Campaign Trail

Last-minute changes

• Matthew Price
• 29 Oct 08, 10:56 PM GMT

Atlanta International Airport, 29th October

It's been a fruitless day, waking well before dawn in Pennsylvania, and travelling to West Palm Beach, Florida where we were expecting a John McCain event.

In the end it was sealed off from all but the "pool" of reporters travelling with the Republican candidate. So now we're in transit yet again, heading back north where we hope to see John McCain again tomorrow. The sun's just setting over Atlanta airport, and we've still got to get to Ohio. Nineteen hours of travelling in all - assuming no delays!

In the last few days of these races it's often hard to know where the candidates will end up on any particular day.

They make last minute changes to the schedule, knowing that a visit to one place rather than another could win - or cost - votes.

In the meantime, are there some signs of desperation within the McCain camp in these closing days? Remember the row over robo-calls? Well if this report is right, they are being used in John McCain's home state of Arizona. That should be a safe state for him. He shouldn't need to use them there.

There's also been a lot of talk about an "October surprise", a possible curve-ball that might throw Obama off course.

It's getting late in the month, and I would have thought too close to election day to make any real difference, but
this has been brewing on conservative websites for a day now,
and shows signs of making it into at least regional newspapers. Fox are also covering it a lot.

A McCain spokesman last night accused the LA Times of deliberately suppressing a video of Barack Obama talking in favourable terms about an American-born Palestinian academic. The feeling I have is that many here have grown tired of these kind of reports, but perhaps one more link between Obama and that often misused and misleading word "terrorist" might change some minds?

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