AP Photo

BOWLING GREEN, OH — In the final days of the race, where the candidates spend their time says a lot about their prorities.

With just two days to go, Obama is sending his top campaign asset - VP nominee Joe Biden - to the two states that have all but decided the last two presidential elections: Florida and Ohio.

Biden, who’s been tasked with reaching out to white, blue collar workers, Catholics, and Jewish voters, will stump all day Sunday in North Florida - a region of the state that doesn’t get as much attention as the I-4 corridor of Tampa and Orlando, or South Florida’s Miami and West Palm Beach.

Then on Monday, he’s back in working class Ohio, visiting the rust belt town of Akron. He’ll wrap up the night with a rally in Philadephia, where Obama is heavily favored — but which is just minutes away from his home in Wilmington.

On Tuesday, he’s expected to campaign in a swing state in the morning before joining Obama in Chicago for a huge election night rally.

LIMA, OH — The muzzle is off.

Joe Biden stopped by a local burger joint for late night take-out, but wound up taking 12 minutes of questions from national reporters who haven’t been able to talk to the Delaware Senator since a flight to Kalispell, MT on September 7th.

So did the gaffe-prone VP nominee feel pressure from the campaign not to talk to the press?

“If I’m muzzled, I don’t know,” Biden said. “I’ve done 200 interviews. I’ve been doing, you know, half a dozen to a dozen satellite feeds everyday. I’m doing shows, I mean, so, no one said anything to me about it.”

Biden told the small media throng inside the classic Lima diner that while he feels good, he expects a tight race.

This election is going to be a lot closer than everybody thinks it is,” Biden said. “I think it’s going to be close in Florida, it’s going to be close here, it’s going to be close in Missouri, I think it’s going to close - I don’t think it will be that close in Pennsylvania, I feel very good about Pennsylvania.”

“I think it’s going to be close in North Carolina, um, you know, Virginia feels really good but, you know, it ain’t till it happens,” he laughed. “We’re going everywhere. Montana, Arizona, I mean we’re everywhere we can be.”

McCain, he said, isn’t going away quietly. “One of the things I’ve admired about John, and I’ve considered him — why I’ve considered him a friend. He does, he never gives up,” said Biden. “I just hope when it’s over, win or lose, you walk up and you shake hands and say John, we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

The VP nominee said he’s glad to hear that McCain is closing out his TV campaign with a positive ad. “I hope John ends this campaign with his strength,” he said. ” I think it’s just not a good thing to, win or lose it’s not a good thing to end in sort of this tough environment. No matter what.”

As for his relationship with the man he calls a good friend? “I hope it’s intact,” he said.” John and I haven’t had a chance to speak. We have not had a chance to speak.”

“I just think that, uh, I think – I believe when this is over, win or lose, John and I are likely to be around, you, in one form or another, in one job or another, and I hope, uh, my hope is we can work together. Because folks, it sounds corny, you cannot do this stuff unless you start to get a little purple here. You can’t make these big decisions. I mean, you need, you need cooperation, no matter how.”

KETTERING, OH — It’s getting scary on the Biden campaign trail.

With Halloween just around the corner, the VP nominee’s wife Jill engaged in some family fright after introducing her husband at a rally for 1500 in westeron Ohio. 

After passing Jill as he came on stage, Biden laughed upon approaching the podium. “I tell you what, some thing things never change,” he said. “I probably shouldn’t let the press know this, but you know, Jill walked back up here a moment ago you know what she did? She put a little rat on the thing here!”

“Everything’s Halloween with this lady!” Biden laughed. “Happy Halloween.” Turning to his wife, he said “You are bad!”

But it’s not rubber rats that scare Joe Biden — it’s Republicans. 

“Look. I know it’s Halloween. I know its Halloween. But John McCain dressed as an agent of change is a costume that just does not fit,” Biden said — repeating a line that’s been a stump speech staple for weeks. 

And as for those scary Republican attacks on Barack Obama? “The Republicans have gone way over the top in my view, calling Barack Obama every name in the book. And the problem will get worse in the next three and a half to four days,” Biden said.

“If you look at who he is, what he’s done, and what he plans to do for this country. If you work for us in the closing days and choose hope over fear, after this Tuesday, the very critics will be calling him something else. They will be calling him the 44th president of the United States of America. Our commander in chief, Barack Obama.

DEFIANCE, OH — A communication mishap left John McCain awkwardly looking for Joe the Plumber at his rally today in northwest Ohio.

While Joe Wurzelbacher has been out on the stump for the GOP nominee in recent days, it appears initial plans to have him attend McCain’s first morning rally near his home were never confirmed with America’s most famous blue collar worker.

But, campaign aides say that Wurzelbacher will appear with McCain in the near future. The GOPer is conducting a two-day bus tour through Ohio.

New OH Newspaper poll by the Cleveland Plain Dealer has Obama up by 3 points,among likely voters but essentially within the margin of error(3.3.). Ohio voters have been wrong only twice when picking the president in the last 108 years.

AP Photo-Cincinnati, OH

CINCINNATI, OH - John McCain did not mince any words in characterizing Barack Obama at his final rally on Wednesday.

“He will say anything to get elected,” he said to more than 10,000 supporters at an airport hangar event alongside Sarah Palin.

While McCain has argued for months that Obama makes policy decisions based on political motivations and has been disingenuous with the American people, today’s statement was his most blunt critique of his rival on the issue of honesty.

The criticism came as McCain took aim at the Obama campaign’s disclosure that it recently added an employment requirement to his mortgage tax credit proposal.

“This week, we learned that Senator Obama is concerned that his tax plan is seen, is seen as welfare, so he just added a work requirement. 13 days to go in the election and he changed his tax plan because the American people had learned the truth about it and they didn’t like it,” McCain said. “That’s another example my friends. He will say anything to get elected. So now, if you are unemployed, Senator Obama’s plan won’t help you at all. And that’s the problem with Senator Obama’s approach on taxes. He is more concerned about creating a tax plan that is quote ‘fair’ than creating a plan that creates jobs and grows our economy.”

Obama campaign economic adviser Austan Goolsbee told a Council on Foreign Relations forum in DC Tuesday that they privately added the provision in recent weeks in response to previous McCain attacks that the credit was tantamount to welfare.

“They started saying this was welfare..so, just so they would absolutely not be able to say that, we decided that for the last two percent we’ll simply add a work requirement,” Goolsbee said, but acknowledged that the campaign never publicly advertised the latest shift to their tax plan.

The McCain campaign is casting this change as the latest politically expedient Obama campaign shift.

MSNBC Cartoon

LANCASTER, OH — Hours before tonight’s third and final presidential debate, Democratic VP nominee Joe Biden accused John McCain of being interested in only in negative campaigning.

“The ultimate decision here for the American people to make is to take a look at, take a look at whether or not this negative campaigning John McCain is interested in – and that’s all he seems to talk about, he and Sarah Palin, or you’re really going to do something about the country and the economy,” he said.

Pullin out a copy of the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, Biden said a cartoon on the editorial page summed up his feelings on the state of the race. “There’s a group of people, business men dressed in suits, standing on a ledge. Some of them jumping off into the street. And it has Sarah Palin saying to John McCain, you know, Barack Obama pals around with terrorists, you know?” he said.

“I think it best captures anything I have seen. While the economy is going to hell in a hand basket, while people are losing their jobs, while things are going under, they’re running the most scurrilous campaign in modern history.”

Biden often cites a study showing that 100% of McCain’s television ads are negative (the figure is actually 98%), and hes decried the campaign’s attempt to tie Barack Obama to former Weatherman bomber Bill Ayers in ads and on the stump.

Borrowing a line from Hillary Clinton, Biden said voters aren’t interested in the negativity. “This is the ultimate, ultimate job interview. And that’s what it’s about. People aren’t looking for a lot of extraneous malarkey,” he said. “They’re looking for what are you gonna do, guys? What are you gonna do to change my circumstance?”

Athens, OH -- AP Photo

ATHENS, OH - Joe Biden revealed his dark, dastardly criminal past at a community gathering in this southeast Ohio college town - or rather, a youthful misunderstanding that nearly landed the future Democratic Vice Presidential nominee in the clink.

“It’s good to be back in Athens!” the Senator told a student-heavy crowd at nearby Ohio University. “Now you say ‘back in Athens, Biden? When were you here? ‘Well I went to the University of Delaware and we came out here to play Ohio University.”

“That was 228 years ago,” the former Fightin’ Blue Hen joked. It was actually October 19th, 1963 — when U of D defeated OU 29-12 on their way to an undefeated season and a small school national championship.

“Now I made a little mistake here that day, I made a little mistake,” he continued. “I met this lovely group of — Ohio University students,” he said with a long, long pause in the middle. The cheers of the young crowd showed they understood who he was talking about: college girls.

“I shouldn’t admit this on national television because it’ll reveal that I’m over 60, but I thought that we were gonna go get something to eat,” he said. “So I just said to young, two young women I had met, said well why don’t you — we’ll be right back. I said, well I’ll come with you, and they said okay.”

“And I walked into their dormitory and was immediately accosted by a cop who arrested me,” he said to laughs.

“Back in those days men were not allowed in women’s dormitories,” Biden explained - but he insisted his virtue (and that of the girls in the dorm) remained intact.

“I promise you I never breached the first floor and it was only a temporary detention. But that’s what I most remember about Athens” he chuckled. “So folks, look — it’s good to be back here.”

WARREN, OH — On the road in this key battleground state, Democratic VP nominee Joe Biden continued to paint John McCain as an angry man who has nothing to offer the country but partisan political attacks. 

Kicking off a two-day bus tour through working class Eastern Ohio, Biden told a crowd heavy with union members that yesterday’s speeches by the two candidates present the clearest contrast yet on where they want to take the country. 

“Barack Obama, he made a major speech. He laid out some new idea on how to attack America’s problems. How to get people back on their feet. And what did John McCain do? He laid out some new attacks on Barack Obama,” Biden said.

“The distinction could not be clearer. One guy’s fighting for you and the other guy’s fighting mad. And attacking.”

“In that speech yesterday John McCain said and I quote, ‘we cannot spend the next 4 years as we’ve spent much of the last 8 waiting for our luck to change,’ end of quote. And yet nothing, nothing John McCain and Sarah Palin are proposing is any fundamental change from what’s been happening in the last 8 years,” said Biden.

(more…)

New Marist Poll out today showing that Obama has a narrow lead in Ohio, and is pulling away in PA with 9 percentage points among registered voters.

OHIO:
OBAMA HAS A NARROW LEAD OVER MCCAIN IN THE BUCKEYE STATE:
Among registered voters in Ohio, Senator Barack Obama now outpaces Senator John McCain 48% to 40%. Among likely voters including those who are undecided yet leaning toward a candidate, Obama has 49% compared with 45% for McCain.

PENNSYLVANIA:
RACE OPENS UP IN PENNSYLVANIA…
OBAMA PULLS AHEAD BY 9 PERCENTAGE POINTS AMONG REGISTERED VOTERS…
HAS DOUBLE-DIGIT LEAD AMONG LIKELY VOTERS:
The once tight presidential race in Pennsylvania is now tipping in Senator Barack Obama’s favor. He leads Senator John McCain among the state’s registered voters 49% to 40%. Among likely voters including those who are undecided yet leaning toward a candidate, Obama is in front of McCain by 12 percentage points — 53% to 41%.