Word: mccain
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...McCain, say people who know him, believes he still has a chance. There are enough stray signs of hope - like a one-day poll sample from John Zogby that placed Obama's national advantage over McCain at just 3 percentage points (though most other national tracking polls put Obama's lead more in the 5-to-10-point range) - to keep the candidate and the the campaign going. Eschewing the attacks revolving around Bill Ayers and ACORN that appeared to backfire earlier this month, McCain is focusing most of his firepower on two primary targets: Obama's readiness...
...Dole started campaigning in states that were of little help to him but where he could assist Republicans trying to hold on to their majorities in Congress. That kind of pivot hasn't happened in this race, though over the weekend conservative writer David Frum openly called on McCain to do just that for the good of the party. Scott Reed, who ran Dole's '96 campaign, says he believes McCain could still pull off a victory. "I think Schmidt's strategy has brought [McCain] back and kept it from being a blowout," he says. "It can be done...
...Reed's comments echo the words of Mark McKinnon, who was McCain's chief media strategist until June, when he dropped off the campaign because he decided he didn't want to participate in attacking Obama. Writing for the website the Daily Beast, McKinnon defended McCain's general election strategy. "I know that Steve Schmidt and his colleagues have run a very good campaign and have taken McCain further than he had any reasonable right to, given the political climate," said McKinnon. "And by the way, don't tell the press, but the election ain't over...
...That could also just be happy talk meant to buck up the weary and the dispirited who dedicated much of the past 24 months of their lives to this effort. McCain's strategy in these final eight days of the campaign hinges on winning a slew of red states in which Obama currently holds leads of varying sizes in the polls - Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Missouri, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada - and then somehow producing an upset in Pennsylvania, a Blue state that went for Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004 and where Obama currently boasts a lead...
...Both McCain and Palin have been spending much of the past couple of weeks in the Keystone State, hoping that Obama's support in western Pennsylvania, where Hillary Clinton far outdid the Illinois Senator in the primary, is soft and that McCain's efforts to distance himself from the current Republican President are convincing. (In that regard, he did himself no favors over the weekend, admitting that he and Bush share a "common philosophy," which Obama quickly seized upon.) Heeding calls from the likes of Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell not to take the state for granted, Obama is returning...