We're in Gary, Indiana where Obama's delivering his closing argument to a crowd of 40,000. Four days until the election and the strain is clearly getting to the Illinois senator who uncharacteristically snapped at reporters waiting for him in front of his home this afternoon.

The running narrative is Obama is cool where McCain is hot. In all the research I've done of him, almost universally his friends and colleagues have described Obama as incredibly patient. When he was a little boy living in Jakarta, Indonesia, he used to hound his friends to play his favorite game. The amusement was one of patience: the kids would take a mango from the Jac tree in Obama's yard and set a string trap with the sweet fruit for the dragonflies haunting the neighborhood. With the bugs leashed, the children would run through the twisting unpaved paths, their new pets in tow.

His best friend, and campaign treasurer, Marty Nesbitt (whose home Obama was walking to this evening) explained Obama's temperament to me like this: “He's very rarely surprised by the way events unfold because he's got this incredible capacity to play things out in his mind so when things happened he's already usually considered the scenario. So, very rarely does he react emotionally.”

In fact, Nesbitt said that Obama has only once been surprised in this election: when his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, blasted the Illinois senator in a speech at the National Press Club. “I think you saw a little bit of an emotional response from [Obama],” Nesbitt said. “It was behavior he hadn't seen and didn't anticipate,”

Still, patience and a strategic mind doesn't preclude flashes of temper like the one we saw tonight. He can get “snippy,” when he's tired or impatient, says Senator Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat and one of Obama's earliest supporters in the Senate. Getting annoyed at a pack of press following you is only natural, but the blanket coverage is something he has asked for by running for president. But the episode shows he's also human: irritable when tired.  

COLUMBUS, OHIO--The McCain campaign brought all the pomp it could muster to its final rally here Friday: A Hank Williams Jr. warm up act, a fake barn backdrop, several crates of fresh apples for scenery, a "Victory in Ohio" sign that stretched at least 100 feet, a grand entrance on the Straight Talk Express, and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who declared, "I only play an action hero in my movies, but John McCain is a real action hero."

But the people were missing. Not all the people, mind you. Many thousands did show, pumped with excitement, and pounding thundersticks in approval. But the Nationwide Arena, home to the NHL's Columbus Blue Jackets, was hardly full. About a third of the Arena, which fits 20,000 people, was draped off. And the upper decks of the remaining area were about half empty, as were the seats behind the faux-barn stage.

This was a notable fact for political historians, because on the Friday before Election day in 2004, Republican nominee George W. Bush sold out the entire arena, filling it with nearly 20,000 enthusiastic supporters and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Columbus Dispatch said the crowd greeted Bush "like a rock star."

On stage, McCain exhibited no sign that he recognized the contrast. As he enters the final days of the campaign, he carries with him as much fire and enthusiasm as he has ever shown on the campaign trail. On his fourth public event of the day, he boomed from the podium. "Arnold said it best, 'The Mac is back,' " McCain told the crowd, which cheered wildly, hanging on his every word. "I know a winning campaign when I see one. I know the momentum. I know the enthusiasm."

From TIME's Amy Sullivan:

I recently spent some time in Hamilton County, which includes and
surrounds Cincinnati in Ohio's southwest corner, for our battleground
county series in the magazine. Hamilton has always been reliably Republican -- the urban population is
relatively small and the suburbs are either socially conservative
(working-class Catholics) or fiscally conservative (affluent
executives at Cincinnati-based Fortune 500 headquarters).

The county has only voted for a Democratic presidential candidate
four times in the last 100 years (1912, 1932, 1936, and 1964). But
that could change this year. Internal polling shows Obama and McCain
neck-and-neck in Hamilton. Democrat challenger Steve Driehaus is
running even with Republican Steve Chabot in a race for the 1st
congressional district.

Local Democrats say their biggest advantage comes from the record
number of new voters they registered for the Ohio primary battle
between Clinton and Obama. I was skeptical that they could have found
that many new Democrats, but the numbers are eye-popping: In 2000, the
last year in which both parties had competitive primaries, 115,300
voters participated on the GOP side and 54,600 cast ballots for
Democrats. This year, 83,400 voted for Republican candidates and
nearly 165,000 participated in the Democratic primary.

Unaffiliated voters still outnumber both Republicans and Democrats
combined (in Ohio, voters don't register with a party but are assigned
an affiliation based on the primary in which they vote; everyone who
doesn't vote is considered unaffiliated). But in 2004, unaffiliated
voters split 52/47 for Bush--the same margin by which he won the
county overall. Even if they split the same way next week, breaking
slightly for McCain, that huge Democratic increase means Obama would
win Hamilton by 13 points.

In an email, my friend Steve Twomey deconstructs that Sarah Palin sentence for the rest of us:

Sarah Palin believes it violates her First Amendment rights if you criticize her for criticizing Obama.

Sarah Palin this morning during a radio interview, via ABC:

If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations, then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media.

The Obama campaign has told the Washington Times, the New York Post and the Dallas Morning News that there will not be room for them to travel on the plane in the last 72 hours of the campaign. Though all three papers have recently endorsed John McCain, an Obama aide points out that they still have seats for the Wall Street Journal, Fox News and Fox News Radio (okay, neither Fox News or Fox News Radio to my knowledge have endorsed McCain but the point is perceived bias).

From Obama spokeswoman Jenn Psaki:
"Unfortunately, demand for seats on the plane during this final weekend has far exceeded supply, and because of logistical issues we made the decision not to add a second plane. This means we've had to make hard and unpleasant for all concerned decisions about limiting some news organizations and in some cases not being in a position to offer space to news organizations altogether. We are doing everything possible to accommodate the outlets that will not have a seat on the plane including offering assistance with hotel rooms, making sure there is space on buses and providing these outlets with all of the information that traveling press receives."

Indeed, staff have bent over backwards so that this is not perceived as a Joe Klein/John McCain-type situation. An Obama source explains that given that state of the charter plane industry – I guess it's pretty bad – there are few medium-sized planes available. They say the demand wouldn't fill a second large plane (on this point, I'm SURE the campaign could easily fill a second large plane, there's like 1,000 Japanese outlets with the money and the creepy zealous interest who'd love to travel) and that adding a second plane would add 90-minutes of travel logistics to Obama's daily schedule (also a weird point since it's not unheard of to do local interviews to fill this time as Kerry did in 2004).  

In 2004, I remember doing nine events the Saturday before the Election with Bush, and Kerry added a second plane at the end of his bid – both moves were attempts to reach as many voters through the press (local for Bush and national for Kerry) as they could. Obama, by contrast, is averaging three events a day and they clearly aren't worried that their message isn't reaching the voters. Indeed, for all of McCain's griping about press bias, one of Obama's most impressive feats this campaign cycle has been his ability to speak directly to his supporters. Hey, who needs a hundred pesky reporters following you around when you've got the Internet and the money to buy 30-minute commercials?

Update:
Scherer tells me that the McCain campaign has added a second plane to handle the increased demand in the final days. 

*Clearly, as commentator Joe Bftsplk reminds me, I was not meant to be a headline writer: I didn't in any way mean to imply that Obama is literally dropping them out the emergency hatch at 30,000 feet.

How many other people are in this kind of situation and don't even know it? Michael Kinsley, a validly registered voter in Seattle who also suffers from Parkinson's disease, discovers that his vote almost didn't count, because the signature on his absentee ballot didn't match his voter registration:

Michael Kinsley founded Slate, edited the LA Times opinion pages, and pens columns for the Washington Post. He's made a career off having strong opinions about politics, but for all that, Kinsley almost didn't get to vote in this election. After mailing in his absentee ballot, he got a call from a campaign volunteer at the local Obama field office. The King County Board of Elections pulled his ballot because the signature didn't match his registration.

“I'm not too surprised, my handwriting's pretty bad,” says Kinsley. He first registered to vote in King County in 1996, when he moved here to start Slate.

Until the call came, Kinsley says he had no idea his vote might not count. After hearing about the problem, he called up King County elections and asked how to fix it. He needed to fill out another form and send in a copy of his driver's license. Kinsley says he might not have bothered but for the tight Governor's race.

“I don't think Obama really needs the help here,” he says. “I'm doing it for Christine Gregoire, whom I've never met.”

You've probably heard a lot about possible voter fraud on Tuesday, as there as been a lot of potential for voter fraud. But few (including the Rs, who are MORE CONCERNED THAN EVER) seem inclined to tell voters how, exactly, to do something about it. It is, unfortunately, a little more complicated than yelling and pointing. Stepping up to the plate this year to make reporting concerns as easy and as public as possible are two organizations: the grass roots group Twitter Vote Report and the more corporate-y (they have consultants!) Election Protection, who is also partnered with a ton of other organizations, including NBC. Both groups are encouraging voters to use Twitter as a kind of panopticon of the polling process. I assume you're following all the right people already, but interested parties should also follow 866ourvote to for real-time poll watching. After the jump, a memo from the group, noting the specific conventions for how to report your own observations and how it works.

(more...)

The Washington Post profiled prolific press correspondent (as in, someone who corresponds with the press) Mark Salter today, shedding a little bit of light on the grumpiest of the McCain campaign's seven dwarves. Salter, for all his guff and frequent invocation of expletives, remains a favorite of those covering the campaign. This is in part because he's the only senior staffer left who will engage with the press on a level beyond talking points and perhaps even more so because most political professionals, there is no sense that, ultimately, he is for hire. He is not preparing us for the calls he'll be making in a month or two, on behalf of some other candidate or cause -- his party is McCain.

There's been much speculation about what Salter will do after the election. I gotta say that if his "dream" ever was "to write a history of the McCain White House, to receive the kind of access that Edmund Morris had received from Ronald Reagan," I don't think it is anymore. Even if his guy does pull off a Truman, Salter has, by all accounts, soured deeply on politics -- and, to some extent, the people that participate in it.

We're basking in 70-degree weather for Obama's outdoor rally in beautiful downtown Des Moines. It's hard to be here and not feel nostalgic. I spent a month living here before the caucuses and to be back today feels like revisiting summer camp in the off-season (only reversed – the last time I was in this quad I was doing an NPR interview in the building behind Obama's stage and it was easily 10 degrees below zero).

Iowa, apparently, also has a special place in Obama's heart. Noting that the Illinois senator was forced to cancel a trip here last week to visit his grandmother, Robert Gibbs explained to us yesterday why Obama is taking the time to visit a state where he's up 11 percentage points. “Obviously, Iowa holds a it of a special place in our story and I think it's fitting to take that last trip back,” Gibbs said.

Taking the stage before 25,000 Iowans, Obama, grinning in shirtsleeves, yelled: “It's good to back in Iowa!” He then gave a shout out to a longer-than-usual list of supporters including Attorney General Tom Miller, Iowa's first statewide elected official* to endorse Obama who held a house party for the Democratic nominee the first weekend he announced his candidacy. “You have launched this campaign, so the people of Iowa I will always be grateful to you, I will always be grateful to you!” Obama said, before launching into his stump speech. “What you started here in Iowa has swept the nation.”

*I'm told that Mike Fitzgerald, the Iowa State Treasurer, who also got a shout out today, endorsed Obama the same day as Miller.