Bruce Springsteen has joined the campaign trail with several college and stadium appearances scheduled:

• Eastern Michigan University
• A free acoustic set at Oestrike Stadium.
• Saturday at a Philadelphia rally
• Sunday at Ohio State University.
• New York City (with Billy Joel) on Oct. 16.

It's all part of Obama's voter registration drive.

This is an open thread.

In the new CBS News poll, as in other polls, voters now have a more negative view of Gov. Sarah Palin. The poll also finds:

• 2 out of 3 women who formerly supported Hillary Clinton now support Barack Obama.

• Among women, Palin's favorability rating has dropped 17 points in three weeks. Her unfavorability rating has increased 15 points.

Details below:

CBS aired the Katie Couric interview of Sen. Joe Biden and Gov. Sarah Palin on Roe v. Wade. The transcript is here.

Think Progress has this portion where they discussed Supreme Court cases and Palin wouldn't or couldn't name any. Transcript below:

Sorry to contradict Jeralyn (yet again), but it's the economy. So says CBS:

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama leads GOP rival John McCain 49 percent to 40 percent among registered voters in a new CBS News poll. The nine-point spread marks an increase of four percentage points in Obama's lead from a CBS News/New York Times survey taken last week. Obama also leads by nine points among likely voters, 50 percent to 41 percent.

Why? It's the economy, stupid:

My view in a nutshell: Gov. Sarah Palin is the reason John McCain is behind in the polls in the battleground states. Yes, the issue on people's minds is the economy. Who would take a chance on having her in charge of economic policy if something happened to McCain?

There's not enough difference between McCain and Obama on the bailout bill. It's Palin that is killing him, particularly, I think, in Florida. No one except evangelicals want an evangelical with extremist views in the White House.

Even if Palin doesn't stumble tomorrow night, the debate won't help McCain .

Unless there's a huge terror or national security threat, areas in which McCain still outpolls Obama, he's history. And Palin sank him. [More...]

Via Kos, CNN/Opinion Research state polling:

Florida

McCain (R) 47 (48)
Obama (D) 51 (48)

Minnesota

McCain (R) 43 (41)
Obama (D) 54 (53)

Missouri

McCain (R) 48 (50)
Obama (D) 49 (45)

More...

Despite the McCain campaign's assertion that it did not know Gwen Ifill, moderator of tomorrow's VP debate, was writing a book on politics, race and Sen. Barack Obama, as Judd Legum points out, it was in the Washington Times two weeks before McCain agreed on August 6 to Ifill as a moderator. A simple Lexis search would have found it.

"We have an awkward history about how to talk about race in the nation and in newsrooms," says Gwen Ifill, senior correspondent for PBS' "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" and author of "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama," slated for publication early next year.

The takeaway here is only the incompetence of the McCain campaign to do its homework. More...

The country's largest union of Registered Nurses with 85,000 members released this ad today in six battleground states -- Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado, and Missouri.

The ad focuses on the possibility of a Sarah Palin presidency due to John McCain's health issues. From the e-mail I received from the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee:

Fostered by the growing concern among healthcare professionals over the health status of Sen. John McCain, the ad also provides a reminder of some of the controversial moments of Palin's record as governor of Alaska and mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.

More...

Time Magazine released a poll today. It has Obama ahead of McCain, 50% to 43%. And Gov. Sarah Palin is not bringing women to McCain's side. Obama leads among women by 17%:

Among the poll's most dramatic findings: McCain is losing female voters faster than Sarah Palin attracted them after the Republican National Convention. Obama leads McCain by 17 points with women, 55%-38%. Before the conventions, women preferred Obama by a margin of 10 points, 49%-39%. After McCain picked Palin as his running mate, the gap narrowed to a virtual tie, with Obama holding a 1-point margin, 48%-47%.

DKos/R2000 (9/28-30) has Obama up 10, 51-41. Ras (9/28-30) has up Obama up 6, 51-45. The new WaPo poll (9/27-29) has Obama up 4. Battleground (9/25, 28-30) has Obama up 2, 48-46. Gallup (9/27-29) has Obama up 6, 49-43. Hotline (9/27-29) has Obama up 6, 47-41.

Another day and McCain still needs a game changer.

By Big Tent Democrat

The last full month of the campaign and I'll start looking at state polls more closely now. Today we'll look at the latest Q polls for Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania:

FLORIDA: Obama 49 - McCain 43 pre-debate; Obama 51 - McCain 43 post-debate; OHIO: Obama 49 - McCain 42 pre-debate; Obama 50 - McCain 42 post-debate; PENNSYLVANIA: Obama 49 - McCain 43 pre-debate; Obama 54 - McCain 39 post-debate

"It is difficult to find a modern competitive presidential race that has swung so dramatically, so quickly and so sharply this late in the campaign. In the last 20 days, Sen. Barack Obama has gone from seven points down to eight points up in Florida, while widening his leads to eight points in Ohio and 15 points in Pennsylvania," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

(Emphasis mine.) The economic news has destroyed any chance McCain had in this election, which was slim in the first place imo. I said yesterday this election is over unless McCain changes the game somehow. I stand by that assessment.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

In an open letter to Sarah Palin, The American Conservative sees in Palin what it once saw in George Bush: a regular person with strong traditional values who champions faith, limited government, and pro-life judges. The AC feels betrayed by a president whose promised “values” agenda was hijacked by neocons.

You see what happened: the president’s entire domestic agenda collapsed under the weight of his failed foreign policy. Social Security reform stalled. Pro-lifers became political orphans. And whatever gains Bush’s tax cuts secured were wiped out by record spending. Everything was subordinated to the war on terror.

It’s doubtful that the president’s failed foreign policy slowed the advance of a conservative domestic agenda. Social security privatization went nowhere because it was spectacularly unpopular. The president was never committed to the right’s values agenda or to a conservative belief in responsible spending and limited presidential power. Lacking views of his own, Bush depended on his corporate political cronies for policy. They happened to be neocons. To appease the religious right, the president said what Karl Rove told him to say, but his real agenda was to redirect the country’s wealth to wealthy countrymen, as well as oil companies and favored corporations like Haliburton.

[more …]