Let’s take a look at a CNN/Gallup/USA Today tracking poll taken just a few days before the election:

Bush: 52%

Gore: 39%

Nader: 4%

Of course, this poll was taken a few days before the election in the year 2000 and more than a month before we even had a final result.

If anyone seems highly confident going into Tuesday, they’re probably faking it.

With everyone still waiting for an October surprise, I wonder if either of these side-by-side headlines from the ABC News web site will qualify?

In the final days of the campaign, we can expect the Bush team to be in all 9/11 all the time mode. During a New Hampshire campaign stop, W momentarily dropped the tactic of attacking Kerry at every turn and instead paid tribute to some relatives of 9/11 victims.

I’m not so sure about the idea of trotting out the relatives at this point in the campaign. But I am sure that Bush should have positioned himself more as a post-9/11 leader and healer than as a man constantly on the attack and a politician who behaved more like a desperate challenger than a war time incumbent.

Trying to shift gears at this point comes off as yet more desperation. The Bush team would be better off staying negative. It’s way too late to go positive and to focus on his own leadership.

During the New Hampshire event, confetti and fireworks were prematurely released. Once they went off, there was no way to reload the fireworks or to stuff the paper shreds back into the canon. And so it is with the Bush campaign. Long ago (maybe way back in South Carolina during the 2000 campaign) this team took the low road and focused all of their efforts on smearing Kerry.

There’s really no going back now. And because of that, the next time the confetti flies, it just may land on the other guy.

Yasser Arafat’s helicopter ride out of the territories serves as a perfect metaphor for his failure to lead his people. After spending most of his lifetime suppposedly fighting for statehood and better lives for the Palestinians, he ends up having to go to Europe to get decent healthcare. Even Arafat, by far the richest and most powerful person in the territories, cannot get anything close to modern healthcare in the society he has helped to create.

But at least Yasser always has options. Economic options. Media options. Housing options. Security options. And of course, healthcare options. Most Palestinians have no such luxuries.

And so much for the joys of martyrdom. Better to preach that than to live it. Arafat’s primary concern has always been self preservation, be it political or physical. His legacy will be his legend and little more.

From the Right, Roger Simon argues that big media will pay for their efforts to get Kerry elected:

If … Kerry does win, the mainstream media will have gotten him elected with their biased coverage and they will pay for it more than they could imagine. And it will be the blogosphere and you, our supporters, who will make them pay. Our strength will grow incremently with a Kerry victory in terms of influence and even economic power. And both will be at the expense of the mainstream media.

Simon is correct in his choice of targets. But he is wrong about big media’s crimes. Skip the part about the blogosphere altogether. Whichever side wins, much of the angersphere will make a lot of people pay in many ways.

The much stronger argument is that if Bush is re-elected, then mainstream media will bear the brunt of the blame for almost never challenging this administration, even on matters as grave as a war of choice. Knocked off balance by the events of 9-11 and wildly outmatched by an incredibly effective GOP messaging machine, the press has given W passes that few presidents have enjoyed. History will show that the mainstream press was more diligent about investigating a blow job than a pre-emptive war.

Columbia Journalism professor Todd Gittlin gets the story of the press right.

But of late, the government has had plenty of help in its efforts at dominance. To a disgraceful degree, the organs of news have been grinding out its tune. Many are the reasons for deference. Reporters and editors are credulous, fearful, and flatly bamboozled. Timid about getting out ahead of a public they respect more when it is “conservative” (read: rightwardly radical) than when it is liberal, they bend over backward to accommodate spin doctors. They grant officialdom the benefit of the doubt. They fear risking independent judgment, which they have defined as occupational hubris. They are terrified of missing out on the perks of access. They fear that detailing the anatomy of official distortion will turn off readers and viewers. Their proprietors, seeking favor in high places, cool their critical engines. So the media yield to temptation and morph into megaphones, and falsehoods too often and too loudly repeated take on the ring of plausibility.

Forget about the fact that big media is owned by mega-corporations. And forget about the fact that the disparaging of thinking segments of society is key to the GOP strategy. And forget the fact that radio is dominated by right wing commentators and that Fox is clearly, and by far, the most dominant cable news organization.

How can people look at this radical administration that has gotten away with everything they hoped to and still argue that there were any significant roadblocks along their path? You can’t win a game by five touchdowns and then complain that you were robbed by the refs.