Obama's Closing Argument

Why Obama is ahead: "Dressed in blue jeans and a black jacket, Barack Obama braved the cold rain falling in Pennsylvania, and held his scheduled rally - outdoors. 'A little bit of rain never hurt anybody,' he quipped to the 9,000 who showed up in ponchos and futilely holding umbrellas. Just an hour away in Quakertown, the rival ticket cancelled their own outdoor rally due to the same poor weather conditions that the Democrat embraced. 'I just want all of you to know if we see this kind of dedication on election day – there is no way that we're not going to bring change to America,' he said as the soggy crowd cheered." Don't catch a cold, man!!

In Ohio yesterday, Obama started to pull the threads of this campaign together. "We are one week away from changing America," Mr. Obama declared to about 5,000 people at the Canton Civic Center here. "In one week, you can put an end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election, that tries to pit region against region, city against town, Republican against Democrat, that asks us to fear at a time when we need hope. In one week, at this defining moment in history, you can give this country the change we need." Watch here.

Oh, and shake out all those crazies please -- get 'em out into the open. Reuters reports that "Law enforcement arrested two men in Tennessee who had plans to rob a gun dealer to shoot Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and 'as many non-Caucasians' as possible, an official said on Monday."

And let the post-mortems begin

ABC: you are seeing people within the McCain campaign starting to look to the future. Not only Palin, but many of the McCain staffers, as well, are circulating their resumes and pointing the finger. Whenever people in the campaign are starting to worry more about their own reputations rather than whether they're going to win in seven days, there is a significant problem.

WaPo: "Probably, John McCain and Sarah Palin will lose this election. Certainly, they deserve to. With a campaign designed more to play on insecurities than promote ideas, McCain and Palin have practically framed Barack Obama's "closing argument" for him. "The question in this election is not 'Are you better off than you were four years ago?'" Obama told an audience Monday in Canton, Ohio. "We know the answer to that. The real question is 'Will this country be better off four years from now?"'The Republicans don't even try to formulate an answer, and with Obama's lead growing by the day, it's hard to imagine what might turn things around."

HuffPo: Fading in the polls, John McCain fought Barack Obama for support in economically hard-hit Ohio on Monday, each man pledging to right the economy and turn the page on the Bush era in a state with an impressive record for picking presidents. Eight days from the election, however, Republicans looked and sounded increasingly like a party anticipating defeat, and possibly a substantial one.

Michelle Obama on Leno

As the NY Times observed, Michelle Obama has really taken to her role in the public eye, and in my opinion, comes across as a very funny, down-to-earth woman. In an appearance on Leno last night she was gracious on the subject of Palin's $150 K wardrobe, saying she wanted to be "empathetic. A V.P. pick, it's like being shot out of a cannon. All of a sudden you're at the center of attention, and you want to look good...You're living in your home, minding your business, and all of a sudden you're on the national stage and everyone's watching."