The Buzz

• Mounting a ferocious comeback in a race where he is down by an rough average of ten-points with three weeks to go will be difficult for the McCain campaign in the face of Obama’s incredible campaign war chest, easily dwarfing McCain’s $84 million in government money. The Obama campaign had almost $80 million in the bank according to late August numbers, the most recent report available. Predictions are that Obama will raise potentially over $100 mil by November 4, making for an easy time of spending that huge stash of campaign money between now and then. This immense cash advantage has enabled Obama to outspend McCain in virtually every state and nationally, spending the summer piling up reserves to unleash last month when the race was closer and now in an effort to seal the deal on top of the advantage Obama has with the economy. Obama is leading so comfortably in some former battleground states that he has actually trimmed his ad budget in those places, letting McCain spend cash to try and make up ground while the Obama campaign blitzes red states. For example, Obama is blowing away any McCain advertising in North Carolina and Indiana, and is the only candidate on the air in the key Northern Virginia region in a state that has become the symbol of McCain’s faltering campaign.

• Virginia, the aforementioned poster state for McCain’s struggles, has only been getting drearier for Republican hopes in November. The news is consistently bad, with Obama leading by nine-points in the latest polls and momentum clearly on the Dem’s side. His rallies in the commonwealth are flush with motivated swing voters in some of the more conservative regions of NoVa, leading most pundits to assume that McCain strongholds of rural southwestern and central Virginia will be outweighed by remarkable Obama support in the D.C. suburbs and fast-growing counties of western VA. The McCain campaign’s efforts in Virginia have certainly not helped the cause. Uncoordinated ground organization, apathy in defending what had been thought of as safe territory for the GOP and high-profile anti-Obama racism from campaign surrogates in rural sections of the commonwealth have turned off swing voters and contributed to the image that VA is a lost cause for McCain. The question now becomes whether his struggles in Virginia will spread to other Southern states where Obama is riding the wave of economic panic among voters.

• Was Todd Palin the “shadow governor” during the first year-and-a-half of “real” Alaska Governor - and Todd’s wife - Sarah Palin’s term? That is the general consensus as Palin continues out on the trail for running mate McCain, accusations investigated to perfection in another article from the LA Times today. Fleshed out in  conversations with former state employees and cabinet members, testimony during the recently closed “Troopergae” investigation and longtime CW among followers of Alaska politics, the picture of Todd as “first gentleman/First Dude” is of a hands-on frontiersman ready to stick his nose in every aspect of his wife’s new job. Besides getting deeply involved in the “Troopergate” snafu, Todd Palin also was said to attend meetings with high-ranking state officials and even conduct business on behalf of Gov. Palin.

• While McCain abandoned the economy in favor of playing up his underdog status for the new “reset” plan to get him back in the race,  Obama will deliver a “major address” on the economy today in Toledo.  Obama will unveil another “rescue plan” for the economy that his campaign hopes will appease voters still troubled about the Fed bailout for Wall Street - and nothing for them. Besides a massive injection of funds to help Detroit automakers cope with their manufacturing and credit worries, Obama will lay out a proposal that would extend unemployment benefits, ease regulations regarding 401(k) withdrawals and give tax cuts to both working families and companies in order to keep manufacturing jobs in the U.S. Most pleasing to taxpayers is that the middle-class tax cuts would be in the form of mailed rebates - much like this year’s stimulus package. Expect the campaign to play this speech and the proposals as Obama working to improve the economy and help working families while McCain merely speaks of his own failings in the presidential race and “whines about his poll numbers” as one anonymous Obama spokesperson told us.

• How can Obama lose Pennsylvania when you’ve got both of the Clintons as well as favorite son Joe Biden out on the trail in Scranton, the blue collar locale that seemed to be ground zero for Obama’s inability to connect with working-class voters in a key battleground state. Penna may soon lose that status in the wake of the Biden-Clinton whirlwind tour and most every poll showing Obama leading a sliding McCain by well over ten-points.

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