With 10 more days left until the election, the candidates’ colors truly show, as the final stretch towards the finish line approaches. Although we’ve been hearing the same old rhetoric for the past 90 days, some new developments have occurred.
Barack Obama’s grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, 85, grew very ill, thus halting Obama’s campaign from Thursday until today, Saturday. Obama came back to the campaign trail strong today, with stops in Las Vegas, NV, Albuquerque, NM and Reno, NV. The Obama campaign’s focus is to go into some states that are already projected red territory, but only by a small margin, as well as fighting for those battle ground states. Early voting is being utilized by both campaigns in an attempt to shorten lines on actual election day and allow citizens to assert their rights earlier.
The battle ground states include Nevada, Colorado, Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina and Florida. All of these battleground states voted Republican in the 2004 election.
On the McCain campaign trail, McCain stopped in Mesilla, NM and Albuquerque, NM. There is a lot of drama circulating Sarah Palin, as tensions between her aides and McCain’s aides are on the rise, and have escalated to a McCain aide describing Palin as “going rogue.” Granted, Sarah Palin has been a vital aspect of McCain’s campaign, for she represents women, the maverick image, the token hockey mom and a firm faith-based foundation. However, McCain aides-and perhaps McCain himself-are realizing that the $21,000 spent transporting her children around Alaska and the $150,000 spent on Palin’s designer wardrobe for the campaign trail were not such a good investment after all.
The latest Saturday Night Live election piece mocked Senator Joe Biden’s words said on October 19, which were: “Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking.”… “Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.” The SNL skit showed Biden and Representative John Murtha in Johnstown, Western Pennsylvania summarizing that quote, in addition to a skewed apology from Murtha to the citizens of Western PA, for calling them racist. The skit depicted Murtha going on to varying “racist” to ignorant and uneducated.
In these final 10 days, while both campaigns battle it out, we know who they are as politicians and as people, and while no great character changes have occurred, what they are doing and saying on the campaign trail today is a reflection of what the next 9 days will bring. A choice example of this is what each candidate’s rallies are called: McCain’s being Road to Victory and Obama’s being Change We Need.