Obama Ends Campaign Ahead In Ohio And Pennsylvania, Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll Finds; With Small Dem Lead, Florida Is Too Close To Call  —  FLORIDA: Obama 47 - McCain 45; OHIO: Obama 50 - McCain 43; PENNSYLVANIA: Obama 52 - McCain 42 Democratic Sen. Barack Obama ends his historic bid …

Tampa McCain rally: Where is everybody?  —  About 30 minutes before John McCain is scheduled to lead a rally outside Raymond James Stadium, looks like there's maybe 1,000 people here.  What's up with that?  On the day before the election?  Bush drew at least 15,000 people to a rally …

CNN Wants Its Viewers to Be Misinformed  —  Steve Hayes is not what you would call a reliable source of information.  His first book, The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America was a deliberate attempt to mislead the public about the subject at hand.

Penn: Democrats Must Snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory  —  One happy result of the way the primaries came out is that Mark Penn is writing op-eds in The Financial Times rather than advising the next President of the United States: … To just repeat what I said in response …

Hyperactive Fact-Checkers  —  I think it's probably a good thing that so many media organizations now run these “fact-check” items about political ads and rhetoric (except that it's going to confuse the next generation of magazine interns about what fact-checking is about) but one thing I've noticed is a tendency to get overly vigilant.

Romney Can't Bring Himself To Say That McCain Has Conducted A ‘Dignified And Honest’ Campaign  —  This morning on NBC's Today Show, host Meredith Vieira asked McCain campaign surrogate Mitt Romney about a new University of Wisconsin analysis, which found that more of McCain's ads have been negative than Obama's in the past week.

Keith Olbermann on McCain Campaign Giddiness: They Have “Even Less of a Clue Than I Thought.”  —  I reached Olbermann by email this morning to ask him about how it felt to be the McCain campaign's ray of sunshine.  He responded: … The McCain campaign denies Palin called an audible on complimenting Tina.

Obama's Grandmother Dies  —  CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A tragic turn of events for Sen. Barack Obama: his ailing grandmother died today.  —  Here's a statement from Obama and his sister Maya Soetoro-Ng:  —  “It is with great sadness that we announce that our grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, has died peacefully after a battle with cancer.

Ohio Coal Association Says Obama Remarks Make It Clear: Obama Ticket Not Supportive of Coal  —  COLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov 03, 2008 /PRNewswire—USNewswire via COMTEX/ — Mike Carey, president of the Ohio Coal Association (OCA), today issued the following statement in response to just-released remarks …

Last of the Culture Warriors  —  Why has America turned on Sarah Palin?  Obviously, her wobbly television interviews haven't helped.  Nor have the drip, drip of scandals from Alaska, which have tarnished her reformist image.  But Palin's problems run deeper, and they say something fundamental about the political age being born.

Barack Obama Answers Your Questions — Check Out The Full Interview Here!  —  For your responses, watch ‘Ask Obama’ on Monday at 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. ET on MTV.  —  MTV News sat down with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Saturday in Nevada, but we weren't alone.

McCain Rally: Salter Is Smiling  —  Elizabeth Holmes reports from Blountville, Tenn., on the presidential race.  —  You know it's a big day on the McCain campaign when Mark Salter is smiling.  —  The senior aide to John McCain, known for his gruff demeanor, was practically giddy this morning on the campaign plane.

The Republicans' appalling attack on Rashid Khalidi.  —  On the clouded synapses of Sen. John McCain, it became clear as his campaign limped and lurched to its close, the termites had been dining long and dining well.  However much one might have admired the low comedy of his closing routine …

Fox News' Major Garrett Defends Obama Against “Fox & Friends” In Leaked E-Mail  —  Fox News correspondent Major Garrett shot back in defense of Barack Obama against the network's morning show's effort to suggest that he has ignored Fox News throughout the campaign.

Palin On Democrats: “Do They Think The Terrorists ... Are The Good Guys?”  —  In a speech just now in Missouri, Sarah Palin unleashed some of the most ostentatious POW-POW-POWing of the campaign, and strongly implied that Dems think the “terrorists” are the “good guys.”

THE NEW POLL TAX.  —  This is why Rachel Maddow matters:  —  The poll tax was a sly system of disenfranchisement used in the Jim Crow era to disenfranchise Southern blacks.  Aware that the Constitution now assured everyone the “right” to vote, Southern states imposed a voting fee heavy enough …

What Might Have Been  —  In the end this campaign could have been a clear-cut and honest choice between two world views, unapologetically expressed.  I think with McCain his conservative/centrist views and 30-year public life were pretty well known to the public.  Like it or not, the voters knew what they would get.

The Republican Rump  —  Maybe the polls are wrong, and John McCain is about to pull off the biggest election upset in American history.  But right now the Democrats seem poised both to win the White House and to greatly expand their majorities in both houses of Congress.

Schumer Vows Big Changes on ‘Issue After Issue’ in Next Senate  —  (CNSNews.com) - Americans can expect to see major changes “in issue after issue” in the Senate next year, said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, at a meeting with reporters near the Capitol on Oct. 29.

The Dr. Maddow Show  —  The secret to the success of a wonky lesbian pundit with no TV experience?  A Ph.D. from Oxford, a dry sense of humor, and the ability to be nice to Pat Buchanan.  —  E  —  ver heard of something called Dada?  Rachel Maddow is trying to make an analogy.

Palin campaign stonewalls on medical records  —  LAKEWOOD, Ohio (CNN) - With less than 24 hours to go before the presidential election, Sarah Palin still has not released her medical records and there is no indication the campaign is planning to do so.  —  Two weeks ago, Palin's campaign …

In One Weekend, 1.8 million Doors Knocked For Obama  —  Inside Obama's headquarters, some call Craig Schmirer their “secret weapon.”  Here's a memo that Schirmer, as Pennsylvania state director, sent out this morning about the scope of the campaign's turnout effort there.

Obama: ‘Not Going to Get Everything Done’ If Elected President  —  ABC News Radio's Ann Compton Interviews Barack Obama on Eve of 2008 Election  —  ABC News Radio White House Correspondent Ann Compton interviews Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama on the eve of the 2008 election:

Palin: ‘Far-left wing of the Democrat Party’ could takeover  —  LAKEWOOD, Ohio (CNN) - With her voice beginning to crack on this final marathon day of campaigning, Sarah Palin promised an audience in Ohio: “We will win!”  —  “You can just feel it here,” she said at a rally in the Cleveland suburbs.

‘We live it’  —  An interesting little clip from CNN's iReport, in which Palin responds to a question about why there aren't more minorities at her rally by mentioning that her husband is a native Alaskan.  “We live it,” she says.

On The Plane  —  Ana Marie Cox participates in one of the weirdest rituals of the dying media paradigm: … Not only is this business of traveling with the candidate not very useful, with its huge ratio of time spent traveling to time spent doing stuff, but it's also quite expensive for the news organization paying for your travel.