Ended up spending the better part of an eight-hour day driving around the suburbs and small towns around the Kansas City area about a week ago (i.e., not just the Dem-tilted center of KC). I saw plenty of Obama bumper stickers, plenty of Obama signs, and an Obama calender on the wall behind the register in one store I stopped at. I saw zero, ZERO, McCain stickers OR lawn signs. Not one during my drive through conservative soccer mom heaven Belton-Raymore nor among the McMansions of Johnson County.

For purposes of comparison, last Prez election the signage split in the KC area was about 55% Kerry, 45% Bush. Slight Kerry lean, but plenty of support for both. This trip, all I saw on the R side was a few faded Bush bumper stickers. I was beginning to think McCain didn’t even distribute any lawn signs, but just the other day I finally spotted one. So they DO exist.

Obviously this sign gap doesn’t mean that tens of thousands of people have switched parties here. But clearly there is a serious gap in candidate love, and I could see that translating to a couple percentage points on election day. Don’t know if my experience was a part of a national trend, a local trend, or just a weird coincidence. Here’s hoping that if you don’t care enough about McCain to put up a sign, you won’t care enough to show up on election day.

I prefer “moribind” myself.

Here in St. Louis, we were told by Tina Hervey, Missouri Republican State Party Press Secretary, that she had never heard of FiveThirtyEight, and while they trusted Politico, we were people who they had to decide whether we “shouldn’t or don’t need to be talking to.” (McCain’s Missouri press secretary actually works out of Iowa, and did not return calls or email.) I told Tina that’s not a story we wanted to write, that this was our first Republican resistance, and that while she may not have heard of us, we’d probably go over 2.5 million site visits this week, now that we’re regularly past 400,000 per weekday. I told her I’d hold off writing her flat refusal and give her the opportunity to change her mind.

No budging. We were told that we’d be asked to leave public field offices we now attempted to visit. We did not get any promised follow-up helping get access to the post-debate Palin rally last night, and we were locked out. Hmm.

Seriously, what is wrong with these people? It seems like they’re not even trying anymore.

It’s true. Many of my friends have traveled to battleground states this weekend in order to register new voters. I’m home sick, but I have delivered to voter registration posters to businesses in my neighborhood (but I live in Manhattan, which will go for Obama in a landslide).

Anyway, I agree with you Elvis. Obama supporters are organized and mobilized. This election is going to Obama and Biden.

This is why we will win this election, Oliver: Because so many more of us are working for a candidate in whom we believe, while so many of them are simply voting against a candidate they hate and fear. Ours is an army of volunteers dedicated to a common cause; theirs is a scattered fraternity of ideologically bankrupt spoiled brats. Our ground game will prevail.