, 68 percent of respondents said they recognized "Joe the Plumber," but only 6 percent said that Joe's story will make them more likely to vote McCain; 4 percent were more likely to vote for Obama; and 85 percent were not affected.

A similar finding was recorded in Missouri, where 80 percent had heard of the presidential plumber; 8 percent were more likely to vote McCain; 3 percent more likely to vote Obama; and 86 percent not affected by his story.

That's pretty consistent. In both states -- both Bush states -- all of one-tenth of the voters who know who Joe the Plumber is said it made them more likely to back McCain. And in both states, huge, huge majorities of around 85% say the Joe mentions make no difference.

It's worth pointing out that McCain's "Joe the Plumber" gambit isn't just some throwaway one-off gag. It's a central pillar of McCain's closing argument on the economy, which is likely to decide this election. He invokes Joe at just about every rally. And his campaign even blasted out an email to supporters today asking them to tell the campaign how they are each "Joe the Plumber," with the possibility that the best could end up in an ad!

But if this poll is any indication, Joe the Plumber's coattails won't be enough to rescue McCain -- in two of his must-win states.

In remarks he's delivering right now in Florida, Barack Obama directly takes on John McCain over his robo-slime campaign, an effort to elevate something that might have otherwise remained a process-y obsession of insiders into a genuinely damaging story.

Here's what he said moments ago:

Obama:

In the final days of campaigns, the say-anything, do-anything politics too often takes over. We've seen it before. And we're seeing it again today. The ugly phone calls. The misleading mail and TV ads. The careless, outrageous comments. All aimed at keeping us from working together, all aimed at stopping change.

It's getting so bad that even Senator McCain's running mate denounced his tactics last night. As you know, you really have to work hard to violate Governor Palin's standards on negative campaigning.

That last line is brutal -- isolating McCain even from his running mate -- as is this one a bit later in the speech:

"That's what you do when you're out of ideas, out of touch, and running out of time."

Full speech after the jump.

Late Update: Video added above.

Read more »

Here's our daily composite of the five major national tracking polls. Barack Obama continues to lead John McCain by a healthy margin, with a slight expansion of the lead in today's numbers:

• Gallup: Obama 52%, McCain 43%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 51%-44% Obama lead yesterday.

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

• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 47%, McCain 42%, with a ±3.4% margin of error, compared to a 48%-41% Obama lead from yesterday.

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

• Zogby: Obama 50%, McCain 44%, with a ±2.9% margin of error, compared to a 48%-45% Obama lead yesterday.

Adding these polls together and weighting them by the square roots of their sample sizes, Obama is ahead 50.1%-43.7%, a lead of 6.4 points, compared to the 49.9%-43.9% Obama lead from yesterday.

On a conference call with reporters just now, the McCain campaign rolled out its grand new push-back against Obama's smashing $150 million September in fundraising: There's something fishy going on here.

The root of their argument is that about $300 million of Obama's total fundraising to date has come from donors whose amounts were lower than the $200 threshold at which the campaign would legally be required to itemize and disclose the donors' identities -- and there are so many of them that the Obama camp has said it would be unfeasible to itemize them all voluntarily.

McCain campaign manager Rick Davis rolled out a new term for these donations: "Secret Donations."

"And I only say secret because I have no doubt that there are sort of -- the vast majority of those are probably legitimate," Davis explained. "But they're being kept secret by the Obama campaign, for no good reason."

Davis later made a direction accusation that Obama "gets away with raising illegitimate money and spending it," and questioned the campaign's honesty when they say they've been returning bad donations that have been flagged.

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

Click To Play

A new national poll from CNN suggests that the race may be tightening, with Obama holding a five point lead among likely voters over McCain, 51%-46%, which is down from an eight-point lead in early October.

One interesting tidbit: There's been a drop in the number who think McCain would most likely represent a continuation of Bush's policies, which suggests the possibility that McCain did manage to have a bit of success at the last debate, when he made a great show of claiming that he isn't Bush.

Nonetheless, Obama's advantage on the economy -- one of the primary places that Dems are arguing that McCain would continue Bush's policies -- remains enormous. A full majority of 53% say Obama would better handle the current crisis, versus only 38% who say that about McCain, and Obama's number is nearly double that of McCain's on the question of who would better help the middle class.

So Obama is still far and away the preferred choice on the most important issue for voters, whether or not they think McCain is the McSame as Bush. More when the internals are available.

Still more ugliness and hostility on the campaign trail, courtesy of North Carolina's Fayetville Observer:

Someone slashed the tires of at least 30 vehicles parked outside the Crown Coliseum on Sunday during a rally for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, authorities said.

Sheriff's deputies are investigating. The tires were cut while people were inside the Crown Coliseum listening to speeches, said Maj. E. Wright of the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office...

Sarah Revis, who lives on Wilkes Road, said the slashed tires left several women, including a single mother and a toddler, stranded and upset. At least four tow trucks were sent to move the vehicles from the Crown, Revis said.

"This is an embarrassment to this city and to me as a citizen," Revis said. "I've seen women out here crying and men cussing. This is a crying shame."

It would require a pretty extensive effort to slash the tires of more than 30 vehicles. Thanks to TPM Reader BP for the catch.

Bachmann Challenger's Fundraising Skyrockets
The campaign of Elwyn Tinklenberg, the Democratic challenger against Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), tells Election Central that they've raised $650,000 online since her now-infamous McCarthyite appearance on Hardball. This is an astonishing number for a House race by any measure, and even more special in light of the fact that this is nearly twice his cash-on-hand at the end of September.

McConnell: I Would Still Back Iraq War, "Regardless Of The Initial Justification"
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) reaffirmed that he would have voted to authorize the Iraq War, even knowing now that there were no weapons of mass destruction. "Regardless of the initial justification, I don't think the Middle East or the world would be better off if he was there," McConnell told the Courier-Journal editorial board. "I think that is a substantial improvement."

Read more »

The Associated Press has a good rundown on early voting and requests for absentee balloting in various key battlegrounds:

* Dems lead in Iowa, with Dems asking for roughly 60,000 more ballots than Repubicans as of last Wednesday.

* Dems lead in Ohio, with about 35,000 more Dems requesting absentee ballots than Republicans as of last week.

* Dems lead in North Carolina early voting, with some 62% of the more than 200,000 who voted last Thursday and Friday being registered Democrats, while only 22% were registered Republicans.

* In Georgia, many of the more than 540,000 ballots that were cast as of Wednesday were in Dem strongholds of metropolitan Atlanta, and blacks accounted for 37% of them.

* In Florida, GOPers hold an edge in absentee balloting, with 220,000 more Republicans requesting absentee ballots than Dems.

All of those states went for Bush in 2004, and if McCain doesn't win them all the map becomes very difficult for him.

The AFL-CIO keeps up its intense and very targeted economic assault in the swing states, dropping half a million copies of this mailer hitting John McCain on a host of issues important to retirees, a key swing constituency.

Click on the images to enlarge:

The AFL official who sends over the mailer says this mail blitz, combined with an intense door-to-door effort, represents the final push in the union's efforts to target three constituencies: Gun owners, vets and, now, retirees. The above mail is going only to retirees, who represent a key umber of undecideds in the battlegrounds.

One other interesting note: The AFL is dropping this piece, and is now sinking additional resources, into Indiana and North Carolina, in addition to the core swing states, suggesting that the big unions, too, are seeking to broaden the map in the race's final stretch.

Poll: Ayers Not A Legitimate Campaign Issue, Palin's Selection Bad For McCain
A new ABC News/Washington Post poll contains two particularly bad numbers for John McCain. First, 60% of likely voters said they do not think Bill Ayers is a legitimate campaign issue, an indication that his campaigns attacks against Barack Obama simply haven't been working. Second, a full majority of likely voters, at 52%, say the selection of Sarah Palin makes them less confident in John McCain's judgement, compared to only 38% who say it makes them more confident.

Obama In Florida Today, Alongside Hillary Clinton
Barack Obama is campaigning in Florida today, with a 12:40 p.m. ET rally in Tampa followed by a 6 p.m. ET rally in Orlando, the latter of which will feature a special guest: Hillary Clinton. Joe Biden does not have any public events today.

McCain In Missouri, Palin In Colorado, Cindy In Pennsylvania
John McCain is campaigning in Missouri today, with a rally at 11 a.m. ET today in St. Charles, a 2:25 p.m. ET rally in Columbia, and a 5:45 p.m. rally in Belton. Sarah Palin is campaigning in Colorado, with an 11 a.m. ET rally in Colorado Springs, a 3:15 p.m. ET rally in Loveland and a 9 p.m. ET rally in Grand Junction. Cindy McCain is swinging through Pennsylvania, a state where the poll data suggests John McCain doesn't have much of a shot at this point, with a 10 a.m. ET rally in Philadelphia and a 3:30 p.m. ET rally in Yardley.

Hillary Going On Big Campaign Swing For Obama
Hillary Clinton will be spending the week campaigning across the country for Barack Obama. Today she'll be touring Florida, with a 12 p.m. ET rally in Fort Lauderdale, a 2:30 p.m. ET rally in West Palm Beach, and finally the joint rally with Obama at 6 p.m. ET in Orlando.

Palin: Yelling "Kill Him" At Rallies Is Unacceptable -- But "Palling Around With Terrorists" Is Okay
Sarah Palin told David Brody that she has not heard anyone yelling "kill him" or other incitements of violence against Barack Obama at her rallies, from her position on stage. "If I ever were to hear that standing up there at the podium with the mic, I would call 'em out on that, and I would tell these people, no, that's unacceptable," Palin said. However, she did stand by her statements that Barack Obama "pals around with terrorists."

Poll: Close Race In Montana
A new Research 2000 poll shows a close race for Montana's three electoral votes, with 49% for McCain, 45% for Obama, with a ±4.5% margin of error. A month ago, McCain had a 52%-39% lead.

Palin: We Shouldn't Experiment With Socialism
Sarah Palin derided Barack Obama's and Joe Biden's tax policies yesterday, telling a rally in New Mexico, "Friends, now is no time to experiment with socialism." Note: Sarah Palin is the governor of a state that practices collective ownership of oil and other natural resources, and equally distributes the state's cut of the revenues to every citizen.

Here's our daily composite of the five major national tracking polls. Barack Obama is holding a sizable lead over John McCain, and has slightly expanded it after a momentary dip yesterday:

• Gallup: Obama 51%, McCain 44%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 50%-46% Obama lead yesterday.

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

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

• Research 2000: Obama 50%, McCain 43%, with a ±3% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.

• Zogby: Obama 48%, McCain 45%, 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 49.9%-43.9%, a lead of six points, compared to the 49.5%-44.3% Obama lead from yesterday.

Note that this is the first day of polling taken entirely after Wednesday's debate. The pre-debate baseline was an Obama lead of 50.3%-43.7%, meaning that McCain has barely made a dent since then.

DNC Raises Nearly $50 Million In September
The DNC announced this morning that they raised $49.9 million in September, and had $27.4 million cash on hand at the end of the month. Together with the Obama campaign's haul of more than $150 million, the combined Democratic fundraising total for September was an astonishing $200 million, far ahead of the RNC's $66 million and the McCain campaign's $85 million in one-time federal grant money.

Obama In North Carolina, Biden In Washington State
Barack Obama is holding a rally at 1:30 p.m. ET in Fayetteville, Norah Carolina. Joe Biden is holding a rally at 5 p.m. ET in Tacoma, Washington.

McCain In Ohio, Palin In New Mexico
John McCain is holding a rally at 1 p.m. ET in Westerville, Ohio, and a rally at 4:15 p.m. ET in Toledo, Ohio. Sarah Palin is holding a 5:30 p.m. ET rally in Roswell, New Mexico. Cindy McCain is holding a 3 p.m. ET rally in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

McCain: Powell's Support Of Obama Not A Surprise
During his appearance this morning on Fox News Sunday, John McCain reacted to Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama: "Well, I've always admired and respected General Powell. We're longtime friends. This doesn't come as a surprise." McCain added that he's glad to have the support of four former Secretaries of State -- Kissinger, Baker, Eagleburger and Haig -- and he continues to respect and admire Powell.

McCain: Obama's Fundraising Could Lead To Scandal
Also during his appearance on Fox News Sunday, McCain responded to Barack Obama's record monthly fundraising haul. "So what's going to happen?" McCain said. "The dam is broken. We're now going to see huge amounts of money coming into political campaigns, and we know history tells us that always leads to scandal." McCain added that we'll eventually have to pass legislation to deal with the problems created by Obama's small-donor fundraising model.

Polls: Obama Up In Wisconsin, McCain Ahead In West Virginia, Tight Race In Ohio.
A new round of Mason-Dixon polls gives Barack Obama a big lead of 51%-39% in Wisconsin, and McCain a 47%-41% lead in West Virginia. Meanwhile, McCain has 46%-45% edge in Ohio. All three polls have a ±4% margin of error.

Obama Has Campaigned More Than McCain In "Real Virginia"
CNN took a look at the candidates' travel schedules, and found something interesting in light of McCain surrogate Nancy Pfotenhauer's comments about "Real Virginia": In the battle for this state's 13 electoral votes, Barack Obama and Joe Biden have made more campaign appearance outside of Northern Virginia than John McCain and Sarah Palin have.

John McCain defended his robo-slime campaign against Barack Obama today -- and as a special bonus, completely misrepresented what his robocalls actually say about Obama.

McCain's comments on robo-slime-gate came this morning on Fox News, after Chris Wallace pointed out that McCain had denounced robo-sliming back when he was the target of it in 2000.

Wallace asked him if he would stop his own robo-slime campaign against Obama, and McCain said "of course not." The Obama campaign was quick to highlight the exchange in a transcript emailed out to reporters.

McCain defended his robo-slime by saying that the calls directed at him were worse than anything his own calls said about Obama.

"These are legitimate and truthful and they are far different than the phone calls that were made about my family and about certain aspects that -- things that this is -- this is dramatically different and either you haven't -- didn't see those things in 2000," McCain said.

McCain said his robo-slime was highlighting "a legitimate issue," which is the question of whether Obama is "being truthful with the American people," a clear reference to his robo-call attacking Obama's association with William Ayers.

Actually, this is false. McCain's robo-call about Obama and Ayers says absolutely nothing about whether Obama is telling the truth about his relationship with the former Weatherman. If you don't believe me, you can listen to the full call right here.

McCain's Ayers robo-slime is not about Obama's honesty at all. Rather, it's all about Ayers' domestic terrorism, and it's all about the false insinuation that Obama just may have "worked closely" with Ayers in his capacity as a terrorist and killer of Americans.

We're now at the point where John McCain has been reduced to distorting his own distortions -- he's not only running a robo-slime campaign that is totally at odds with his previously claimed principles, but he's now lying about it, too.

Late Update: Here's the video:

New polling from ABC News and The Washington Post reveals just how big Barack Obama's victory in the collective debates really was.

The survey finds that more than a third of likely voters (36%) said their opinion of Obama had gotten better because of the debates, while only 12% said it had gotten worse. By contrast, only a fifth (20%) said their opinion of McCain had improved, while more than that (26%) said it had gotten worse.

The numbers among independents are pretty interesting, too. A third (33%) said their opinion of Obama had improved, while only 19% said their opinion of McCain had improved -- significantly less than the 28% of indys who said their opinion of the Arizona Senator had worsened.

And get this: While McCain won handily among Republicans, opinions of both candidates improved by approximately the same number among conservatives. Twenty seven percent of conservatives said their opinion of Obama had gotten better, while 28% said the same of McCain.

He just announced it on Meet the Press. More soon.

Late Update: Powell elaborated on his decision in a Q-and-A with reporters moments ago. He said he'd concluded that we need a "fresh set of ideas" and a "fresh set of eyes."

While he praised McCain's "maverick" ways, he added: "I think we need more than that," asserting that we need a "generational change" in leadership.

Powell said he'd arrived at his decision within the past couple of months.

Notably, he specified that "decisions that came out of the conventions" played a role in his decision, strongly suggesting that McCain's choice of Sarah Palin cost McCain the chance of Powell's support.

Also interesting was Powell's claim that the two men's response to the economic response played a role. He said that gave him an opportunity to evaluate the two men's "judgment" and way of "approaching a problem."

He praised Obama's "calm, patient, intellectual, steady approach to problem solving."

Late Late Update: Looks like McCain's robo-sliming didn't help matters much -- Powell also said on Meet the Press that they'd "gone too far."

Late Late Late Update: On CNN just now, Mark Halperin pointed out that one reason this is a big blow to McCain is that the press will talk about the endorsement for the next few days, cutting into the time McCain has left. I'd add that this also makes it much tougher for any kind of "McCain comeback" narrative to break through.

Still Later Update: Here's video of Powell's Q-and-A with reporters:

And here is Powell endorsing Obama on Meet The Press:

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe emails supporters this morning with the news that Obama has raised an extraordinary sum in September: Over $150 million.

The Obama camp added 632,000 new donors, bringing the campaign's total number of donors to over three million people. Also extraordinary: The average donation for the month was less than $100.

The key here is that September was when the contours of the current context first became truly visible: The GOP convention took place at the start of the month, and hockey mom/pitbull with lipstick Sarah Palin was first introduced to America as John McCain's choice for backup commander in chief.

What's more, as the month unfolded, it became clearer and clearer that McCain had made a strategic decision to wage a campaign dominated by slimy attacks, vile adver-sleazements, and cosmic levels of mendacity. And Obama's donor base responded in kind, as did more than half a million newcomers.

Late Update: Plouffe's video announcing the decision to supporters is here.