Presidential candidates coming down the homestretch

The final week of the election is upon us with a whirlwind of last-minute campaign calls, mail, commercials and door-to-door lobbying.

Last weekend's rallies by Barack Obama, both here in Nevada and in the Intermountain West, were remarkable considering the landscape of the electoral map hanging in my office.

The 2004 election results are as damning to progressives as suffering under eight years of George W. Bush. The map isn't just the red state-blue state one everyone has seen, it's a look at the presidential race in each of the nation's counties.

And with the exception of dark blue Massachusetts, coastal California, northeastern Arizona and the southern tip of Texas, the whole country is awash in red.

Nevada has the lightest of blue in Clark County against a red sea elsewhere. Utah, Nebraska, Oklahoma are completely red.

Given the reality of four years ago, the current map is hard to believe as polling estimates suggesting the Obama-Biden ticket could finish with as many as 375 electoral votes, winning in previously inconceivable places such as Virginia, Colorado and even just Nevada, too.

Obama's rally Saturday at Bonanza High School had the same purpose as Sarah Palin's rally in Henderson earlier in the week. To use a poker analogy, it's like a huge bet by the big stack at the table designed to show strength and scare the other players out of the pot.

In this case the rally was designed to show force and numbers as a signal to voters.

John McCain's Sunday declaration that "I'm going to win it" was designed to keep some of his voters energized enough to actually turn out next Tuesday. If you're a Republican outside the Palin camp, it can be daunting to look at national polls suggesting you're ticket is trailing badly.

In his 19th visit to Nevada, Obama drew an estimated 29,000 voters statewide to his two appearances in Reno and Las Vegas -- the smallest crowds of his recent Western swing. Still, his speech at Bonanza was the perfect mix of policy assurances for the undecided and urgent pleas to the faithful to get out and vote and volunteer for him.

"Senator McCain has been throwing everything he's got at us, including the kitchen sink -- all seven of those kitchen sinks," Obama said. "He's even called me a socialist for suggesting that we focus on tax cuts not for corporations and the wealthy, but for the middle class."

McCain, for his part, was in neighboring Western states before heading to must-win Ohio. His campaign suggests he won't be back in Nevada before Election Day. He hasn't been here since August, when he made a quick stop in Northern Nevada.

Maybe the strategy will work. McCain can drum up a small crowd with his tax scares, but the average Republican here doesn't like him any better than he does the cross-dressing former mayor of New York.

And trying to win the Hispanic vote with radio ads that suggest he's more liberal than Obama when it comes to immigration doesn't help a bit.

Even the pro-Yucca Mountain forces don't seem to have the numbers to lift him. The Palin voters I've talked with sure are proud of the ticket, hoping Palin can influence policy, judicial selections and even step into the big job herself.

And so while we won't see McCain -- or Obama -- again, we will probably get the robo messages and the door knockers from neighboring Utah and California where the election results aren't in question. One of McCain's fellow prisoners of war is appearing in a new robo message suggesting, "A weak president, will, indeed, be tested. Obama and Democrats' politics endanger American lives. They are not qualified to lead our military and our country."

Tell that to Gen. Powell.

Nobody's out there suggesting McCain is weak for following the most disastrous foreign policy in modern times -- policies that have cost thousands of Americans their lives and tens of thousands more their bodies, mental health and families.

On Monday, as McCain supporter Orson Swindle (I am not making that name up) was making his "weak" assault, Obama was making what his campaign called a closing argument to the people of Ohio, and in a sense, to the rest of the nation.

"In one week, you can put an end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election; that tries to pit region against region, city against town, Republican against Democrat; that asks us to fear at a time when we need hope," Obama said at a rally in Canton.

Nevadans may ultimately see the election the way the Elko Daily Free Press did in an honest endorsement of McCain, offering support for the "man behind the mask."

"The moderate, reform-minded man of integrity Sen. John McCain, has turned himself into a Frankenstein in order to scare up voters from the Republican base," the paper wrote.

Meanwhile Obama finishes with the same message he began with: change and hope.

The electoral map is already starting to accept it.

Contact Erin Neff at eneff@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2906.