Slow blogging today, if any.  I thought about live-blogging the day, but I’d rather sit back and take it in.  There won’t be much to talk about until the results start coming in anyway.  I’m of course going out to vote, I’ll be having lunch with my wife, we’ll get our free cup of Starbucks, and– depending on the lines– our free Krispy Kreme doughnut.  And then it’s nonstop television watching and furious Web surfing.  If anything major develops, I’ll more likely be on the phone with family than here.  So, in all likelihood, I’ll see you tomorrow.  Hopefully, America– and the world– will be a very different place then.

Sure, you could always wait until the networks call the election, but who wants to spend those extra four or five hours (or more) writhing in agony, while all the champagne gets warm?  Yesterday, I wrote this handy little shorthand guide:

If Obama wins just two of the following four states, it’s over: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, or Florida. If Obama wins just one, he can still be saved by holding serve in the west, winning Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada, or by winning just one of those states plus North Carolina. If Obama somehow loses all four– Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, and Florida– hold onto your hat. He would then need the three Western states– Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada– plus North Carolina (which could easily happen), or the Western states plus Indiana and Missouri (a scenario that is unlikely if he’s already lost Midwestern voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio).

But Nate Silver at 538 is the man with the cold hard numbers.  He adds this: 

[T]here are some states that truly do appear to be “must-wins” for McCain. In each and every one of the 624 victory scenarios that the simulation found for him this afternoon, McCain won Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Indiana and Montana. He also picked up Ohio in 621 out of the 624 simulations, and North Carolina in 622 out of 624. If McCain drops any of those states, it’s pretty much over.

As far as exact times go, Silver lays out what to watch for– and when– in a must-read article for Newsweek.  Indiana and Virginia appear to be the early bellwethers:

If for some reason [Indiana] is called before 7 PM for John McCain, that probably means we’re in for a long night. If, on the other hand, the state is called for Obama in the first hour after the polls close, that could indicate that the force of Obama’s field operation has been underestimated, and that McCain is in for a catastrophically poor evening.

…

Virginia, for my money, is the most important state in this election. … As Obama remains about five points ahead in most polls of Virginia, what we’re really looking for is a quick call on anything before 8 PM that would indicate that the map has indeed changed from 2004, and not in McCain’s favor.

I’m predicting an electoral college landslide for Obama, so I think we get a surprise call on Florida a mere two hours after the polls close there– 9:00 p.m EST.  Obviously, Obama won’t have 270 at that point, and no one will officially call the election until some of the Western states start coming in.  But every path McCain has to 270 will be closed at that point.  To quote the great Tim Russert, the state to watch tomorrow night: “Florida, Florida, Florida.”

By the way, guess which of those is one of John McCain’s favorite sayings.

In the last week, John McCain has pulled most of his resources out of the get-out-the-vote ground game and poured it all into television ads:

The decision to finance a final advertising push is forcing McCain to curtail spending on Election Day ground forces to help usher his supporters to the polls, according to Republican consultants familiar with McCain’s strategy.

The vaunted, 72-hour plan that President Bush used to mobilize voters in 2000 and 2004 has been scaled back for McCain. He has spent half as much as Obama on staffing and has opened far fewer field offices. This week, a number of veteran GOP operatives who orchestrate door-to-door efforts to get voters to the polls were told they should not expect to receive plane tickets, rental cars or hotel rooms from the campaign.

But television ads and robocalls don’t get people to the polls.  Cars get people to the polls.  Volunteers offering to help people get to the polls gets people to the polls.

McCain’s move isn’t completely crazy.  As Nate Silver at 538 has pointed out several times, McCain needs the polls in every state to tighten about five points to even have a shot at picking off enough battlegrounds to win the electoral college.  Television ads are more likely than get-out-the-vote efforts to have this kind of nationwide effect.  The problem is, McCain’s television ads aren’t moving the numbers at all, and he’s still down about 5 and 11 points in every national poll and tracker.  Which means that McCain is working from at least a 5-point deficit, AND he’s going to be turning out less voters.

Think of it like this.  There’s 100 voters in a room; 53 supporting Barack Obama, 47 supporting John McCain.  For McCain to win a vote from the people in that room, he has to either convince 3 or more Obama supporters to switch sides, or he has to make sure that all 47 of his people actually vote, while maybe 6 or 7 Obama supporters flake out and stay home.  McCain’s problem is two-fold: 1) In the last few weeks, he hasn’t been able to convince any of those 53 Obama supporters to switch sides; and 2) Because he put all his resources into the side-switching tactics, he now has very few resources left to get the 47 people who are on his side to actually get out and vote.  So in the end, Obama is going to use his superior ground game resources to turn out something like 50 of his supporters (a 95% turnout rate), while McCain is only going to get 42 of his supporters to show up and vote (90% turnout).  That’s an 8-point loss in a room McCain only trailed in the polls by 5 in.

I’m pretty confident that with increased African-American turnout that has amounted to a self-propelled get-out-the-vote advantage, plus the enormous ground game advantage Obama has (more volunteers, more offices, much more voter contact), that things state-by-state are going to look a lot like the hypothetical of that room.

If you need evidence of how much stronger Obama’s ground efforts are, Ben Smith is posting a lot of good anecdotal stories today from reader e-mails.  538′s “Road to 270″ series also has a lot of really good on-the-ground evidence from correspondent Sean Quinn.  And Josh Marshall posted this video yesterday of Politico’s Roger Simon on MSNBC, discussing the sheer magnitude of Obama’s GOTV advantage:

Electoral vote tally: Barack Obama 375, John McCain 163.

Just a few notes:

– Every poll confirms that Pennsylvania is a done deal. I know McCain sees it as his last stand, and he definitely needs to win it to have any real chance at the presidency. But if it’s such a swing state, why hasn’t Obama been there in a week?

– Ohio and Florida seem to be the two battlegrounds getting the most attention from both campaigns in the final days. Ohio is one of the states hit hardest by the economic downturn, especially in the housing market, and I think that puts it over the top for Obama. The theme there, even from white voters skeptical of a black candidate, is “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” And if Ohio falls, Indiana will also get swept in, by virtue of being sandwiched between the Buckeye State and Obama’s Illinois (where he’ll win by 20% or more). Florida is all ground game, and McCain is getting trounced by Obama in that respect. Kerry lost Florida by 5%; Obama will make that up in increased African-American turnout alone. Obama’s superior get out the vote effort will push it over the top.

– Early voting has locked up Nevada and North Carolina. It’ll also put Obama within three points in Georgia, though not quite close enough to win there.

– McCain’s team fumbled the ball badly in Virginia. Not only did they build no ground game, but they spent the last few weeks insulting the northern half of the state. It’ll cost them 13 electoral votes.

– Missouri in the Obama column is the prediction I’m most worried about.  I think the vote there might look like it did on Super Tuesday, when the state was originally called for Hillary Clinton but was eeked out at the end by Obama.

– If McCain is going to pull off a surprise anywhere, it’ll be the midwest states, Ohio and Indiana. Under my map, that still leaves him 76 electoral votes short.

– If you want to know when on election night you can start celebrating, here’s a guide. If Obama wins just two of the following four states, it’s over: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, or Florida. If Obama wins just one, he can still be saved by holding serve in the west, winning Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada, or by winning just one of those states plus North Carolina. If Obama somehow loses all four– Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, and Florida– hold onto your hat. He would then need the three Western states– Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada– plus North Carolina (which could easily happen), or the Western states plus Indiana and Missouri (a scenario that is unlikely if he’s already lost Midwestern voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio).

And here’s a pretty entertaining behind-the-scenes chat with John and Cindy McCain on their history with SNL. Check out when Cindy says something like, “It’s what I do best; I just stand there and look good.” Do I sense a little tension?

– Does Barack Obama regret his decision to take Sasha trick-or-treating yesterday (which actually ate up his whole day because he campaigned in the relatively safe Iowa and the relatively unimportant Indiana to stay close to Chicago)?  Or his campaign’s decision to throw resources into Arizona pretty much for no other reason than to show up McCain?

– Does it disenfranchise an entire generation of Democrat-leaning voters who will likely never want to vote again after working so hard and getting their hopes up so high?  How badly would the participation of black voters drop in the next election?  How long would it take Democrats to rebuild a coalition like that again?

– Does FiveThirtyEight go out of business?  After all, Nate Silver currently has McCain at a 2.8% chance to win the election.  2.8% isn’t zero percent, but if McCain wins, he’s gonna have a lot of splainin’ to do.  In fact, with no polls to crunch from now till the 2010 midterms, he’d probably have to spend the next year and a half laying out to his readers exactly what went wrong.  And it would be hard to get that credibility back.  It would no longer be “the website FiveThirtyEight,” but instead ”the website FiveThirtyEight, who despite a lot of fancy number crunching, famously got the 2008 election wrong.”

– Does Obama run in 2012?  Obviously, a lot of people would blame his loss on race.  With pretty much everything that matters overwhelmingly favoring Democrats this year, there wouldn’t be too many other explanations.  With that said, how long would it be before either major party, Democrat or Republican, nominates another non-white person for president?  Would Hillary have a lock on 2012 or at that point would Democrats be hesistant to nominate a woman as well?

– Does the way Republicans essentially snuck Sarah Palin into the White House change the rules of transparency in future elections?  Why should any candidate release health records or give press conferences if Palin never got punished by voters for not doing those things?  Does Andrew Sullivan’s head explode?

– Does the enormous disparity between the final polls and early voting numbers (which both overwhelmingly favor Obama) and the ultimate election result undermine America’s confidence in its democratic process?  Would the stories of electronic voting machine malfunctions and discarded voter registrations balloon into a nationwide conspiracy hunt?

– Do I get up and go to work the next day?  Does anyone?

236.com makes a pretty valid point about the presidential debates: Um, what was the point of the last two?

Yesterday, in an attempt to derail the Overconfidence Express, the Obama camp released this video of a real-life cautionary tale. Seriously, it’s hilarious, watch it:

And while that is one of the funniest political videos I’ve ever seen, I’m thinking that November 4th is gonna look a lot more like this:

UPDATE: Still, you know, get out and vote.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism’s researchers found that John McCain, over the six weeks since the Republican convention, got four times as many negative stories as positive ones. The study found six out of 10 McCain stories were negative.

What’s more, Obama had more than twice as many positive stories (36 percent) as McCain — and just half the percentage of negative (29 percent).

You call that balanced?

Here’s the chart of media bias they’re citing:

Politico, almost with a sense of shame and needing to explain themselves, then goes to great lengths to lay out and analyze the possible reasons for this.  But I’ll save you five minutes. Here’s the short and simple reason why the media is biased against McCain:

Because his campaign sucks. And both he and Sarah Palin are borderline awful presidential candidates– a fact, I’m guessing, that many Republicans will heartily agree with on November 5th.

The truth is the McCain campaign has had two really good days since August: the day they announced Palin for VP and the day Palin gave her RNC speech. Every day other than those two has varied between mediocre and disasterous. There just hasn’t been that much good news to report.

McCain’s two-week response to the economic crisis was a mess, Palin’s train wreck interviews have dominated discussion for days at a time, they both somehow managed to lose every single post-debate poll and focus group that I saw, they’ve been down in the national polls almost every single day (the state-by-state electoral college situation is even worse for them), their campaign took on a particularly ugly negative focus for a solid three weeks which elicited some likewise ugly responses from supporters, and Elizabeth Hasselbeck on the stump is like a shrill, annoying, spoiled, uninspiring, bit….. ter version of Oprah. Meanwhile, Obama is attracting record crowds, raising unprecedented funds, drawing significant support from well-known conservatives, running one of the smoothest campaigns ever, and enjoying a steady near-double-digit lead in the polls.

I bet if you did a chart of media bias last year, comparing coverage of the New England Patriots (pre-Super Bowl collapse) versus the Oakland Raiders, it’d look similar to that picture above. Winners get positive fluff pieces– like the humanitarian work of Randy Moss, the inspiration of Tedy Bruschi’s comeback, and the hotness of Tom Brady’s girlfriend– while losers get in-depth analysis of what’s going wrong, who said what behind whose back, and who needs to be or is about to be fired. Right now, the Obama campaign is the 2007 Patriots. Even if they manage to blow the Super Bowl– which would no doubt lead to a swift, 180-degree media backlash– it doesn’t matter. ‘Cause the Raiders didn’t even make the playoffs.

Shortly thereafter, exactly one-third of the cable news channels and ten percent of the political blogosphere was buzzing over this devastating development for the Obama campaign a mere seven days before the election:

John Moody, the Executive VP of Fox News, made the following statement on the importance of this new evidence and why the Fox News Channel will now replace all programming with a 24-hour-a-day feed of this photo:

If this photo is verified, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are capitalists, but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee.

If the photo turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to epic failure.

People are losing their homes and their life savings, and what is McCain offering? “Workin’ Joes.” What is that, a sandwich?

This is actually pretty infuriating. What is terrorism if not politically-motivated violence with the threat of more violence? And doesn’t that describe abortion clinic bombers exactly?

Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground may have bombed empty buildings, but they never killed or injured anyone except their own members. On the other hand, violence against abortion clinic doctors and workers has killed 7 Americans. It has also accounted for “17 attempted murders, 383 death threats, 153 incidents of assault or battery, and 3 kidnappings.” It’s no coincidence that those read like statistics from neighborhoods in Iraq.

So what is the difference, Sarah? If you’re asking to lead the war on terror, and if you’re going to make your entire campaign about Barack Obama’s association with terrorists, it’d be helpful if you actually understood the concept.

And while Palin’s soft stance on domestic terror is astonishing, John McCain may have an even bigger domestic terrorism problem:

McCain’s terrorism problem dates back to the early 1990s, when he sided with right-wing domestic terrorists and voted against tough new legislation cracking down on a wave of anti-choice domestic terrorism targeting women who visited abortion clinics, their doctors, and clinic staff.

In both 1993 and 1994, McCain voted against the anti-terrorism measure. On each occasion, McCain was one of thirty radical anti-choice Senators to oppose the bill. Fortunately, despite McCain’s opposition, it passed the Senate by a 69-30 margin.

I think part of the reason why McCain and Palin are pushing the Bill Ayers thing so hard is because for the first time in a long time, the Republican ticket is getting out-muscled on national security. McCain wants to spend another four years policing Iraq, Obama– like most Americans– wants to go after Al Qaeda where they live. Obama strongly denounced a man who bombed empty buildings, hurting no one in the process, 40 years ago; the strongest word Palin can muster up for abortion clinic terrorists who are responsible for countless threats, assaults, and murders against American doctors is “unacceptable.”

UPDATE: Just so we’re all clear, if a right-wing Islamic extremist shoots an Iraqi doctor in Baghdad, it’s terrorism and we must spend $10 billion a month overseas and cripple our own economy to defeat it. If a right-wing Christian extremist shoots an American doctor in Birmingham, “I don’t know if you’re gonna use the word ‘terrorist’ there.” Got that?

First, Greg Sargent at TPM broke the story yesterday that the McCain campaign was directly involved in fabricating details of Ashley Todd’s fake robbery and assault story: 

John McCain’s Pennsylvania communications director told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established — and even told reporters outright that the “B” carved into the victim’s cheek stood for “Barack,” according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.

John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain’s Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, “You’re with the McCain campaign? I’m going to teach you a lesson.”

But it gets even worse.  Somehow.  Someway.  It gets… even… worse.

Apparently, Ashley Todd is just the latest individual the McCain campaign failed to vet before shining the national spotlight on them.  Because it turns out that not only was Todd’s story a complete hoax, but she also suffers from a history of mental illness:

She will be housed in a mental health unit at the county jail for her safety and because of “her not insignificant mental health issues,” prosecutor Mark Tranquilli said.

So the McCain campaign put their reputation, their entire Pennsylvania campaign– and by default, their entire national campaign– on the line to exploit and embellish the story of a mentally ill woman who, 24 hours later, has been institutionalized for her own safety.

“When you think of John McCain, think of me, George W. Bush. Think of this face. When you’re in the voting booth, before you vote…….. picture… this… face.” Too funny!