The Note: We're With Stupid

Oct. 28, 2008— -- One week out, we know that one of the following equations will produce a number greater than 270 (and only one could possibly approach 370):

Change + Bush + Virginia + Montana + Ground Game + (Air War x 4) + Axelrod - Schmidt - Neiman Marcus - Backbiting - Surprise +/- Biden + Tina Fey

Experience + Liberals + (Bradley x 2) + (Surprise x 3) + Joe the Plumber + Pennsylvania + Schmidt - Axelrod - Bush +/- Palin +/- Bill Clinton

We know every smart mathematician ends up with the same result these days. But we also know every smart conversation ends with the same two words . . . and yet.

And yet . . . it's just distinctly possible that this election that's been all about little things may wind up being about the big things (probably not including seven-year-old radio interviews). Things like national security and public corruption and the direction of the nation and, above all, the economy.

It's a formula that even Sen. John McCain appears comfortable with now: Joe the Plumber himself (finally) hits the trail for him Tuesday, ABC's Bret Hovell reports, and it's all about the economy for him, too.

McCain's latest ad is economic in message, alternating pictures of the candidates (and it's not hard to figure out which words belong with which man -- and which man looks better in the chosen photographs): "For higher taxes . . . For workin' Joes . . . Spread your income . . . Keep what's yours . . . A trillion in new spending . . . Freeze spending, eliminate waste . . . Pain for small business . . . Economic growth . . . Risky . . . Proven."

But who's really happier with this turn? "Both candidates are focusing their rhetoric increasingly on economic issues -- a main area of concern for voters in the continuing global financial crisis," Christopher Cooper and Elizabeth Holmes write in The Wall Street Journal.

Said former Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, R-Md.: "In the cloud of this economic turmoil a lot of things often times get lost in translation. . . . It is important for campaigns to step back and reassess and remind."

One basic problem with a debate like this, this late: "Senator Barack Obama, making what aides called the 'closing argument' of his campaign, declared on Monday that it was time to 'get beyond the old ideological debates.' And then Mr. Obama and his opponent, Senator John McCain, spent much of the day engaged in just such a debate," Peter Baker and Michael Cooper write in The New York Times.

Contrast the closing styles: Obama is going broad, with soaring speeches before big crowds -- and McCain is making it all about the attack: liberal vs. conservative, safe vs. risky, the plumber vs. the redistributor.

Even if McCain was totally comfortable with the turn to the economy (no sure bet when Obama has effectively claimed the tax issue as his own -- all while expanding a map that continues to shrink for his opponent), distractions emerge anew.

The GOP brand takes another beating -- delivered from the District of Columbia, but with impact a place you can't see from any rooftop deck in the nation's capital.

Make that plus-one (most likely) in the Democratic push for 60, in ruby red Alaska -- and make that minus-one for a McCain-Palin campaign that's anxious to tell its own stories for a change.

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska -- Uncle Ted up in Alaska, and the former Senate president pro tem back in Washington -- convicted on all counts, per ABC's Jason Ryan, Pierre Thomas, and Theresa Cook.

"Political handicappers refused to write him off but said his chances of reelection were greatly diminished by yesterday's outcome," Del Quentin Wilber writes in The Washington Post. "Within hours of the verdict, Democrats were sending out news releases seeking to link their opponents to Stevens's trouble."

" 'It's not over yet!' Stevens said angrily to his wife as he walked from the courtroom Monday afternoon," Erika Bolstad and Richard Mauer report in the Anchorage Daily News -- calling it "a crippling blow not just to his election chances next week but to his legacy as Alaska's longest serving and most accomplished living politician."

As for Gov. Sarah Palin (an Alaska voter, in addition to the state's governor): "I'll carefully monitor now the situation and I'll take any appropriate action as needed. In the meantime I do ask that the people of Alaska join me in respecting the workings of our judicial system, and I'm confident that Senator Stevens, from this point on, will do the right thing for the state of Alaska," she said Monday, per ABC's Imtiyaz Delawala.

(Ummm -- that's nice, but who's she voting for? Per ABC's Jake Tapper: "A Palin ally writes: 'You seem to be under-reading her statement. She was clearly making the point that he needs to do the "right thing" and given he was convicted on all 7 counts, it seems pretty obvious what the "right thing" is.' Really? Stevens thinks the 'right thing' is to keep fighting the charges and to continue running for re-election.)

Leaving well enough? "This has been a tight race all along, with his challenger, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, running an exceptionally tough contest against someone who had always represented his constituents. But we're told the riches of the DSCC won't be pouring money in for ads soonest," Kate Phillips writes for The New York Times.

Another wrinkle: "Since picking Palin, McCain & Co. have staked out Alaska as the living, beating heart of American authenticity," writes Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson. "And so, today, Ted Stevens' felonious betrayal of the public trust is going to allow Democrats to campaign like it's 2006 -- against the Republican 'culture of corruption' that proved so electorally toxic to the GOP two years ago."

More immediate worries: "There is no question that there is a rift between Sarah Palin's camp and that of John McCain inside the Republican campaign, sources tell ABC News. And you are seeing people within the McCain campaign starting to look to the future," per ABC's George Stephanopoulos.

"The Alaska governor herself has been pushing out on her own against McCain's handlers," he continues. "In recent days she has been speaking her own mind about what she thought of McCain's strategy in Michigan, and what she thought of his decision not to go after Rev. Jeremiah Wright. And we're seeing more and more of that in the closing days of the campaign."

"John McCain thought he was being clever picking a fellow maverick to be his running mate. The problem with mavericks, however, is that they don't follow instructions. Pretty soon they go rogue and before you know it you've got a full-fledged diva on your hands," Dana Milbank writes in The Washington Post.

(Meet Tito the Plumber: "Not since the Jackson Five has the name Tito been used so often," Palin said.)

"Sarah Palin may soon be free. Soon, she may not have the millstone of John McCain around her neck. And she can begin her race for president in 2012," Politico's Roger Simon writes.

At least it's a productive fight -- right? "The person who went and bought the clothes and, as I understand it put the clothes on her credit card, went to Saks and Neiman Marcus . . . the staffer who did that has been a coward," Fred Barnes said on Fox News.

He then said he was talking about senior McCain advisor Nicolle Wallace. Per Politico's Ben Smith: "Wallace fired back in an email to me that Barnes is 'incorrect' that she charged the clothes to her card, and 'incorrect that I went to any stores.' Public records suggested that another Republican operative, Jeff Larson, paid for the clothes."