GOTV

No, not Tom Ellsworth's mobile video company. "Get Out The Vote." The grassroots key to winning elections. Actually mobilizing the lazy, disaffected electorate to line up at the local church or school and cast an actual ballot.

You may disagree with Obama ideologically on policy (even I was a little freaked out by how many programs he said he wants to fund in last night's debate), but read this piece on how he has built his much-celebrated ground game to get out the vote, and you can't but be impressed that a politician has finally figured out how to run a top-down and bottom-up campaign in the modern world. If this "movement" has legs, the Republicans are in deep trouble for the future (as some of them are starting to acknowledge). If you want to know what he learned as a community organizer -- the element of his resume that pious Palin derides so aggressively -- this is it. And, ironically, it may crush the church-based Republican alternative for decades.

In the meantime, the Obama campaign is going on a red state offensive in the final 19 days. They are running ads in West Virginia. They are considering expanding their footprint to Georgia, North Dakota and Kentucky, while continuing their ad blitz in Florida, Missouri, Virginia and North Carolina. I can construct a (somewhat fanciful) scenario in which he breaks 400 electoral votes. On the other hand, my gut tells me that just won't happen. But I do think it's going to take a small miracle for McCain to keep it under 350.