While most national and battleground polls continue to show a virtual dead-end for McCain come Tuesday, the McCain campaign is not buying it, instead tweaking the pundits and presenting a cohesive public and private consensus on the race that it may be turning in the GOP nominee’s favor.

Thanks to some actual confidence about the close of the horserace and internal measures taken by the likes of Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter, the private rumblings and concerns  voiced by innumerable McCain “advisers” in recent weeks have shut down, replaced by cautious optimism about their own polling and the select few outside numbers that show even a hint of a bump for McCain. It’s all about cherry picking the numbers for the McCain camp right about now.

Putting a more public face on the McCain campaign’s belief in a surge for their guy is a new state of the race memo from campaign manager Rick Davis. After saying he was”jazzed” about the campaign this morning, Davis set out several talking points -  and a bit of questionable data -coming to the conclusion that McCain is on his way to a comeback and that he is “surging in the final 72 hours.”

Davis points to the large crop of undecided voters still out there according to a new Gallup poll as ripe for conversion to McCain, as well as tagging what he called “tighter” polls in several battlegrounds, including Iowa and some Rust Belt states. Interesting that Pennsylvania is mentioned by Davis - nearly all of the latest polls out of Keystone have Obama leading by double-digits or just under. No weakness there…

If your television is tuned to cable news as frequently as ours are here at campaign headquarters, you have seen the pundits say John McCain and his campaign are done. And, if you’ve followed this race since the beginning, this is clearly a song you’ve heard before. I wanted to take some time today to give you some insight on the state of the race as we see it.

An AP poll released this morning revealed a very telling fact: ONE out of every SEVEN voters is undecided. That means, if 130 million voters turn out on Tuesday, 18.5 million of them have yet to make up their mind. With that many votes on the table and the tremendous movement we’ve seen in this race, I believe we are in a very competitive campaign. 

Davis expounds on battleground state and regional developments…

Iowa - Our numbers in Iowa have seen a tremendous surge in the past 10 days. We took Obama’s lead from the double digits to a very close race. That is why you see Barack Obama visiting the state in the final days, trying to stem his losses. It is too little, too late. Like many other Midwestern states, Iowa is moving swiftly into McCain’s column.

The Southwest - It is no secret that Republican candidates in the Southwest have to focus on winning over enough Latino and Hispanic voters in Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado to carry them to victory. John McCain has overcome challenges Republicans face, and has made up tremendous ground in these states with these voters. For these voters, the choice has become clear, and you have seen a big change in the numbers. John McCain is now winning enough voters to perform within the margin of error - putting these states within reach.

Colorado - Barack Obama tried to outspend our campaign in Colorado during the early weeks of October and finish off our candidate in Colorado. However, after our visit early this week, we saw a tremendous rebound in our poll position, and Colorado is back on the map.

Ohio and Pennsylvania - Everyone knows that vote rich Ohio and Pennsylvania will be key battlegrounds for this election. Between the two: 41 electoral votes and no candidate has gotten to the White House without Ohio. Senator McCain and Governor Palin have been campaigning non-stop in these key battleground states and tonight Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has pumped up our campaign at a rally in Columbus. Our position in these states is strong and undecided voters continue to have a very favorable impression of our candidate.

Then Davis wraps it up with the bottom line from the McCain team…

All the major polls have shown a tightening in the race and a significant narrowing of the numbers. In John McCain’s typical pattern, he is closing strong and surprising the pundits. We believe this race is winnable, and if the trajectory continues, we will surpass the 270 Electoral votes needed on Election Night.

 In short: the McCain campaign is surging in the final 72 hours. Our grassroots campaign is vibrant and communicating to voters in a very powerful way. Our television presence is strong. And, we have a secret ingredient - A candidate who will never quit and who will never stop fighting for you and for your families.

The campaign also plans a major ad blitz both nationally and in swing states as well as what Davis describes as a “Final Barnstorm” on Monday that sends both McCain and Palin to 14 battleground states for their final trail events and rallies.

Throw out the facts; there’s no getting the McCain camp down about their current predicament. Is this confidence unfounded or a prescient foreshadowing of Tuesday’s events?

A remarkable ad out from Elizabeth Dole’s campaign in a Senate race she is losing in North Carolina has been getting plenty of buzz and cable airtime recently. It’s also been getting pretty much universal condemnation from Democrats, Republicans and non-partisans alike.

Why the fuss? Watch for yourself…

Besides using some factually adventurous claims against her opponent, Dole is crossing the line entirely by putting in a final audio clip of the “Godless America” organizer saying “there is no God” - and clearly implying that the voice is Hagan’s. A huge photo of Hagan is thrown up on the screen as the garbled clip is played, essentially telling voters that it is Hagan who is making the comments when that is blatantly false.

Hagan and the Dems are outraged, leading them to put up their own hard-hitting rebuttal, so on and so forth.  It’s wild down there…

Dole is losing the race to Hagan - she has been for awhile - and this beyond the pale ad is essentially the kitchen sink mentality that McCain is foregoing in the presidential race’s last days. Dole is apparently willing to try anything…

Is the media underestimating the potential for a truly unprecedented Obama landslide across the country on Tuesday? While intense scrutiny and hourly updates are provided for the usual batch of battlegrounds - plus Georgia and North Carolina, intriguing results from the reddest of red states like Louisiana are looked over. Yes, that’s right; Louisiana is potentially a toss-up state and a very realistic potential win for Obama.

Just look at a new poll from Louisiana that has McCain and Obama in a statistical tie.

An exclusive new WWL-TV statewide poll shows the contest for president may be closer than many had predicted among Louisiana voters. 

 In the telephone survey of 500 registered voters, conducted by pollster Ed Renwick, Republican Senator John McCain earns 43 percent of the vote, while Democrat Senator Barack Obama receives 40 percent.  Renwick said that amounts to a statistical tie, since the poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 points.

“It’s closer than I thought it would be,â€� said Renwick, adding that the higher the turnout, the worse it might be for McCain.

The McCain campaign has released what is probably their closing argument TV spot today, announcing the brand new ad “Freedom” will be airing in “key states” just days before Election Day.

The new spot stays away from negative attacks and doesn’t even mention Obama, instead peddling a positive message of McCain’s overall service to his country and his dedication to “a cause greater than my own” - something that could be seen as a mild dig at Obama’s ambition and ego.

Freedom” is telling about the overall mindset within the McCain camp, showing that the masterminds there understand that they can do precious little to sway the voters they need before Tuesday. It’s left to the undecideds and swing voters to digest some final McCain messages and perhaps get caught up in enough last-minute skepticism concerning Obama to change their mind. It’s out of McCain’s hands at this point…

Script and video below.

JOHN MCCAIN: I’ve served my country since I was 17 years old.

And, spent five years longing for her shores.

I came home dedicated to a cause greater than my own.

We can grow our economy.

We will cut government waste.

Don’t hope for a stronger America.

Vote for one.

Join me.

ANNCR: McCain.

John McCain: I’m John McCain and I approve this message.

• The final days of the race will see wide-ranging advertising displays and grass roots efforts from the two campaigns (mostly from Obama), but the ground effort by the actual tickets will be strictly and expertly focused on only the biggest of battleground states. Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania are being swarmed by the members of both the Democratic and Republican tickets both today and into the weekend. While Biden and Palin converge on the Sunshine State over the weekend (after Palin hits Pennsylvania today), McCain is trekking across Ohio on a major bus tour and Obama is kicking off a chaotic schedule that send him to events in states from Iowa and Indiana today to Ohio on Sunday - with a three-state, Nevada to Colorado to Missouri swing thrown in on Saturday. All presidential campaigns end up coming down to either one or a handful of uber-important states - the trio described above appears to be the version for 2008. The time spent on the ground and the ad money being thrown at undecided voters in these states is truly incredible. Don;t expect it to cool off even as we rapidly tick away the clock towards Election Day.

• Are we about to see a major ad push in the final days of the race from the McCain campaign? McCain campaign manager Rick Davis confirmed the swirling rumors that both the RNC and their own campaign will essentially throw the kitchen sink in TV ads at Obama in this last frenetic run-up to Tuesday. There had been indications that the last reserves of available cash from the Republican Party and McCain would be used in some sort of last-ditch ground or advertising push; now we know which it will be. Davis hinted that the campaign would even outspend the Obama machine on ads overall in the last week of the race, possibly creating a new spot for the last weekend - although most likely the campaign doesn’t have enough cash or time to create any flashy new ads. Will there be any true last-minute surprises tossed about from the GOP or McCain in this final ad blitz? Will voters hear nothing but the “S” word - socialism?

• Obama’s campaign schedule today had him in Des Moines, Iowa for a big rally in what had been pointed to as a key battleground states as recently as last month. But weeks of polls and McCain trending way down had allowed most pundits and election trackers to scratch Iowa off of the battleground list and give it to Obama. So Obama’s Iowa rally immediately raised questions as to why the campaign would spend valuable time - the last Friday before Election Day - on a state that is considered something of a Dem lock? Nothing substantial will probably come of this, but the parsing and predictions are flying today, with rumors of startling gains for McCain in Obama’s internal polls and final worries about complacency and maybe even the Bradley effect.May not mean anything, but the stop does warrant a raised eyebrow or two.

• Going for the kill or a dangerous waste of money and a risk of over-extension? Those are the questions surrounding another ponderous decision from the Obama campaign made public today. Campaign mastermind David Plouffe told reporters that the campaign is buying ad slots in the very red states of Arizona, Georgia and North Dakota - AZ of course being McCain’s home state and the other two states reliably red and even now seen as out of reach for Obama. Beating back doubters, Plouffe called these three states in the “realm of possibility” to win and promised “extra effort” in the final days. No need to force McCain to defend red turf with less than a week until the election, and the polls in the three are mostly pro-McCain- although Obama is running much stronger than Dem candidates in the past.

• Scratch off one major voting demographic that the Obama campaign doesn’t have to fret over these last few days. Hispanic voters are overwhelmingly supporting Obama in the race despite initial fears from Democrats that their die-hard support for Hillary Clinton in the primaries - and potential racial tensions - would severely dampen Obama’s lure among Hispanics in the key Western battlegrounds. Obama is winning Hispanics on the economy and immigration, with voters skeptical that McCain will be able to handle the economic crisis and worried that he will cave to anti-immigrant Republicans and crack down on illegal immigration.

The McCain campaign is out with a brand new hard-hitting TV spot slamming Obama for having the nerve to…compliment John McCain on his climate change record? This sure is strange for a campaign trying to paint Obama’s bipartisan message as inherently false and nothing more than a campaign gimmick.

“Obama Praising McCain” simply goes after Obama for “often believing John McCain is right” and specifically brings up comments Obama made during a Senate hearing on climate change in 2007. Obama is shown on camera praising the “Lieberman-McCain bill” as a fantastic piece of legislation that is “good for the environment” and “good for business.”

Script and video below.

ANNCR: The truth on global warming:

BARACK OBAMA: The right approach begins with the proposal put forward by Senator Lieberman and Senator McCain.

The Lieberman-McCain bill establishes limits for greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a framework that’s not only good for the environment, it’s also good for business.

I want to thank Senator Lieberman, as well as Senator McCain, for the outstanding leadership that they’ve shown.

JOHN MCCAIN: I’m John McCain and I approve this message.

Brand new numbers from the latest installment of the CBS News/NY Times national poll shows Obama retaining a double-digit lead over McCain with well under a week until Election Day the end to this chaotic race. Obama leads by a comfortable margin over his GOP foe, 52% to 41%.

These new results show a slight improvement for McCain from last week’s CBS/NYT numbers and a minimal bump from other recent Obama-friendly national polls. But today’s release shows no sign of an overwhelming shift to McCain in the vein of some apparently outlying data from AP and Fox News.

Parsing the results further finds that a stunning number of voters have already cast their early ballots - most for Obama…

Seventeen percent of registered voters say they have already voted, either by absentee ballot or at early voting sites, and this group favors Obama by a large margin.

…The “enthusiasm gap” plaguing McCain off-and-on has returned in full force mere days before the race ends…

An enthusiasm gap remains between the candidates: While roughly half of Obama’s supporters are excited about their candidate being elected, just 22 percent of McCain voters feel the same.

…And Obama is simply cleaning the floor with McCain over the economy. Voters have consistently rated Obama’s ability to handle economic policy as immensely better than McCain’s since the beginning of this financial crisis and probable recession.

But on the economy - the most important issue to a majority of voters in making a choice for president - Obama has a clear advantage. A majority of registered voters say Obama’s policies would make the economy better, while half as many say they would make the economy worse. By contrast, nearly as many expect McCain’s policies to make the economy worse (31 percent) as expect his policies to make the economy better (32 percent).

Low income voters, in particular, expect Obama’s policies to help the economy and McCain’s to make things worse.

We’re getting into “statistically impossible” land for McCain…

The Obama campaign turned into an “As Seen on TV” product and marketed his candidacy in an unprecedented 30-minute infomercial on three of the four major TV networks last night. The campaign bought up 30 minutes of airtime on CBS, FOX and NBC in order to run what amounts to a 30-minute campaign ad touting Obama’s proposals and throwing in a live clip of him at a Florida event.

The overblown TV ad is called “American Stories, American Solutions” and will certainly go down as the longest major political ad of any presidential election.  The full video is below…

Was the lengthy - and pricey - ad worth the effort for Obama? Mindless media and online chatter postulates that perhaps the sheer size and delivery of the ad - buying up half-an-hour of primetime on network TV - merely added to criticism that Obama is too presumptuous and is carrying on the old adage of “measuring the White House drapes.” The conservative and McCain-Palin buzz is that the Obama ad is “overkill” and flaunts his “broken promise” to join McCain in accepting public financing. Primetime is apparently no place for prospective presidents…

Realistically, Obama probably added to the overall perception that he is a juggernaut in this race and that his money and his momentum are carrying him to heights never before reached in presidential campaigns. These displays of muscle and force are  more than another way to tweak angry conservatives and an increasingly desperate McCain; they can help create a final image among voters that Obama is easily winning the race and that he is essentially already presidential, fomenting a sense of comfort and even resignation that Obama can and will handle the job.

If it costs 30 minutes of expensive network air to acheive last-minute campaign goals, so be it. His campaign won’t exactly be pinching pennies because of it…

The ad was a smashing success if the effectiveness is judged by the amount of eyeballs tuning in on Wednesday night.  The final tally is that over 33 million viewers watched Obama’s 30-minute infomercial on the multiple broadcast and cable networks where it aired.

The most improbable of Democratic victories in a reliably red state in years may be well on its way to becoming reality as Obama continues to easily hold off McCain in a new poll out of Virginia. Obama is in front with an 8-point lead as we rapidly approach only one week before Election Day.This lead is a sizable increase from the last Washington Post/ABC poll out of Virginia last month. Then Obama led by only 3 over McCain.

Obama is dismantling McCain in the Commonwealth over the GOP nominee’s ties to President Bush, the ability to bring unspecified “change” to Washington, and who would be best to handle the current economic crises. Other than a few minor points of concern and skepticism from Virginia voters over Obama, the Democrat has seemingly rebuffed any and all attempts by the GOP -0 in VA and every other battleground - to take over the campaign dialogue and get emotions and anger flowing over anything from Obama’s past to his “spread the wealth” tax plans.

As Virginia goes so goes the election?

By wide margins, Virginia voters think that Obama is the candidate who would do more to bring needed change to Washington, who understands the economic challenges people are facing and who is the more honest and trustworthy of the two rivals. Still, there remains widespread apprehension over whether the Democratic nominee would make a good commander in chief.

McCain’s path to the White House is very difficult without Virginia’s 13 electoral votes, and Obama now leads the senator from Arizona 52 percent to 44 percent in the new poll.

Obama is also making headway in the more rural regions of Virginia, outside the left-leaning D.C.Beltwa.

Obama has an almost 2 to 1 advantage over McCain in Northern Virginia, surpassing even the 60 percent mark that Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) and Sen. James Webb (D-Va.) racked up in the region during their successful campaigns in 2005 and 2006.

Obama is also performing far better elsewhere in Virginia than Democrats have done in recent state and federal elections. He and McCain each drew 48 percent of the vote outside Northern Virginia, a signal that Obama’s repeated visits, as well as his multimillion-dollar advertising blitz, has softened the GOP base in the more rural parts of the state.

Seeking to finish off McCain on the economy and take back the dialogue from “Joe the Plumber” and other McCain-Palin distractions, the Obama campaign has released a new two-minute TV ad in “key states” to solely address the economy and lay out specific plans and proposals for a prospective Obama administration. Is this really an introduction for voters to what will probably be a President Obama?

Script and video below.

BARACK SYNC: At this defining moment in our history, the question is not, “are you better off than you were four years ago?”   We all know the answer to that. The real question is will our country be better off four years from now?  How will we lift our economy and restore America’s place in the world?

Here’s what I’ll do as President.  To deal with our current emergency…

BARACK SYNCH: I’ll launch a rescue plan for the middle class…

BARACK SYNC:  That begins with a tax cut for ninety-five percent of working Americans.

If you have a job, pay taxes and make less than two hundred thousand dollars-a-year, you’ll get a tax cut.

I’ll end the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas, and give them to companies that create jobs here in America.

And I’ll make low-cost loans available to small businesses.

To build our economy for the future, I’ll focus on our urgent national priorities: reducing the cost of health care… breaking our dependence on foreign oil… and making sure that every child gets the education they need to compete.

How will I pay for these priorities?  First, we’ve got to stop spending ten billion dollars a month in Iraq – while they run up a surplus. I’ll end this war responsibly, so we can invest here at home.

We’ll monitor the Wall Street rescue plan carefully, making sure taxpayers are protected and CEOs don’t game the system.

I’ll let the temporary Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% expire and close the corporate tax loopholes the lobbyists put in.

I’ll order a top-to-bottom audit of government spending and eliminate programs that don’t work.

We face real challenges, and they won’t be easy to solve. But we can do it if we end the mindless partisanship…the divisiveness, curb special interest power and restore our sense of common purpose.

BARACK SYNC:  I’m Barack Obama. I approve this message and ask for your vote because if we stand together, we can meet our challenges and ensure that there are better days ahead.