The Boss

Springsteen sings "The Rising" at the rally in Cleveland.

Obama exuded confidence. "The last couple of days, I've been just feeling good," he told 80,000 gathered to hear him--and singer Bruce Springsteen --in Cleveland. "The crowds seem to grow and everybody's got a smile on their face. You start thinking that maybe we might be able to win an election on November 4th." Indeed, Election Day is becoming a misnomer. About 27 million absentee and early votes were cast in 30 states as of Saturday night, more than ever. Democrats outnumbered Republicans in pre-Election Day voting in key states.

The view from a Republican who got dragged along on the canvassing trail by his wife..."I had the chance to view that organization up close this month when I canvassed for him. I'm not sure I learned much about his chances, but I learned a lot about myself and about this election...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."

The man in the plane: "The lines in Mr. Obama's face have grown a bit deeper since he started his campaign, with the notches of gray hair along his temples far more pronounced. He often carries the look of exhaustion, but flying the other night to Nevada, where he arrived after midnight, Mr. Obama passed on the chance to take much of a nap.Instead, he walked around the cabin of his airplane, which is about the size of a bedroom, and talked about a favorite diversion, the coming basketball season, as he took care not to step on a senior foreign policy adviser, Mark Lippert, who was asleep on the floor.

"His world is awash in powerful, conflicting emotions: the realization, presumably, that he may be about to become president; the huge optimism that he has unleashed, evident in the crowds he is drawing (and something he has told aides worries him a bit, given the expectations set for him); the weighty thinking he is gradually giving to how he would staff a government and deal with a transition in such a difficult time. All of this is taking place as a woman who played a large role in raising him, his grandmother, is approaching death. '"What if I disappoint people?"' Valerie Jarrett, a close friend and adviser, recalled Mr. Obama asking at several points throughout the campaign. 'That's what gives him the energy to keep getting up every day.'"

The Arizona Daily Star endorses Obama! "Like a race car driver going into a turn, a leader must see not only what confronts our nation today but envision where we come out on the other side. Obama sees how the United States is connected to other nations through our economic, immigration, national security and energy policies. No one can thrive alone. Obama sees a foreign policy where force is but one tool. He envisions countries collaborating to confront bad actors and shared challenges such as global warming, poverty, terrorism, disease and religious extremism."

One of the really heartening things has been to see how many people have invested into this presidential campaign. While he's been criticized for turning down public financing, in the end, Obama made a much more profound point by getting a "buy-in" from 3.2 million people (to raise $641 million) this campaign. And for those who wanted to do more, his campaign inspired a kind of do-it-yourself creativity and energy that frankly, I've never seen before. The NY Times on Sunday profiled Susan Skolfield, a Winter Park, FL resident who chafed that the Obama campaign wouldn't be opening an office in her mainly GOP-leaning town. "So Ms. Skolfield opened one herself. She dug into her own pocket for the initial $1,350 in rent, hooked up telephones and computers, hauled in furniture and printed up fliers for an early September opening party that drew nearly a thousand people."

Andrew Sullivan in the London Times: "We are indeed on the verge of something that seems even more incredible the closer it gets, something more than a mere election. This is America, after all. It is a place that has seen great cruelty and hardship in its time. But it is also a place that yearns to believe naively in mornings rather than evenings, that cherishes dawns over dusks, that is not embarrassed by its own sense of destiny. In this unlikely mixed-race figure of Barack Obama, we will for a brief moment perhaps see a nation reimagined and a world of possibilities open up. For a brief moment at least. As they have learnt to say in some of the most blighted parts of the world at some of the most desperate times: know hope."

Paul Krugman's column today muses upon what an Obama win would mean for the Republican party. Would it really force the party to ponder where it has been heading, and move the party fromt he far-right to a more central stance? Or will it become MORE extreme as socially moderate fiscal conservatives decide to leave?