The camps have tossed out a few stinkers lately, and some seem to have stuck in the mainstream for the news-cycle. Here's a few that I find interesting and my short take on them.

1. Clinton Camp: Obama told the Canadians that he wasn't serious about his NAFTA policies.
   After she and her cutthroat band of handlers spewed this across the media pages for a day or two, it finally comes out from the Canadian government that it was HER campaign all along that slipped this little crap-nugget outta the hole. This is despicable politics and reeks of Rovian-style swift-boating.
   


2. Obama Camp: Clinton "is a monster".
   You know, right after vilifying Hillary's master, Howard Wolfson, for calling his tactics Ken Starr-like, one of Obama's own political strategists fired off this line. The best thing that happened in this story was the almost immediate apology and resignation of the offender. This could have been handled better in the onset, but the reaction from the Obama campaign was right on the money here. In this tight of a primary fight, against one of the most mechanical and diabolical political teams since Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, Barack needs to nip this kind of stuff in the bud before it hits the airwaves.
   


3. Clinton Camp: "As far as I know, [Obama's not a muslim]".
   This is one of the worst offenders here. This horrible rumor has been disproved time and time and TIME again by Obama and his entire entourage. The guy's a Christian, straight-up. No question about it. For Clinton to even HINT that she isn't certain of it with this kind of political skirting is despicable to impossible degrees. She should have come flat out with a vehement "No" and stopped all lines of questioning on the matter and not entertained the subject again. She didn't, and it shows just what she'll do to try and win this nomination.
   


4. Obama Camp: Clinton is as being as secretive as Bush and Cheney.
   Seriously now. You don't invoke the Unholy and his puppet without due diligence. Sure, she seems to be hiding something in her past and won't release her returns until this nomination is all but sealed up with her in the throne, but this is going a little far. The past 7 years have seen the greatest amount of Constitutional side-stepping, unauthorized surveillance, torture and more secret backroom pud-pulling than the last six decades of White House residents. I don't think hiding your taxes (which she shouldn't be doing) equates to the horrors of this current administration. This is an unfair comparison and shouldn't have been made in the first place. But even though it's out there, I still don't think it's bad enough to demand a public apology.
   

Dear Senators Clinton and Obama,

Surely, you must know that this long, drawn-out primary campaign is doing nothing but hurting the Democratic Party and diminishing our chances in the November general election. Not only are the personal attacks childish and pointless, but they are providing the Republican Party with ammunition to use against the ultimate nominee. (It is true that they would likely use the same ammunition regardless of the content of this primary contest, but they will now have the implicit backing of the losing Democratic candidate.)

Supporters on both sides want the other side to back down and drop out of the race, and that would be the easiest way to close this primary season. It does appear, at this point, that Senator Obama does have an advantage in pledged delegates and the popular vote. However, there are still races to go and the people in the remaining states deserve to have their voices heard. So, barring one candidate dropping out of the race, it becomes important to finish this race with a different tone and with different tactics. There must be a way to elevate the contest so that it helps the eventual nominee, rather than hurt him or her.

I am not the first to suggest that the rest of this race should be about substantive issues, rather than silly attacks about whose supporters said what. First, it is important to recognize that in terms of these issues, both candidates’ views are similar. There are substantial differences, but overall, these differences are trivial when compared to John McCain’s ideas. What it boils down to, is that this campaign is about which candidate is liked and trusted more. And personal attacks on the other do nothing to settle that question. What needs to happen is an honest and frank policy discussion that highlights the substantive differences and similarities between the two candidates and how best to beat the Republicans in November. Let the voters decide based on that.

Senator Obama’s speech last week was monumental and should serve as a model for the rest of the campaign. If both candidates continued the race with the same honest and nuanced tone, it would not only put an end to the childish personal attacks, but would prepare the winner for the general election campaign and help to reunite the party behind the Democratic nominee.

Or the campaign can continue the way it is going now. We will go to Denver and have a brokered convention on our hands. Almost exactly half of the party will be disenfranchised. And the nominee, legitimate or otherwise, will have less than three months to pull it together and try to beat McCain in November.

I like my idea better.

Sincerely,
Toby.

David Brooks on Meet the Press this morning:

I think she should slow down the campaign, run what Mike Huckabee ran, a dignified campaign, not attacking her opponents, go through North Carolina and then get out. She really has very little opportunity to win. The Jeremiah Wright thing was big, the big scandal, the biggest thing Barack Obama's faced really in months. It didn't hurt him. We now have the polling results from poll after poll. It's clear it didn't hurt him. The voters were not shaken off him. The--Michigan and Florida are not going to revote, the superdelegates are never going to overrule the pledge delegates, so her chances are really small.

Why is this a good idea? First off, it would engender some good will toward Senator Clinton within the party and among Obama's supporters. Second, it would leave a better taste in the mouths of those who might consider backing Clinton in 2012 should Obama lose to McCain. And most importantly, it allows her to stay in the game in case something catastrophic occurs. Brooks and Peter Beinart, Tim Russert's other guest today, both agreed that Clinton's chances were no more than 5%. That seems about right. And a lot of that 5% can be explained by the possibility of a huge scandal--never out of the question in politics. Since she is not going to win without a giant event, what does she gain by an ugly, divisive contest?

NPR has a story up about the gay vote in PA.

Mark Segal, editor of the Philadelphia Gay News, says he has never seen an election in which the Democratic Party fielded better choices. Segal says Obama and Clinton have each sought his paper's endorsement.

Segal remains undecided. He says that to win the Gay News endorsement, Clinton and Obama need to speak very directly to issues affecting gay and lesbian voters.

"We want to hear what's going on with their positions on 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,'" the editor says. "We just don't want hear a very simple, 'Yeah, I want to get rid of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."' We would like to hear a plan."

The issues related to homosexuality are all pretty big political landmines, even for those on the left. It's not just the military thing as the article does go on to touch on employment and same sex marriage.

The interesting thing to me is how powerfuil such a small minority is thanks to the current Democratic hoopla.

By one count, those voters makes up five percent of the city's Democratic electorate. In a tight race, even such a small demographic could make a big difference.

And as for this:

Segal says he believes the lesbian community in particular strongly supports Clinton, who would be the first woman to hold the office of president. He calls it a matter of "identity pride."

I'm too mature to go there.

Don't really have a whole lot to post today, so here's a glimpse at a couple things I've read so far today.

Politico: Obama's happy, drama-free campaign:

In the days and weeks ahead, the Barack Obama campaign is going to pose a simple question to the undecided voters and undeclared superdelegates who will decide the Democratic nomination for president: If Hillary Clinton can’t run a good primary campaign, how is she ever going to run a good campaign against the Republicans?

And while she says she is ready from Day One to be president, she is at something like Day 430 into being a presidential candidate and her campaign seems to be going from bad to worse to train wreck.
...

And this is the pitch the Obama campaign is going to make in the weeks ahead, especially to those superdelegates who are still on the fence: Obama has run a good primary campaign, which is a sign that he will run a good general election campaign, and then a good presidency. Clinton, the Obama campaign will say, cannot make the same argument.

Sean Wilentz argues in Salon that if the Democratic primary operated on a winner-take-all basis -- "one of the central principles of American electoral politics" -- Hillary Clinton would be ahead. "In a popular-vote winner-take-all system, Clinton would now have 1,743 pledged delegates to Obama's 1,257," he concludes. Instead, Obama has a lead that is "reliant on certain eccentricities in the current Democratic nominating process."

This is a bizarre proposition. It's true that the Democratic delegate-apportioning process is eccentric. But since when is winner-take-all considered a more democratic process than proportional allotment? Indeed, in this case, winner-take-all would have made the Democratic primary less democratic. Obama is winning the popular vote. He's even winning if you count the vote in Florida, where neither candidate campaigned or organized their voters. (A restriction that benefitted Clinton enormously, as greater familiarity has boosted Obama's standing virtually everywhere -- witness the withering away of Clinton's once-massive lead in Pennsylvania.)
...

Clinton supporters are spending an inordinate amount of time devising scenarios where Clinton would be winning if the rules of the primary were changed retroactively. Yet all the rules were understood and agreed to by both candidates in advance. The rules are not perfect, but the hypothetical alternatives proposed by Clinton's side -- imposing a winner-take-all system, counting the votes in states with no campaigning or only one candidate on the ballot -- would make the race less fair, not more fair. So, yes, it's possible to imagine different, less-fair rules where the losing candidate would have prevailed. But so what?

show the race tightening in Pennsylvania. The CNN "poll of polls" (You know it's good because they polled the polls! How about that?) has Clinton up by only seven points, while the RCP Average has her up by only just over six points. No telling what the MoE is. Also, it should be noted that, according to CNN, nine percent of likely voters in Pennsylvania are undecided.

I don't put a whole lot of stock in polls, especially in this race, but any polls that show my guy doing well are encouraging! (In true American political style, I dismiss polls that reflect poorly on my candidate and tout the good ones!)

This might become a regular thing...

Politico: Where did the tables turn?

Where did the Hillary Clinton campaign first go wrong? How did she go from inevitable to in trouble?

I think it all began with the very first contest: Iowa.

Iowa is where Clinton needed to strangle the Barack Obama campaign in its crib. [Gotta love that imagery, hm?]

She needed to do him in at the very beginning, while her inevitability argument still had credibility.

Hillary Rodham Clinton wants voters to decide the nomination based on who can coolly and competently run the country. She had better hope they don’t study her recent campaign too closely for the answer.

Clinton has overseen two major staff shake-ups in two months. She has left a trail of unpaid bills and unhappy vendors and had to loan her own campaign $5 million to keep it afloat in January. Her campaign badly underestimated her main adversary, Barack Obama, miscalculated the importance of organizing caucus states and was caught flat-footed after failing to lock up the nomination on Super Tuesday.

It would be easy to dismiss all of this as fairly conventional political stumbling — if she hadn’t made her supreme readiness and managerial competence the central issue of her presidential campaign.

I was checking out the Compassion Forum, particularly the sections on abortion and euthanasia and I quite liked Obama's answers (shock and surprise). Rather than limit this (what I hope to be a debate) to that one issue though, I'd like to know what your "one issue" is, if you have one. What is your deal breaker for a candidate. Mine is, if they don't like Bruce Willis movies and possibly support for the war in Iraq.

All other things being equal what would keep you from voting for someone?

So I was listening to talk radio this morning and doggone if I don't feel blessed for having a great couple of guys to listen to on my morning drive. This morning they were talking about the "elite" tag and how stupid it is. These people all make boocoodles more money than I do or probably ever will. They all went to prestigious academic institutions. They've all served this country (and/or desire to do so) more than I do. They are all by definition part of the "elite", the best of the best, the cream of the crop, etc. To turn this into some sort of pejorative is just plain silly. I want the elite to be up there. I want Ivy League gradutes, people that have risen to the top of the business, academic, and/or military worlds to be elected to the highest offices in the land. Don't you?

So having said that I have to tell the three folks in that picture up there to stop acting the fool. A river of Crown Royal, a 300 game, shooting at clay pigeons, none of the games that you're playing are going to make you look like regular folk. They will only come across (to anyone paying attention) as pandering. You are the elite. Sometimes (looking at you junior Senator from Illinois) you will say things that sound arrogant, because of that. That's okay by me. Often you will say things that seem to make no sense to me. I chalk that up to the fact that you are giving (essentially) the same speeches ten times a day for what, fifteen months now, and you have cameras stalking your every move waiting for that verbal misstep. None of that will convince me that you aren't Top Guns in a way.

Here's what will take you down a peg or twelve. Keep smacking each other around. Keep calling one another knuckleheads. Forget that you're up there on that stage letting me know how much you want to serve the American people. Believe your own press releases. You do these things and all you are is King Stooge.

ht to TSK for photo

Happy Friday!

Tom Hanks is endorsing Barack Obama.

At this moment, only two counties remain to be counted in Indiana. NBC has been holding out on calling the election for Clinton because of those two counties, Lake and Union. Union county, a rural, white county with just over 7,000 people. Lake county, however, has an 25% black population of over 485,000 people (including Gary, IN, a predominantly black city with 85%).

Hillary just addressed her people claiming victory in Indiana, thanking the people for giving her the "opportunity" to continue on to the convention.

Fingers are crossed that Lake county can pull up the 4% points needed for Obama to break her and ruin her "victory" speech.

Update:
NBC just called Indiana for Clinton by a razor-thin margin (likely under 15K votes). The interesting thing about tonight is that she seems to have canceled all of her public events for Wednesday. Didn't Romney do that right before he pulled out?

I don't know how I feel about this, if it's true, of course. I guess it depends on the tone of the campaign between now and then. If, as seems to be the general consensus, Hillary continues the dirty tactics, this will be a good idea. It will be a symbolic step to starting the general election. But, if Hillary takes the Huckabee route, it seems that declaring victory will come across as presumptuous, which could turn voters off in November.

If on the off chance, the rest of the campaign is about the issues and is fought fairly and cleanly (unless that's not a word), I think Obama should hold off on declaring victory until after the Rules Committee meets on the 31st and until after the last of the primaries on June 3rd. Obama has the nomination, whether or not he declares victory.

A pledged delegate for Clinton switches his vote to Obama. Great. We got the vote, but what does that mean? There has been talk from the Clinton camp about getting pledged delegates to switch. This could legitimize her position. Methinks the Obama camp would be smart to discourage delegate switching.

Update: Christopher Orr at The Plank weighs in:

But there is, or ought to be, a moral [obligation]. There may be extraordinary cases in which it is reasonable for a pledged delegate to defy the will of the citizens whose votes he's representing, but this isn't one of them. There have been plenty of procedural absurdities that have been brought to light in this year's extended primary. But none come close to comparing with the undemocratic chaos that would ensue if other delegates took their pledges as lightly as Johnson does his.

My initial prediction for Hillary to drop out of the race was June 10th. I'll still stand by that prediction, as I think that after tomorrow, she'll give a little time for the superdelegates to make their decisions. But, Marc Ambinder presents a good case for her dropping out (or at least suspending her campaign) tomorrow:

(1) She's going to speak Tuesday night from New York, not from South Dakota or Montana.

(2) The Politico reports that members of her advance staff are being recalled to New York and being given hints that their employment is over; yes, Clinton won't have any more states to campaign in, but the Obama campaign is not shedding its advance staff after Tuesday

(3) Cheryl Mills, a very senior Clinton adviser, intends to return, full-time, to her job as senior vice president at New York University. (Note: aides say I am making way too much out of this news; Mills would surely stay on board Clinton's campaign if Clinton continues. And truth be told, I did not contact Mills before I wrote this item, something I should have done.)

(4) Junior members of the staff are making plans for vacation, and they're not receiving any push-back from their bosses.

What do you think?

AP: Obama has delegates to clinch nomination

Tonight's speeches will be interesting to watch.

But this commercial put out by the RNC is still pretty painful to watch.

ht: Marc Ambinder

I honestly heard with my own two lovely shell-like perfect ears a Hillary supporter say (after Hill's latest speech) that he would wait until she told him who to vote for, before he would make a decision.

Now I know that there are sheep like this on all sides. I know that Hillary supporters are upset, almost as upset as I would probably be were the tables turned. Question is, how big a percentage are there?

Also, didn't she tell him to support Obama? What does that mean to them?

Also also, what the blue lazes does "suspending" your campaign mean other than "I'm secretly hoping that something very, very wrong happens to teh Senator from IL?

An interesting article on Keith Olbermann.

This is too awesome! Sean Tevis, an Information Architect in Kansas, decided to run for his state Representative's office. Problem? He needed money, at least $26,000. The comic spells out what happened. He reached his goal in 24 hours.

According to the LA Times:

As of Saturday, 5,703 people had made online donations to Tevis' campaign. The majority live outside of the state. Fans from other countries even sent more than $1,700 -- which Tevis refunded, in compliance with federal election rules.

Staffers for two political candidates in Kansas and eight out-of-state campaigns -- Democrats and independents running for state or congressional seats -- have contacted Tevis in recent days to ask for help and advice. And the money has continued to pour into Tevis' campaign, along with fan e-mails cheering on his campaign platform of boosting teacher pay, eliminating food taxes and protecting an individual's right to privacy.

Whether or not he wins I applaud him for his wit. This and Obama'a use of the net for fund raising tell me that politicians are finally figuring out this interwebs thing. Now is that good? Well I guess we'll see.

If you don't read XKCD and you're a geek of ANY strip, you should remedy that.

An interesting independently-made anti-McCain commercial:

I think it would be a very effective ad, if professionally produced and it's not like it's untrue, but should Obama put some money into this type of advertising? Has he already?

Obama has picked Biden. No text message last night. It never came. Not that it mattered, though: the media beat him to the punch. Too bad, too. I really liked the idea of notifying the American people directly, rather than through the media... No matter. McCain already has an attack ad out. The convention starts on Monday. Now, it gets fun.

From Ironic Sans: "Practice until it's second nature."

For the first time in almost 22 years, a Democrat has the chance to overthrow Jim Inhofe and take a rightful place in the US Senate.

For the first time, in almost that entire time, I have donated actual dollars to a state political campaign.

From everything I've read and heard about and from Rice, he seems like a genuinely righteous candidate and a diehard supporter for Barack Obama. This would be an outstanding victory over the Republican scourge in this state.

More to come. It looks like the conservative infestation of our government might actually be coming to an end.

And it's about damned time.

While we all get a warm, fuzzy feeling when looking at the national poll numbers lately, we have even more reason to be more optimistic when looking at the state polls and the electoral college map. Depending on what source you look at, Obama is showing a commanding lead and threatening at least seven states Bush took in 2004. McCain has a chance (albeit a small one) at maybe two Kerry states.

The website, FiveThirtyEight.com, is projecting an electoral victory for Obama by a margin of 333.2 to 204.8 and gives him an 84.4% chance to win. And 270toWin.com gives Obama a less-nuanced 99% chance to win.

All well and good, but check this out: McCain just pulled out of Michigan, which was pretty much his last possible Kerry state. He might still have a shot at New Hampshire and Minnesota, but an average of polls there shows Obama ahead in both states by 4.1 points and 6.8 points, respectively. Obama is threatening Nevada, Colorado (Woo! Happy to help here!), Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio and Indiana.

All are close, but think of it this way, assuming Obama holds onto NH and MN, he only has to win one of those 2004 Bush states and he wins the election. 270toWin has enlightening pages on each party's winning combination.

Look at these statistics, mayhaps this race isn't quite as close as the media is making it out to be. To be sure, not a point for us to rest on our laurels. If this election has shown us anything, it's that something could happen tomorrow that will completely change the map.

The Obama campaign is putting out a 13-minute documentary about McCain's involvement in the Keating 5. Obviously, this was made to be a preemption to the forthcoming attack ads to be put out by the McCain campaign after the debate tomorrow night. Is this kind of thing appropriate, especially since the McCain campaign has already announced its upcoming attack ads? Thoughts?

[Trailer after the break.]

Was just reading this article about how and if McCain might be able to turn this around for himself and this quotation jumped out at me and seems to illustrate a recurring Republican problem (emphasis mine):

There is a lot of doubt [about Obama] out there. I don’t care what the polls say.

From KTUU Alaska (emphasis mine):

Investigator Stephen Branchflower led the bipartisan panel that investigated the matter and found [Sarah] Palin in violation of a state ethics law, KTUU reported.

"I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch ethics act," Branchflower said in the 263-page report.

"Alaska statute 39.52.110(a) provides 'the legislature reaffirms that each public officer holds office as a public trust and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust,'" Branchflower continued.

The entire 263 page report can be read here. (PDF)

He's still talking about the issues. Today, Obama unveiled a new "economic rescue" plan, while McCain debuted a "feisty new stump speech." Included are such classic phrases as "straight talk," "...Obama is measuring the drapes..., Obama will "raise taxes, increase spending... [and] concede defeat in Iraq." So, while one candidate is working on solutions to solve problems, the other is reverting back to tired attack lines. This, my friends, is the sign of a very troubled campaign.

Thanks to Kansas Bob and the Voter Test he posted, I discovered that I should be allowed to vote. Should you? (BTW if you fail, just take it as a sign to get educated. We should ALL vote for Obama.)

You Should Be Allowed to Vote

You got 12/15 questions correct. Generally speaking, you're very well informed. If you vote this election, you'll know exactly who (and what) you'll be voting for. You're likely to have strong opinions, and you have the facts to back them up.

From The Bellingham Herald:

Bush votes early for McCain

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, who has been rarely seen on the campaign trail, cast his ballot for GOP presidential nominee John McCain.

In past elections, the president and first lady Laura Bush have traveled to Texas to vote, but the White House said Friday they cast their ballots in the early voting process. Their votes are being sent back to Texas.

The White House also said the president and Laura Bush plan to be at the White House on election night.

After that devastatingly sharp SNL performance on Thursday night, this could actually be pretty damaging to the already troubled McCain/Palin campaign.

As many of you know from my other ventures in the Internets, I am a space nerd. Extraplanetary exploration and on-orbit technology has been close to my heart since childhood. The only real hesitation I've had lingering in the back of my mind about the candidates has been the total lack of policy discussion on the issue. That is, until now.
Thanks to my friends on Twitter, I've found the answers to my questions, and they all verify my left-ward leanings this year.

Here's a decent Google slideshow comparing the two.

Barack Obama's Space Policy (in .pdf)

Some excerpts:

Since 1981, the Space Shuttle has been NASA’s workhorse. Its retirement will leave NASA without human spaceflight capability until the first elements of the Constellation program are operational, some five years later. This gap between the retirement of the Space Shuttle and the entry into service of its replacement is a serious
concern. Barack Obama is committed to making the necessary investments to ensure we close this gap as much as is technically feasible and to minimize reliance on foreign space capabilities. He also will work with the space industry to ensure retention of workforce and technical capabilities during the transition from the shuttle to its successor.
...
Obama will expedite the development of the Shuttle’s successor systems for carrying Americans to space so we can minimize the gap. This will be difficult; underfunding by the Bush administration has left NASA with limited flexibility to accelerate the development of the new systems.
...
Barack Obama would ensure that NASA and other federal agencies are fully utilizing the ISS to conduct research that can help address global challenges such as public health and energy independence and can develop technologies that can provide economic benefits to Earth. Obama also will enable research on the ISS to support long-term human exploration and planetary research needs.
...
Barack Obama will support renewed human exploration beyond low earth orbit. He endorses the goal of sending human missions to the Moon by 2020, as a precursor in an orderly progression to missions to more distant destinations, including Mars.
...
The United States needs to fully involve international partners in future exploration plans to help reduce costs and to continue close ties with our ISS partners. NASA has been working with 13 other space agencies to develop a globally coordinated approach to space exploration; Barack Obama will not only continue but intensify this effort. Human exploration beyond low-earth orbit should be a long-term goal and investment for all space faring countries, with America in the lead.

Excerpts from John McCain's Space Program Policies:

Current U.S. space operations policy commits the U.S. to completing the International Space Station (ISS) by 2010 and then terminating the Space Shuttle flights, with the completion of the ISS. The NASA vision for space exploration calls for sending a robotic lunar lander to the Moon in 2008/2009 time period to begin searching for potential base sites and for development and deployment of a new manned space craft for lunar missions.
...
As President, John McCain will --
* Ensure that space exploration is top priority and that the U.S. remains a leader;
* Commit to funding the NASA Constellation program to ensure it has the resources it needs to begin a new era of human space exploration.
* Review and explore all options to ensure U.S. access to space by minimizing the gap between the termination of the Space Shuttle and the availability of its replacement vehicle;
* Ensure the national space workforce is maintained and fully utilized; Complete construction of the ISS National Laboratory;
* Seek to maximize the research capability and commercialization possibilities of the ISS National Laboratory;
* Maintain infrastructure investments in Earth-monitoring satellites and support systems;
* Seek to maintain the nation's space infrastructure;
* Prevent wasteful earmarks from diverting precious resources from critical scientific research;
* and Ensure adequate investments in aeronautics research.

Although these statements are similar, Sen. McCain's is startlingly sparse and almost entirely without detail. Sen. Obama's is very specific, naming dollar amounts and exact plans for NASA and its missions. It is also about 5x longer than McCain's. Not surprisingly, Barack Obama has been endorsed by a number of NASA officials, employees, scientists and operations personnel (including most of the Astronaut Corps).

The future is very near.

This time, let's try to keep our heads IN the clouds.

Links provided by Obamanauts.org.

Here's an article from a conservative in NC, who canvassed for Obama this year. Multiply this story by a few hundred thousand and you can see why a community organizer is exactly what this country needs right now.

From The Christian Science Monitor:

Instead of walking the tree-lined streets near our home, my wife and I were instructed to canvass a housing project. A middle-aged white couple with clipboards could not look more out of place in this predominantly black neighborhood.

We knocked on doors and voices from behind carefully locked doors shouted, "Who is it?"

"We're from the Obama campaign," we'd answer. And just like that doors opened and folks with wide smiles came out on the porch to talk.
...
I've learned that this election is about the heart of America. It's about the young people who are losing hope and the old people who have been forgotten. It's about those who have worked all their lives and never fully realized the promise of America, but see that promise for their grandchildren in Barack Obama. The poor see a chance, when they often have few. I saw hope in the eyes and faces in those doorways.

My wife and I went out last weekend to knock on more doors. But this time, not because it was her idea. I don't know what it's going to do for the Obama campaign, but it's doing a lot for me.

Jonathan Curley is a banker. He voted for George H.W. Bush twice and George W. Bush once.

This time, it might actually be more about the people than about the words of empty promises.

All we can do is Hope.

Thoughts? I debated with myself over a couple states.... Make your own map at 270toWin.com.

According to today's FiveThirtyEight.com roundup, McCain has a 6.24% chance of winning the election tomorrow.

What a McCain Win Looks Like:

This was by far the most common McCain victory scenario, occurring 169 times out of 10,000 simulations this afternoon:

...this would be a boring ol' map. Obama wins everything that either Al Gore or John Kerry won. McCain wins everything else. Problem for McCain: this becomes a losing map if he loses Colorado.
...
Also, there are some states that truly do appear to be "must-wins" for McCain. In each and every one of the 624 victory scenarios that the simulation found for him this afternoon, McCain won Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Indiana and Montana. He also picked up Ohio in 621 out of the 624 simulations, and North Carolina in 622 out of 624. If McCain drops any of those states, it's pretty much over.

This is out of 10,000 scenario runs. I'm still trying to tamp my hopes down.

There's still time for Bush to bomb Iran, or maybe...Cleveland.

VOTE.

Obama's final stump in Virginia. This is absolutely riveting and gave me a little thrill going up my leg...

Are you fired up?
Are you ready to go?

Do your part to change the world.

Vote today.

Update at 22:00 CST: OBAMA FTW!

NBC's Chuck Todd all but called the election over. At this particular point in time (20:48), Obama has 200 electoral votes. Add CA, HI, WA and OR into the mix (all dead giveaways for Obama) and he's at 277.

Norm Coleman, the standout for the Republicans, finally conceded the win in the Minnesota Senate race to Al Franken. Does this mean the spineless Democratic congress will actually push through any of the real change we all hoped and voted for?

Don't count on it.