HEMPSTEAD, NY - Twenty months and more than twenty debates after he announced his candidacy, Barack Obama is looking forward to the final debate of the presidential cycle, telling reporters he’s “feeling pretty good” about tonight.

Senior advisor David Axelrod told reporters traveling with the campaign that the third match up between the two candidates is “the last chance for folks to see these candidates side-by-side and take measure of them, and I think that it’s going to accelerate the decision making process for people who are still pondering their choices.”

The previous two debates, Axelrod said, benefitted Obama in the general election race, but cautioned, “Nothing’s over till it’s over and so it’s important but not determinative and what we do in the next two weeks will tell the tale.”

Axelrod, who has been with Obama from the beginning of his candidacy, explained that while the Illinois senator has honed his debate skills and is better at answering questions in a given amount of time, the candidate has not altered his core beliefs, so don’t expect any surprises tonight.

“I think you should look for the same guy that you’ve seen in the last two debates and you’ve seen over the last 20 months. I don’t know if there’s any big revelation,” he said.

On the other hand, he acknowledged that Obama’s GOP rival may try to unveil “McCain’s 7.0″ tonight as he did in the previous debate when the Republican candidate revealed new policy. While Obama will be prepared for it, don’t expect the Democrat to follow suit. “We’re not in the business of reinventing ourselves from debate to debate,” Axelrod said.

But even if McCain were to score tonight with heralded new policy or a good debate, Axelrod said no matter what happens, McCain sill has a heavy weight on his shoulders. “He’s essentially on the wrong side of history; he’s arguing for a set of policies and an approach that’s been discredited and in a really dramatic way over the last eight years, and I’m not sure any stylistic change or approach in a debate can change that.”

It’s been a long road for both candidates, but especially Obama, who has been engaged in nonstop political warfare since February 2007. So how does he feel going into the final debate?

“I think more than anything it’s been an occasion to look back at how long this race has gone and to sort of consider the arc of the thing, so but there’s not all that much time for that right now. I don’t think he’s kind of considering his emotions and his sentiments about the journey right now so much as focusing on those 90 minutes tonight,” Axelrod said.

On a flight aboard the campaign jet from Raleigh to St. Louis, Obama senior advisor David Axelrod shared little details of Senator Obama’s secret meeting with Hillary Clinton last week.

According to the senior staffer, Obama was “pleased” with the rendezvous meant, in part, to help heal the rift caused by 16 months of often contentious infighting between the two Democrats. “It was a friendly meeting, it was a productive meeting and it was very clear as was reflected in her speech on Saturday that she’s doing everything she can help,” Axelrod explained.

Of their hour-long discussion, Axelrod would only reveal, “There was a lot to talk about. It was a long campaign. It was good, but I’m not going to tell you specifically what was discussed, but I mean I think it was characterized by their joint statement. It was very much about the future and it was very good,” he said, maintaining the veil of secrecy surrounding the underground meeting.

When asked if the NY Senator would be making appearances on the campaign trail on behalf of the presumptive Democratic nominee, Axelrod said, “We hope so, we expect so based on what she said publicly. But this has been an unbelievably grueling process and she deserves some time to chill out. So when she’s back in circulation, hopefully we’ll see her out there.”

Perhaps Bill Clinton will emerge on the campaign trail too, as Obama himself told reporters last week he hopes to take advantage of Clinton’s political prowess. “I think Bill Clinton is an enormous talent, and I would welcome him campaigning for me,” he said responding to a question on whether he could overcome the bad blood between the two.

Axelrod afforded the ex-president the benefit of the doubt when asked about his often volatile remarks on during the course of the primary campaign. “You know what – he was out there, he was campaigning for his wife – I think he was fighting very hard and you know you can’t begrudge him that. I think it’s different when you’re campaigning for someone that close to you,” Axelrod explained.

Perhaps more importantly, President Clinton may help advise Obama as he tries to fight his way into the Oval Office this fall. “There aren’t that many presidents of the United States. Bill Clinton was very successful, and is a very smart guy, so I think beyond the campaigning elements of it, you know he’s somebody who I think Obama would want to have a relationship with. He’s got a storehouse of knowledge that very few people have,” Axelrod said.

Following stops in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, the senator, his staff, Secret Service detail, and press corps waited on board the Obama campaign plane on a busy Philadelphia airport tarmac. Barack Obama was set to fly to Evansville, Indiana, to hold a post-Pennsylvania primary rally, but the 757 pilot announced over the PA system that we were number 18 for takeoff. After a collective groan in the cabin, the pilot announced he’d made three phone calls to try to move us up in the queue. Just a few minutes later, the pilot informed us we were number 3 for takeoff. Chalk it up to the perks of running for president.

Obama and crew were “wheels up” minutes after polls closed in Pennsylvania for the next state up to vote in the Democratic race on May 6th. During the nearly two hour flight, senior advisor David Axelrod and communications director Robert Gibbs dropped by the press section of the plane, donned in “Stop the Drama, Vote Obama” T-shirts they purchased for $10 a pop in Philadelphia. Obama, they said, was napping in the front of the cabin, and had not been following the returns.

Axelrod and Gibbs didn’t know much – only what they read on their blackberries before we took off, and when we left, the race was still too close to call. But as early returns favored Clinton, Axelrod observed, “We’ve been very clear from the beginning that we didn’t come in with oversized expectations…as this race began, we were greeted with a declaration of the spokesperson for the Clinton campaign that she was unbeatable in the state of Pennsylvania, essentially that we were wasting our time, so we thought otherwise, and you know, we’ll see what happens.”

But Axelrod was confident in his campaign’s current position - more states, more pledged delegates, and more of the popular vote than Hillary Clinton. “If you don’t think we’ve done well enough, ask the Clinton folks if they’d like to trade places with us,” he said.

Of course this was not a good night for Obama. When the frontrunner offered his congratulations to Senator Clinton during his Evansville rally, the 7,000-strong crowd enthusiastically booed. “No, no,” Obama pleaded. “She ran a terrific race.”

Just after the speech concluded, Axelrod made an appearance in the press workspace – in a button down shirt this time. This was a “home game” for Clinton, he told reporters. “We got the result that we anticipated,  and now we’re on—we’re here tonight, we’re on to North Carolina.”

With no end in sight in this Democratic brawl, Axelrod noted (prior to knowing his candidate lost), “There’s a sense of urgency about the time we’re losing, and a sense of urgency that we not you know savage each other to the benefit of Senator McCain. And as it becomes clearer that we have a delegate lead that is harder to overcome, or close to impossible over time, then the question [is] - If Senator Clinton has a legitimate chance to win the nomination then she has every reason to stay in, but if her only strategy is to try to tear down Senator Obama, then I think that will make a lot of Democrats uncomfortable.”

The campaign doesn’t think it’s likely that she will be able to pull this off, and said so in a memo emailed to reporters following Clinton’s victory. “As he has done in every state, Barack Obama campaigned hard to pick up as much support and as many delegates as possible and was able to stave off Clinton from achieving a significant pledged delegate gain from Pennsylvania. The bottom line is that the Pennsylvania outcome does not change [the] dynamic of this lengthy primary. While there were 158 delegates at stake there, there are fully 157 up for grabs in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries on May 6.”

The Obama campaign just sent out a pair of emails that Senator Obama won a “clear majority of Super Tuesday states” at 13, and that their candidate has won more delegates than Clinton in today’s 22 contests. That is why their victory is “crystal clear” as Senior Advisor told a gaggle of reporters following Obama’s Super Tuesday speech.

Listen to Axelrod on Clinton’s prediction weeks ago that the nomination would be sewn up tonight, on what the American people should take away from today’s results, and on their “victory.”

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