We've just got back to Chicago after the Democrat's closing rally of his 21-month quest to win the White House. More than 90,000 supporters filled a field in Manassas, Virginia to hear Obama exclaim late Monday: "Let's go change the world!"

Obama will vote in his Hyde Park neighbourhood early Tuesday before heading for one more campaign stop on election day. He'll fly to Indianapolis, Indiana for a meet-and-greet with voters to encourage a high turnout and generate a last burst of TV coverage in a state that hasn't voted for a Democratic presidential hopeful since 1964.

Then it's back to Chicago to watch the returns come in at the Hyatt Regency hotel, before an election night party in Grant Park that is expected to draw 65,000 ticket-holders inside and many, many more to the surrounding area.

It's expected to be a balmy night in the Windy City, with unusually warm temperatures for this time of year. The heat will only rise if the state-by-state roll-call bears out the final polls that pointed to a night of triumph for Obama against John McCain, and the election of America's first black president.

But as Obama noted, with tears running down his cheeks and his voice choked with grief in North Carolina Monday, it would be a bitter-sweet victory following the death earlier in Hawaii of his 86-year-old grandmother Madelyn Dunham. She was the last survivor of the family that raised him.

En route to Chicago after the Manassas rally, Obama made a rare foray to the press section of his campaign plane to thank us for expressions of condolence over Dunham's passing, and for accompanying him on his grueling 21-month ride.

There had been "sometimes friction" between the campaign and the press, he said, although for conservative critics and supporters of vanquished Democrat Hillary Clinton, the "liberal media" have all along been Obama's best friends.

"But you guys have been gracious and understanding," he said. "It's been a good long ride with all of you. Whatever happens tomorrow, it's going to be extraordinary, and you guys have shared this process with us.

"It'll be fun to see how the story ends."

With a parting kiss for a female photographer who was celebrating her birthday, Obama retreated back to his first-class chair at the front of the cabin to mull over what lies ahead - the biggest day of his rocket-fuelled career.

The Obama campaign has done its best to prevent sales of the free tickets by requiring those who managed to sign up in time for the 65,000 passes awarded to supporters to show photo identification.

But there's no name attached to the "plus one" part of the ticket, and scores of people are capitalizing on their luck.

Sam Cooper posted an ad on the online classified ad site Craigslist offering his extra ticket to anyone willing to hand over the keys to "an old running car for my son."

"I have a teenage son who'll need a car soon, as long as the car you have is in running condition and is not a complete clunker, we can do business," the ad said.

Reached by AFP on Monday evening, Cooper said he's had a number of interesting offers - including "very polite offers of sex" which he had no interest in - but hasn't decided who to give the ticket to yet.

He's also posted an add offering the ticket to a "bible thumping Christian" and said in an e-mail "I have 'faith' in some more crazy answers about their religion."

Some are using their tickets to try to find love, or even a job while others are simply looking for cold, hard cash.

One person with two passes to the rally in Chicago's downtown Grant Park offered to sell the two "plus one" spots for 1,000 dollars.

"No sob stories need apply - we're saving to put 3 kids through college, so I don't need to hear about your student loans and how you can only afford 20 dollars," the ad said.

The big dollars attached have offended a number of people, whose angry rebukes can be found scattered through the more than 600 posts linked to Obama.

One person gave their location as "Leftout" and wrote "This is seriously distgusting (sic) Especially where there are volunteers like myself and others who can't even get it."

About a million people who were unable to get tickets to the rally are expected to make their way to the sprawling lakefront park on Tuesday night. City officials have promised to try to accommodate them.

-- Being in Springfield, Illinois, on a crisp morning in February 2007 when Barack Obama launched his "improbable quest" for the White House. Few people thought that the 47-year-old Senator could beat Hillary Clinton to the Democratic nomination.

-- Watching former president Bill Clinton give a lecture on massive Arkansas watermelons to bemused farmers who had entered a giant pumpkin competition at a state fair in New Hampshire in September 2007.

-- Sitting in a New Hampshire coffee shop when Hillary Clinton was caught off guard and dissolved in emotion, when asked by a voter when how she kept fighting every day. It was the first time in several decades that her famously steely demeanor had cracked in public and she gave a glimpse into her soul

-- Watching vice presidential nominee give Sarah Palin give her searing convention speech in St Paul, Minnesota, which went down with her hardcore Republican audience like a hunk of meat in a tank full of piranhas.

-- The night of the New Hampshire Democratic primary in January, as campaign aides and reporters sat watching each vote come in, in a tense, old fashioned cliffhanger election, eventually won by Hillary Clinton.

-- Getting lost in a snowdrift in whiteout conditions in Iowa during an attempt to find a Mitt Romney event -- a doubly dubious mission.

-- Watching Barack Obama's speech in Berlin, before more than 200,000 people - the biggest of his campaign - which while a stunning event may have been a political mistake, opening the Democratic nominee up to charges of arrogance and hubris.

-- Sitting in the worst filing center of my career -- a men's rest room at a Texas sports arena courtesy of the Clinton campaign.

-- Going to all the small political events in living rooms, coffee shops and town squares in Iowa and New Hampshire before just a few voters in early 2007, when campaign aides were just grateful somebody showed up.

-- Tina Fey's devastating impressions of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live.

-- Obama's daring speech on race in Philadelphia, the cradle of American democracy, after the saga over his fiery former pastor Jeremiah Wright threatened to derail his campaign.

-- Any political event with wisecracking former Baptist minister and Republican funster Mike Huckabee.

-- Rudolph Giuliani's scalding assault on Obama at the Republican convention - he branded him the least experienced presidential candidate in 100 years.

-- Watching tears stream down the faces of women who supported Hillary Clinton during her concession speech in Washington in June. Many had hoped to vote for a woman president for the first, and possibly last time in their lives.

-- Barack Obama's speech in a sports stadium at Iowa's Jefferson Jackson dinner late last year - the moment when he turned around a campaign which had seemed to be struggling.

-- Reading my last opinion poll of the 2008 race (sometime early election day).

-- Never having to care what "Joe the Plumber" thinks again ....

-- The start of the 2012 White House race -- in about two weeks!

Reporters from the Washington Times, New York Post and Dallas Morning News are being ejected this weekend.

The campaign is adamant there's nothing political to the decision and says it needs to make room for other outlets in the final approach to Tuesday's election.

"This has been a tough thing for everybody as we're trying to squeeze as many news organizations onto a single plane as possible," Obama spokeswoman Linda Douglass said, although it must be noted that the Associated Press has won another berth for a second photographer.

The astronomical costs of this year's campaign had kept many US newspapers off the plane and reliant on news agency copy. But on the home stretch leading up to Tuesday, demand to get on has been huge, including from the foreign press.

The obvious solution would have been to add a second plane, affectionately known to reporters as the "zoo plane", as has happened in previous campaigns. But Obama's folks said this posed too many logistical problems, given the tight timetable as the Democrat blitzes battleground states, and the costs would have been too high.

The newspapers being thrown off are not happy, with the Washington Times posting a scornful account on its home page. All three had happened to endorse Obama's Republican opponent John McCain, although the Dallas Morning News doesn't necessarily see a political tinge to the decision, and the New York Post took the high road.

Asked if politics was involved, Douglass said "absolutely not" and pointed out that other organizations that have been "downrightly unfriendly" to Obama remained on the plane. That would include Fox News.

Obama late Wednesday held his first midnight rally, near Orlando, Florida. It was his first joint event with that famous night-owl, former president Bill Clinton. Despite the late hour, the vast crowd of 35,000 was pumped and Clinton was on vintage form.

Today, Thursday, will see the Democrat address three rallies in three states - Florida, Virginia and Missouri. Most polls may suggest that Obama is headed to victory next week but he's taking nothing for granted.

That said, we're yet to hit the extremes reached in past campaigns. In 2000, as my colleague Olivier Knox informs me, then vice president Al Gore would often start a day on the east coast, hold events sliding westward, then fly back east overnight and start all over again.

The night after that year's Democratic convention, the Gore campaign scheduled just 45 minutes in a hotel between the end of one day's events and the start of the next. Reporters at the back of the check-in queue never actually reached their rooms before it was time to leave for a Mississippi boat trip.

Travelling with Obama, our own nights are growing ever-shorter. But for all the exhaustion, there'll be a sense of deflation when finally the election's all over.

Not that we will be able to rest. We're well into planning our transition coverage because whichever candidate wins, this electrifying political story will hit another gear in the build-up to inauguration day on January 20.

But one of the great things about covering American presidential politics is that it is like a sport with no off-season. Even before a new president is elected, inaugurated and enduring his first scandal, addicted political hacks look forward to the next race.

There are already clear signs of growing disarray in McCain's camp, with some of his most senior backers already apparently positioning themselves for the day after and even his running mate Sarah Palin, despite her public denials, apparently preparing the ground to become a national political figure in her own right.

So here goes: if Barack Obama manages to turn all the opinion polls suggesting he will win into reality, who will he face in his 2012 re-election fight?

If John McCain loses, and the Republicans get their expected drubbing in congressional polls, it seems certain that there will be a wrenching battle for the party's soul. Top potential candidates to lead the party  into the next election cycle are already jockeying for position only three and a bit years before primary season.

Mitt Romney, the Massachussetts governor who lost out to McCain in this year's Republican primary campaign, could finance a run with his own millions and has been carefully building ties with the powerful conservative wing of the party.

Mike Huckabee, the wisecracking former Baptist preacher who won the Iowa caucuses, now has his own television show and could use the fame he built this time around to build the fundraising network he lacked in 2008.

Then there is perhaps Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, passed over by McCain for his vice presidential pick who has since emerged as an effective, if a little dull, surrogate for the Republican nominee, and who appeals to conservatives and moderates alike - a possible compromise candidate.

And there are sure to be more names we haven't even considered.

But there just seems to be something missing with this worthy list. There's no pizzaz, less charisma and nothing likely to get the heartbeat of demoralized Republican base voters racing or tickle the media's fancy. But of course there is one Republican who has charisma to spare, who has demonstrated a stunning ability to fire up the base, and possesses unmatched and elusive helpings of political starpower: Sarah Palin.

Hold your laughter. Some observers believe Palin has been a disaster for the McCain ticket and there is plenty of evidence in polling to show that she is dragging him down - largely because voters don't think that she is qualified to serve as commander-in-chief should something befall the 72-year-old McCain.

Almost every day brings another damaging story about Pain from the 150,000 dollars Republicans spent on designer clothes to kit her out for the campaign trail to suggestions she is furious about the way McCain's aides handled her roll-out and there is continuing sniggering about some of her disastrous early television interviews.

But if a week is a long time in politics, four years is an eternity. Palin is a heroine of conservatives and even if McCain loses, she has used the limelight to carve out a role as a national figure. It is hard to believe that she will just go back to being governor of Alaska and never be heard from again.

She can spend four years traveling, boning up on the foreign policy issues she seems to have little grasp of now, and pull off a political reinvention act. Maybe she can even blur the edges of her conservatism to work out a way to appeal to more moderate Republicans and wavering Democrats who she is currently driving away from the McCain ticket.

Of course, all this is a best-case scenario, and she clearly needs some major surgery on her image. There is the little matter of the "Troopergate" abuse of power probes back in Alaska and it is questionable if she can ever shake comedian Tina Fey's devastating impression of her on Saturday Night Live.

But Palin clearly does not lack for ambition, brassiness or self confidence, and her growing fluency on television seems to show she is someone who learns from her mistakes and has no intention of ceding the spotlight. One thing is for certain. Whatever you think about Palin she is not boring, and from a reporter's point of view is a source of fascination.

The Obama campaign always talked about expanding the electoral map, but the Democratic nominee has taken that to extremes, stretching the US presidential election further east and further west than it has ever been before.

Obama made his second visit of the campaign to his native Hawaii just a few days ago, on a poignant mission to visit the grandmother who brought him up, and now at 86 is gravely ill and may not live to see election day on November 4.

It is only when you sit on the plane and grind across the Pacific for five hours - halfway to Asia - that you are reminded of Obama's deeply improbable story, as an African American boy from a broken home in a modest neighborhood of the most remote US state who, incredibly, may next week be elected the 44th president of the United States.

Those two worlds collided during his trip. During a visit to his grandmother's apartment, Obama slipped out for a walk around his boyhood haunts - head down, his eyes shielded by sunglasses - trailed by a lone Secret Service agent - until that is a pack of reporters bore down on him.

For a moment, he seemed taken aback, then sought the seclusion of a Secret Service vehicle. If presidents are sometimes lonely, they never are truely alone, and Obama, who seems to value solititude and time to think more than most, will enter a gilded cage if he beats John McCain.

Obama's other international stops were more uplifting for him. His foreign trip to the Middle East and Europe was, as I blogged here before, effectively the trip of a shadow president, and may have gone some way to enhancing the impression, driven home at the debates, that he possesses presidential mettle.

But I still think the decision to give a speech near Berlin's Brandenburg Gate before 200,000 people was a mistake, offering Republican John McCain the chance to exploit the tinge of hubris that has sometimes shadowed the Obama campaign.

Of course, it is not just internationally that the map has expanded. The candidates are fighting over many more states than is normal at this time of year, testimony to the Democratic desire to create multiple routes to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House.

Certainly, McCain, the clear underdog a week out, is fighting in territory which by tradition is solid Republican, places such as Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Indiana and the western battleground of Colorado.

One of the most intriguing unanswered questions must wait for election night Is Obama's apparent competitiveness across the nation an illusion which will fade as the race reverts to a close battle over a few swing states that either side can win when voters actually go to the polls? Or will he succeed in putting distance between himself and McCain and bring former Republican states into his column in what would be a tectonic political shift?

As a news story, it seems enormous, doesn't it? "President Palin," "Melanomagate" are among the possible headlines it conjures up. Yet we chose to pass on this one. Why?

McCain's mortality risk is estimated in a letter this week to The Lancet, written by a US physician, John Alam, who spent 17 years in clinical research and is now a biotechnology consultant.

Alam ran the figures to calculate the possibility of a relapse of the melanoma that McCain had removed in 2000.

He used a model of statistical risk derived from a patient's age, gender, the thickness of tumour and its location.

McCain's case puts him in a "higher risk" category, Alam says. On the other hand, he adds, McCain tested negative in a key assessment to see whether a cancer has metastasised, and this somewhat diminished the risk.

Put in a nutshell, Alam told me, there was a risk of "between one in four and in one in five" -- he estimates 22 percent - that someone of McCain's profile and known background would die at some point over the next four years.

Alam, in a declaration of interest, said he had contributed both to Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.

I asked him why he had submitted the letter at this time. He said McCain's health, at the age of 71, was an important issue but had remained poorly investigated. Access to McCain's health records had been only partial, and his risk of dying or leaving office prematurely should be addressed, he said.

Alam said his political affiliations should be considered independently from the letter, and said his analysis should stand or fall according to the evidence.

In 2000, McCain had surgery for skin cancer on his face, which left visible scarring down one side of his face.

In May this year, his campaign released more than 1,000 pages of his medical history in a bid to lay to rest concerns about his age and health. In July, McCain said he had a small mole removed from his face during a routine dermatological check-up.

After a lengthy internal debate, we decided against covering the letter.

One reason: The Lancet's letters page is not subject to peer review - an assessment by outside experts - as is the case for the studies and reviews that it publishes. Letters are assessed by editors, the journal told us.

Another question was whether it was possible to venture an assessment of an individual's health on the basis of a generalised model. If access to McCain's records was poor, this meant in effect that an estimate of mortality was little more than an educated guess.

In addition, some specialists have doubts about the type of test that determined whether McCain's melanoma had spread, and which Alam factored into his model.

The test, called sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsy, is prone to higher "false negatives" (i.e. wrong indications of a negative result) in samples taken from the neck and head, according to some research.

With these factors in mind - and the timing of the letter, when the election campaign is at fever pitch - we took the line of caution. It was better to miss out on a good story than flirt with accusations of bias.

Her idealised version of America bears more than a passing resemblance to Wasilla, the hard-scrabble Alaska town where she was once mayor. And not much resemblance to the cities and suburbs where most US citizens live.

For Republican nominee John McCain, the "real America" is in Pennsylvania, just coincidentally the state he must win to make any of his routes to the White House add up.

Anyone who saw the Vietnam war epic "The Deerhunter" will recognize the gritty kind of town the Republican is talking about - where boys left the steelworks (now probably closed) and headed off to war. "Western Pennsylvania is the most patriotic, most God-loving, most patriotic part of America ... this is a great part of the country," McCain said the other day.

A Republican Congressman,  Robin Hayes of North Carolina went even further, saying that  "liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God.” He denied he ever made the comment, until it emerged that a reporter had it on tape. Another Republican member of Congress, Michele Bachmann then caused a storm when she suggested the Democratic White House candidate Barack Obama may have "anti-American" views.

Another McCain adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer raised eyebrows when she suggested that exploding Washington DC suburbs in Virginia, which favor Democrats, did not  represent the "real Virginia" a classic, conservative southern state. One problem, McCain makes his home when he is in the Senate and has his campaign offices in those same suburbs.

Such talk is  part of classic Republican presidential campaign strategy, which has worked well for years, which relies on raising culture war issues and probing at political divisions in an effort to put together narrow  political  majorities.

Democratic candidates, (Al Gore, John  Kerry, Barack Obama) are typically portrayed as effete, northeastern, intellectual liberals who have little in common with the "heartland."

Given that Obama is an African-American, and has had to squelch inaccurate Internet rumors that he is a Muslim, some commentators have complained there is a racial-religious dimension at work too.

This tactic has worked well in the past, partly owing to the fact that  Democrats,  good ol' southern boy Bill Clinton aside, have struggled  to come up with a way to combat it.

Things are so bad though with the crippling economic crisis and collapsing support for the Bush administration that such character-based political assaults don't seem to be flying this time. Time seems to be running out for McCain.

Outside the Hampton Inn, there were another hundred supporters pressed together, some having arrived more than four hours before, desperate for a sight of the Democratic presidential contender. This time, I was a somebody. As I struggled to drag my bag through the crowd to our luggage van, one middle-aged African-American lady stopped me to demand to know if I had shaken Obama's hand. Yes, I had. So she grabbed my hand and pumped away. "I can feel the love!" she exclaimed, before her friend snapped a photo of me on her camera phone.

Crazy, but not as crazy as the scene that unfolded when one of Obama's staffers stopped by a gas station near the hotel to buy some cigarettes. On seeing her "Obama 08" fleece, the attendant screamed and dashed into the store's inner office. She emerged with 10 other people, who'd materialized out of nowhere and were convinced that the aide's presence meant the great man must be on his way. Alas, it was not to be. The staffer really did just want some Marlboro Lights.

There's a lot of love going round these days as the November 4 election approaches and Obama rides high in the opinion polls against Republican John McCain. On Saturday, an astounding crowd of 100,000 turned out for a rally by the Democrat in St Louis, Missouri. It was his biggest ever crowd in America, beaten only overall by the 200,000 who came to hear Obama speak in Berlin in late July.

In case you're wondering, those figures aren't just plucked out of thin air. Towards the end of every Obama rally, the campaign sends us a tally from a fire marshal, police chief or municipal official. And the person's cellphone number is attached so we can call to check for ourselves. (McCain's campaign has been accused of being rather creative about its crowd numbers).

Anyway, we're at the two-week mark before the election, and the love is going to explode for Obama when he returns to Chicago for an election night extravaganza. One of the outdoor venues under consideration by his campaign is Grant Park, site of a mass in 1979 by Pope John Paul II. The woman who accosted me in Fayetteville said, only half in jest, that she could feel some "healing power" from clasping my hand. Now who says Obama has a messiah complex?

Ohio tradesman Joe Wurzelbacher shot from lead-piped obscurity to world renown in the time it took McCain to pick up on a row he had with Barack Obama over taxes while the Democrat was stumping in his neighborhood on Sunday.

The McCain campaign, seeking to brand Obama as an old school 'tax and spend liberal' went to town and the Arizona senator repeatedly invoked Joe on Tuesday during their last TV debate. In McCain's view, 'Joe the plumber' is a worthy emblem for all those hard working middle class people who want the government to get out of their way so they can go on chasing the American dream.

One of the funniest things about Joe's story, is that he almost seemed to have been waiting in the wings for his 15 minutes of fame for years. His pithy soundbites and quick embrace of the media spotlight after the debate, made him look more like a pundit than the man you would call to fix a dripping tap. He has become a hero of conservative talk radio, and McCain, desperate for any way of changing the subject from his flagging campaign, has made him the centerpiece of his stump speech and said he wanted to meet him.

But in today's warp speed media culture, it doesn't take long for a rise to prominence to become clouded. It turns out that Joe might not be a plumber at all and the Ohio plumbers union is on his case over the fact that he appears not to be registered to ply his trade in his home state. And Joe might also not be the best messenger for a McCain campaign assault on taxation  - as reports suggest he owes 1,200 dollars in back taxes.

Wurzelbacher also admitted in one of his blitz of television interviews that his current income is not even close to the 250,000 dollars a year that, theoretically, would require him to pay higher taxes under an Obama presidency.

But the Obama campaign has only itself to blame for the Wurzelbacher episode, and the lifeline, however temporary, it has thrown McCain. The 'tax-and-spend' story has dominated campaign news for two days, deflecting from what instant polls said was another Obama debate victory. And it was as much Obama's comment to the Ohio tradesman that he wanted to "spread the wealth" as Wurzelbacher's arguments that have hurt the Democrat.

Desperate to avoid any mistakes and keep hold of his opinion poll lead as the race heads into its final two and half weeks, Obama might be well advised to avoid any kind of unscripted encouters like the one he had with Wurzelbacher on Sunday.

Flying in and out of New York skies, some of the world's most congested airspace, is rarely without aggravating delays for the commercial traveller. But as Barack Obama's "O Force One" plane was taxiing at La Guardia this morning, we skipped past 12 planes lined up waiting to take off and assumed prime position at the head of the queue. I could see the pilots on the other jets looking on resignedly from their cockpits as we rumbled past.

Then, after a post-debate campaign stop in New Hampshire, we got back on the plane at Manchester to be told by the captain that there was a 90-minute backlog of planes waiting to land at La Guardia. So he was looking to see if JFK airport (which isn't exactly light on traffic) would take us instead. Ten minutes later, the pilot was back on to say that, for us, the wait had evaporated and the more central La Guardia could accommodate us after all. It's amazing what air traffic controllers can do when they hear the potential next president is about to enter their radar screens.

(John McCain, warned he also faced lengthy delays trying to take off from Philadelphia for New York today, didn't bother waiting and grabbed a helicopter instead to keep an all-important date with David Letterman, whom he famously stood up last month.)

Of course, if I were sitting on one of those circling commercial planes and knew what was going on, I'd be cursing the privileges enjoyed by the select few as I fret about missing a connection or an important appointment.

It's the same deal with the car drivers who have to sit in traffic behind police lines, sometimes for an hour or more, before a candidate's motorcade sweeps past. In Miami last month, I observed a near-riot among irate drivers when the local police blocked off every road around Obama's hotel for several blocks. On the other hand, I'll admit, there's something thrilling about cutting a swathe through downtown Manhattan's gridlock behind a blaring convoy of police and Secret Service cars.

And, I have to confess, it's a blast to get driven straight to your plane instead of shuffling through an airport security queue. (No shoes off and laptops out to board O Force One.) If, like me, you look vaguely Middle Eastern, you'll know the frustration of being selected "randomly" for "special screening" at US airports (for me, it's six times so far this year).

So call me a spoiled member of the elitist media pack, but I'm enjoying the fuss-free life of travel in the election fast lane while it lasts. Three weeks and counting...

But while the Republican is promising to "whip" his opponent's "you know what" at New York's Hofstra University, the perils of a negative strategy at a time of economic crisis are clear.

The Democrat now has a double-digit poll lead, according to various findings including a Washington Post-ABC News survey Monday that showed McCain's "favorable" ratings falling and Obama's rising. The poll said about one-third of voters had a better opinion of Obama as a result of his performances in the first two debates. By contrast, more than a quarter said they thought worse of McCain after the debates.

At the second debate a week ago, McCain jabbed his finger and spat out "that one" instead of naming Obama. But the Democrat kept his cool, and snap polls gave him a second victory after his assured performance in the first debate in late September.

The White House race now appears to be Obama's to lose, barring something extraordinary happening in Wednesday's debate or some other unforeseen event on the international stage between now and November 4.

We're now holed up in Toledo, in the battleground state of Ohio, as Obama huddles with his advisers to prepare for the debate. McCain campaigned Monday in Virginia and North Carolina - and for two normally rock-solid Republican states to be in play three weeks before election day is a sign of the challenge he faces.

We'd been promised new economic packages from both the candidates on Monday - Obama came through with a four-point "rescue plan for the middle-class", but McCain reportedly dismissed his advisers' latest proposals as gimmickry and instead went back to touting his personal record of heroism and courage.

He said that we the media had written him off before, and been wrong before. That's true, if you look at how McCain came back when his campaign for the Republican nomination looked dead and buried in mid-2007. But now, there's very little time between Wednesday's debate and November 4 for him to prove the doubters wrong and allow the "Mac is Back" headlines to be dusted off.

So when a candidate gets a slice of what passes for normal life - even one under the gaze of sharp suited Secret Service agents and a gaggle of cameras - they tend to harp on it endlessly. Candidates squeeze even the smallest encounter with the heartland for fodder for stump speeches and to add meaning to their campaign.

Barack Obama's slice of life came last week - with a slice of pie.

Since then, he has been regaling his crowds with the tale of how he bought a piece of coconut creme pie, a bit like this one, at a diner in the middle of nowhere in a bus tour through Ohio.

He tells supporters jokingly that he is an expert on pies - and is particularly partial to the sweet potato variety.

The story has a couple of purposes for Obama. First it helps him in his ongoing effort to "connect" with normal working class and middle class voters after he faced claims earlier in the campaign that he is distant and lofty.

See, Barack Obama might be hailed as a political messiah, but he likes a piece of pie, just like you and me.

Also, the pie story has become a key piece of his economic message. The owner of the "Fireside" diner in Georgetown, Ohio described himself as a "staunch Republican". So the Democratic  nominee relates how he told the man that he should vote Democratic and stop "bashing his head against the wall" by siding with Republicans.

Democrats have for years fretted over the fact that worked class Democrats have been convinced to vote Republican by the use of "wedge" social issues like abortion, gay marriage and gun control and against what is perceived to be their economic self-interest.

But in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, Obama is promising to ease the pain everyday Americans are facing with rising prices at the pump, supermarket and to heat their homes. In other words, offering everyday Americans a bigger slice of the economic pie.

Not necessarily in last night's debate, though the Democrat also won that if you believe the instant polls. No, I'm talking about the race to deluge reporters with an inbox-clogging stream of outraged 'rebuttal emails' even as the two candidates clashed on stage.

Obama's tireless rebuttal team, led by press aide Nick Shapiro, fired off 39 emails during and just after the clash, designed to knock down McCain's claims, comments and to highlight the "wisdom" shown in the Democrat's performance.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton weighed in with seven of his own - including a note which launched the campaign's attempt to highlight one of the most contentious moments of the debate, which appeared to betray McCain's seething contempt for his rival. "Did John McCain just refer to Obama as "that one"? Burton asked.

The night had started so promisingly for the McCain spin-machine, as spokesman Brian Rogers previewed his stream of "Debate Fact" emails.

"We stand ready to savage your inboxes with an overflow of truth and justice," Rogers wrote.

In truth, few of my colleagues have time to even open a lot of the mails that come pouring in at these events as they are all writing the debate as it happens, be they wire reporters who will send out two or three full length stories during the clash or newspaper reporters on deadline.

Maybe if there were fewer, more concise mails, they might get read. But, as it is, some useful information gets swamped - several reporters missed an Obama email last night arguing that McCain's big plan to buy up bad mortgages was not a new idea at all.

As soon as the debate is over, the game at these events shifts from rapid rebuttal to declaring victory, as the rival campaigns cherry pick the cable news analysis shows and send out summaries of pundits saying their guy won in a bid to spin the post-game. The McCain camp put out "What they're saying about John McCain at the Nashville debate" mails. Obama's team hit back with "The Reviews are In."

Then, any reporter still on the fence can walk a few yards to the "spin room" where campaign hacks are mobbed by journalists and cameras and make the case that their candidate was brilliant while the other had a disastrous time.

Sometimes, you can pick up useful signs about how the campaigns really feel about the debate by just observing the mood of the rival spinners. Anecdotally, at least, last night it seemed that the Obama camp was happiest, sure that their man had just vaulted without an error over one of the few remaining hurdles which seem to separate him from the White House.

McCain's team seemed a little subdued, probably because they didn't get the "game-changer" moment that the Republican seems to need as he trails in the polls with the election less than four weeks away. The Arizona Senator's camp was also on the defensive, over the "that one" remark, and seemed frustrated that, as often happens, a trivial moment in a debate trumps the substance.

McCain and Obama both spent a short night in Nashville, before dashing for their planes. McCain may be behind in the race, but his "Straight Talk Air' jet made it to the runway one place ahead of "O-Force One." as the rivals headed up to midwestern battleground states. They meet for one final time next Wednesday in New York.

Simply put, Republican McCain needs a knockout - or at the very least to send Obama reeling for a standing count - as the race which once looked set to be a neck-and-neck struggle until November 4 has changed sharply since the rivals last met two weeks ago.

Obama now leads in every meaningful measure of the campaign - in both national polls and state polls in the electoral battlegrounds that will decide the election.

With only four weeks to go, McCain's brain trust appears to have decided that their man can't compete on the economy, the number one issue at the moment, so they must turn the race into a referendum on Obama's patriotism and character.

McCain has vowed to take the "gloves off" at Tuesday's debate so reporters are rubbing their hands in anticipation of a real slug fest, because Obama, mindful of previous Democratic candidates who have been ripped apart by a Republican barrage, has been hitting back hard.

Fresh from her debate against Democrat Joe Biden last week, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin has also been throwing barbs, accusing Obama of "palling around" with terrorists - a reference to his past acquaintance with a 1960s radical William Ayres.

But can McCain really afford to throw those kind of aggresive punches at the debate? Unlike last week's encounter, tonight's clash will be a "town hall" style  meeting, which will bring the unpredictable variable of human contact into the mix, as the rivals will field questions from undecided voters - which might make it more difficult for the candidates simply to throw bombs at one another.

It is also uncertain how voters spooked by the economic crisis would respond to a harshly negative attacks. And McCain certainly cannot afford to come across as angry, unpleasant or harsh, as that will play right into an emerging Obama campaign narrative that he is out of touch, cranky and erratic.

Obama was judged the winner of the first debate by pundits and instant polls and appeared to pass the test of being seen to be ready to serve as president and commander-in-chief.

Perhaps McCain's best hope tonight is to make the kind of emblematic, emotional connection with a voter that Bill Clinton pulled off in a townhall debate with then president George Bush in 1992, which helped to put him on the road to the White House. Such a moment might remind voters why they liked McCain in the first place, insulate him from a backlash against his relentlessly negative campaign and convince voters he can offer steady leadership in a time of crisis and understands their fears.

Maybe a question from a war veteran or mother of a US serviceman could do the trick and allow McCain to recall his own incarceration in the Vietnam War.

When he started his campaign, Obama often seemed a little aloof in his interaction with voters, but he has improved over 19 months on the trail, so McCain can hardly pin his hopes on his rival coming across as detached and uncaring. But, absent some huge error on a matter of critical policy by Obama, it is tough to see where a knockout blow might come from.

Here's what was initially meant to occupy the space behind Obama's stage. It's the "USS George H. W. Bush", the latest Nimitz-class aircraft carrier under construction by Northrop Grumman at their vast yard in Newport News.

Now, I'm a fan of enormous boats, so out of curiosity I asked a couple of police officers standing guard to name the vessel. It was the Bush, they said, and explained how Obama's stage was initially meant to occupy a park green in front of the nuclear-powered carrier. But then organizers realized it might not be appropriate for this year's Democratic White House hopeful to be speaking against the backdrop of a ship named after the current Republican president's father.

In the event, 18,000 Virginians turned out on a sun-kissed day to hear Obama excoriate his Republican rival John McCain's health care policies. Exactly one month before Election Day, the weather was beautiful and proved that after my last blog, I should leave meteorological predictions to the experts.

For Barack Obama, this time of year carries a special significance: today is his 16th wedding anniversary, and we are heading back to Chicago after a rally near Philadephia so the candidate can take his wife Michelle out for what he promises will be a "romantic dinner". It'll be just the two of them (plus the Secret Service, a press pool and the inevitable crowd of onlookers).

Obama told supporters in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Thursday that he had "a gift all picked out" for his wife. However, marital discord is possible as the baseball World Series approaches. For the first time since 1906, Chicago's two arch-rivals - the Cubs (Michelle's team) and the White Sox (Barack's) have a serious shot of both making the season finale starting on October 22.

"No fans are as passionate about their teams as Chicago fans, so the Cubs-Sox rivalry gets pretty heated - even in my own household," the Illinois senator said on ESPN Radio Thursday.

"I think I'm going to skip the last week of the presidential race if it's a cross-town series," he joked.

"We're just going to be back in Chicago. I'll tell America, 'Sorry guys, but I've got my priorities straight'."

If the polls continue to go his way, the election might well be sewn up before November 4. Not, of course, that Obama will be taking any chances.

That extends to forswearing his beloved basketball for the time being. Obama explained to ESPN that he couldn't risk turning up for one of his two remaining presidential debates against McCain with a broken nose or a missing tooth.

But on Election Day, the Democrat is promising himself a pick-up game - just as he did, as a good-luck charm, on mornings of his crunch primary races against Hillary Clinton. "By that time everybody will have made up their minds so it doesn't matter if I get hurt," he said.

Meanwhile, for Obama's travelling press corps, the autumnal weather has meant numb typewriting fingers in chilly tents at recent outdoor rallies in Wisconsin and Michigan. But that's just a staple of US campaign reporting, and the sudden demise of summer means that after a race that seems to have gone on forever, E-Day is now just a month away.

The point was is that you could get wound up by a football match, a Grand Slam rugby game or a Ryder Cup, but when you woke up in the morning, the world would go on just fine.

I thought about this as I watched members of the House of Representatives stare at an electronic vote counter on the wall of the chamber, as they voted on the bailout. It looked just like the 'out of town scoreboards' that you see when you got to a basketball, baseball or hockey game in the US and Canada.

The difference here was that the stock market linked pension of all the lawmakers, reporters and people in the public gallery of the House and millions of Americans was shedding value, not to mention US stocks having their worst one day fall ever,  as the bill went down .... So clearly it mattered a lot.

The Bush administration had warned of a financial catatastrophe if the bill failed. So the look of shock and fear on the faces of lawmakers after rebel Democrats and conservative Republicans thwarted the biailout was surreal. But bailing out Wall Street bankers is hugely unpopular in the heartland and self preservation instincts were at play as 228 members, a majority in the House, voted against the bill five weeks from election day.

So, now the White House and leaders of both parties in the House, clearly spooked by the consequences of a failure to pass a bill must "go back to the drawing board" as a football manager might say.

Early verdicts on last night's tussle between John McCain and Barack Obama are still coming in. A fair summation might be that Obama won, because he didnt lose.

The Democrat seemed to meet the vaunted 'commander in chief' threshold and came across as assured and presidential. As he has a slim lead in the race, a draw is likely to be scored as an advantage to Obama since McCain seems to have done little to have shaken up the race.

The Republican did however seem to steady his campaign after the furore over his decision to inject himself into the Wall Street bailout talks. He also seemed to lay to rest some concerns about his age with a snappy answers and seemed up for the fight. Where Obama scored on the economy, McCain did well on foreign affairs.

A few things to watch for in the next few days...

Commentators are beginning to focus on the fact that McCain barely looked at Obama during the debate, and seemed to betray his disrespect for the Democrat. Often, the most polite, pleasant and friendly candidate comes out the winner in these televised debates. It is no mistake Obama kept chummily referring to his foe as "John" while McCain wouldn't use "Barack".

The McCain campaign thinks it damaged Obama by their man repeatedly branding him "naive" and "inexperienced" on national security. That would line would have worked much better had Obama provided his rival with a glaring foreign policy error - but he didn't oblige.