John McCain desperately wants to frame the final days of this presidential campaign as yet another comeback story, and pundits and pollsters keep wondering if the race is tightening. What’s actually happening is that the prospects for a Democratic landslide are growing.
Look where the candidates are. In the closing days of the 2000 and 2004 campaigns, all the action was in Florida and Ohio. Now it’s in states that George W. Bush carried comfortably, such as North Carolina: Barack Obama was in Raleigh this morning, John McCain was in Fayetteville yesterday, Joe Biden was in Greensboro and Greenville on Monday, and Sarah Palin was in Asheville on Sunday. Or Virginia: Obama held two events there yesterday, while Palin did three on Monday. This is no coincidence. Obama has taken criticism for plowing resources into his attempt to redraw the electoral map. But the epicenter of this campaign has shifted to precisely the states where Obama wanted to expand the Democratic electorate, and McCain hasn’t been able to push it back.
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