Usually winning campaigns peak just before election day. This is normal, because the idea is to throw all available resources into getting voters to turn out. It isn't just enough to persuade a voter, it is important to identify him or her, and deliver him or her to the polls. The other task is to persuade people who vote all the time anyway. Many of these voters are left to the winds of the last minute, which is why campaign tactics such as Liddy Dole's libelous advertisement crop up. In politics, this is called "the bomb." Apologists at the Washington Post aside, which has become a virtual house organ for Mitch McConnell's pitch for gridlock and divided government, Obama has run one of the most positive of campaigns, while McCain's has unleashed slurs on his patriotism, his religion, his adherence to American values. In short, McCain's coalition is of rock ribbed racists who love socialism so long as it only goes to white people. The dwindling number of people who still believe that the Republican Party means smaller government might cling to the belief that this is about a secret plan to bankrupt the government, but everyone else knows better. There are two parties of big government, and the question is which party is big enough to run that government.

The signs are that Obama has peaked. His poll numbers in his safe seats are down, the swing states are tightening. However the swing states are all must win for McCain. McCain must sweep the states still in play, and then take one other besides. Pennsylvania is not really in play. McCain does have a chance to win this, but it relies on a combination of election fraud, and simple fraud, along with the Obama campaign messing up the thing that has been their signature from the beginning: the ground game. If Obama's campaign suddenly forgets to do the thing they have been doing all along, then McCain probably even deserves to win. But the odds of this are small.

Thus the McCain campaign's pleas to the contrary, the race "tightening" is not an effect of their message getting out, but Obama no longer contesting the message question. Instead, the Obama infomercial was clearly directed at the last phase of the campaign: activating and energizing supporters he already has, going around the filter to talk directly to his core supporters, and get them to be attached to the image of an Obama victory. McCain is still trying to persuade people, which means that his ground game is behind. Even if McCain polls ahead on election day, who is there to drive them to the polls?