The Note: Pit Bull's Bite

Oct. 22, 2008— -- A lucky 13 days out, we're wondering:

Do the votes in real America count differently than those in fake America?

Where do real Americans shop?

Is it better for Team McCain to waste time and money on Pennsylvania, or to waste whatever enthusiasm would vanish if the GOP wasn't playing offense anywhere?

Will bashing the media win John McCain a single, real-life vote he wouldn't have already gotten?

Is it patriotic to question your opponents' patriotism?

Does McCain have one long ball left in him? (One that has nothing whatsoever to do with "Joe the Plumber"?)

Does a long plane trip to Hawaii by Barack Obama freeze the race in place, or allow someone to drive a new message?

Does the fact that Sarah Palin is now the most accessible of the four candidates change anything at all?

It might, actually, but Palin has gone full circle in her brief time on the national landscape -- and the recent attempts at definition have gone about as well as that bridge we used to hear so much about.

She continues to get huge crowds, though the big headlines she's getting are not for the right reasons. She influencing voters -- but not in the way McCain expected when he shook up the race by plucking her from obscurity. (Ask Colin Powell.)

Neither running mate has done his or her ticket many favors in recent days. And Palin -- buttoned up for so long, might have been better off staying that way (albeit with nicer buttons these days).

Not where she needs to be going: "Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin apologized yesterday for implying that some parts of the country are more American than others, even as similar comments by two Republican congressmen were causing a backlash that threatened their chances for reelection," per The Washington Post's Lyndsey Layton.

"If that's the way it's come across, I apologize," Palin said on CNN.

We're waiting for this to show up her stump speech -- what's more patriotic than shopping at high-end retail outlets?

"The Republican National Committee has spent more than $150,000 to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family since her surprise pick by John McCain in late August," Politico's Jeanne Cummings reports. "According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74. The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September."

(Cash crunch? What cash crunch? That's some nice lipstick. . . . )

Strategic decisions! "The campaign does not comment on strategic decisions regarding how financial resources available to the campaign are spent," spokeswoman Maria Comella said.

Added another spokeswoman, Tracey Schmitt: "With all of the important issues facing the country right now, it's remarkable that we're spending time talking about pantsuits and blouses. It was always the intent that the clothing go to a charitable purpose after the campaign."

Too easy: "I wonder how 'Joe the Plumber' feels about his donation going to Sarah the Shopper," one Democratic operative tells the New York Daily News' Ken Bazinet. "I guess she can also see Saks from her doorstep."

"The Democrats are going to have a lot more fun with this than is prudent, but the heat for this story will come from Republicans who cannot understand how their party would do something this stupid," The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder writes.

"I buy my suits at Dillard's here in Florida," said Gov. Charlie Crist, R-Fla., on MSNBC Wednesday morning.

The AP's lobs the next volley: "Gov. Sarah Palin charged the state for her children to travel with her, including to events where they were not invited, and later amended expense reports to specify that they were on official business," Brett J. Blackledge, Adam Goldman, and Matt Apuzzo write. "In all, Palin has charged the state $21,012 for her three daughters' 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights since she took office in December 2006. In some other cases, she has charged the state for hotel rooms for the girls."

One more civics lesson: Asked what the vice president would do, we hope she won't be disappointed when she winds up doing crossword puzzles in the chair. "That's something Piper would ask me," Palin told a TV interviewer in Colorado, per ABC's Imtiyaz Delawala. "They're in charge of the US Senate, so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes."

Palin's campaign will have to pause Friday: Deposition time. "Gov. Sarah Palin, already found by one investigation to have abused her power, will take time from her vice presidential campaign Friday to give a deposition in a second inquiry into her firing of the state's top public safety official," per the AP's Rachel D'Oro.

As for how she's been handled by her opponents: "I think that both Barack and Joe [Biden] were very smart, after an initial kind of misstep, in pulling back and not criticizing Governor Palin personally," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton tells ABC's Cynthia McFadden on "Nightline."

More Clinton: "I believe that you can hold two thoughts simultaneously. You can hold the thought that she's an extraordinary woman. She has an incredible set of skills, personal skills that are really apparent in how she connects with people and her life story. But that doesn't mean that she and John McCain should lead our country, for a million reasons that I think people understand."

The process of healing (as dictated by Rudy?): "I was running against him," said Clinton, D-N.Y. "I mean, it would be like saying to somebody who just lost the playoffs ... to get into the World Series, 'Well, you know, are you going to root for the team from your league?' And, you know, 'Yeah, I'll get around to it.' . . . It's a human experience and, obviously, a lot of human emotion."

Palin is incorporating Clinton into her stump speech: "In stronger language than she has used on the campaign trail before, Palin criticized Obama for not selecting Sen. Clinton as his vice presidential nominee, citing Obama's decision as an example of the barriers women face in the workplace," per ABC's Imtiyaz Delawala.

Said Palin: "When it came time for choosing, somehow Barack Obama just couldn't bring himself to pick the woman who got 18 million votes in his primary, and that seems to be too familiar a story isn't it?"

The latest ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll has it 53-44 for Obama over McCain -- and a gaping, enormous enthusiasm gap, as reflected by first-time voters.

"Four years ago first-timers backed Democratic nominee John Kerry by 7 points. Today they favor Obama over John McCain by 47," ABC polling director Gary Langer writes. "First-time voters are among the telling ones; they attest both to the Obama campaign's efforts to sign up new voters, and to the extraordinary level of enthusiasm among his supporters this year. But there's a cautionary note for the Obama campaign: Turnout among first-time voters is challenging to predict, since they're clearly not in the habit."

It's grim where it counts, too: "In the 16 states identified by the ABC News Political Unit as battlegrounds, Obama leads John McCain by 54-43 percent among likely voters in ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll. That's a party switch from the last two elections: George W. Bush won these same 16 states in 2004 and 2000 alike. And in 1992 and 1996 Bill Clinton won these 16, and the White House," Langer reports.

It's 52-42 nationally in the new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. "It's the largest lead in the Journal/NBC poll thus far, and represents a steady climb for Sen. Obama since early September, when the political conventions concluded with the candidates in a statistical tie," the Journal's Laura Meckler writes.