This morning, I wrote up a post noting an apparent lack of tightening in the polls. Au contraire, objects the McCain campaign pollster Bill McInturff in a new public memo: “The McCain campaign has made impressive strides over the last week of tracking. The campaign is functionally tied across the battleground states … with our [...]

Markos Moulitsas has a post today about the vindication of Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy. He’s right. When Dean launched the project, many thought it was foolhardy. As late as October 2006, top Dem strategists and elected officials were bemoaning the way Dean had spread the party’s money around instead of concentrating it on targets of [...]

Politico honchos Harris and Vandehei pen a fair assessment of the evidence – and the criticism – that the press in this election cycle has favored Obama and disfavored McCain.

A lot talk lately about what happens to the GOP post-election — no matter who wins. I was talking to a GOP strategist yesterday who noted that, for the past eight years, “You walked into the RNC and it made sense–George Bush was the head of the party, and everyone there was working for him. [...]

Ana: If Doug Holtz-Eakin doesn’t believe that young, healthy people would leave the system, he might want to talk to Mitt Romney, who actually studied the situation in the real world when he was reforming the health care system in Massachusetts. It’s not–as Holtz-Eakin suggests–that these healthier citizens would choose between staying with their employer-provided [...]

Wow: CNN Money: Election: Your health insurance at stake — Younger, healthier workers likely wouldn’t abandon their company-sponsored plans, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain’s senior economic policy adviser. “Why would they leave?” said Holtz-Eakin. “What they are getting from their employer is way better than what they could get with the credit.” In addition to harshing [...]

A little belatedly, a quick snapshot on the Pennsylvania House races and McCain’s double down in that state. And my take on Virginia after spending more than a week floating around Prince William County, which, together with Loudon County, are the lynchpins to Democratic victories in the state. Ruy Teixiera has a fascinating study out [...]

Tightening? That seems to be the question of the day. John McCain admits that he needs (and expects to have) the momentum on his side going into election day. The polls show that Obama’s big October spike seems to have plateaued. But the aforementioned tightening is not really in evidence with seven days to go. [...]

Marc Ambinder finds Sarah Palin’s silence on whether Ted Stevens should resign to be “curious,” and wonders: Why is it, exactly, that while Sen. McCain called for Sen. Ted Stevens to resign in the wake of his corruption convictions, Gov. Palin couldn’t bring herself to utter the word?  Will the media interpret this as a [...]