TRAILBLAZERS
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Obama is off the trail today getting ready for a weeklong world tour that is to begin Monday in Jordan. He also plans to visit Israel, the Palestinian West Bank, Iraq, Afghanistan, Germany, France and Britain. The full itinerary for Obama and his all-star press pool has been withheld, but the campaign has let some details slip, including the candidate’s scheduled meetings with the heads of France, Germany and the U.K.
After staying up late with Conan O’Brien on Friday, McCain has been off the campaign trail this weekend, as usual. He’ll need the rest for the week he has ahead of him. While Barack Obama goes globe-trotting, McCain will be swinging through Colorado, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania to talk about energy prices and other domestic issues. On Monday, McCain is to attend a fundraiser in Maine hosted by former President George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush.
PUNDITS’ ALLEY
The Coming Activist Age
If [John] McCain is going to win this election, it will because he can communicate an essential truth — that people in a great and successful nation do not want change for its own sake. But they do realize that it’s only through careful reform that they can preserve what they and their ancestors have so laboriously built.
Hysteria alert: Barack Obama starts world tour
You have to go back to the Beatles‘ first U.S. tour to find a trans-Atlantic trip freighted with the sort of pregnant excitement that attends the one Barack Obama is about to make next week. The faces of the crowds expected in Berlin when he arrives on Thursday will be portraits of the same devotional ecstasy that greeted the Liverpool quartet on their way from [John F. Kennedy International Airport] to Manhattan that February day in 1964. In London next weekend Gordon Brown will play Ed Sullivan to the Fab One, hoping to borrow, just for a day, a little of the superstar charisma to bolster his own ratings.
Left behind: Evangelicals haven’t embraced the Democrats’ agenda
Obama certainly uses more biblical references in his speeches than John Kerry or Al Gore ever did. But evangelicals may not be as gullible as the Democratic elites make them out to be. Mr. Obama’s 100 percent approval rating from NARAL, the abortion-rights organization, his support of the California Supreme Court‘s gay-marriage decision and his desire to pull out of Iraq no matter the cost to American security may tell religious people — especially evangelicals — all they need to know.
POLL CHECK
Barack Obama continues to hold a narrow lead in national polls and in the Examiner Electoral Average. Meanwhile, the battle for two key states — Virginia and Nevada –continues to intensify. For John McCain to win the White House, he’ll almost certainly need to win both.
NATIONAL OPINION
CANDIDATE PERCENT NOW PERCENT ONE WEEK AGO
Obama 47 47
McCain 46 45
Undecided/Other 7 8
EXAMINER ELECTORAL AVERAGE
CANDIDATE ELECTORS
Obama 225
McCain 216
Toss-up 97
(271 needed to win)
VIRGINIA (13 ELECTORS)
CANDIDATE PERCENT OF VOTE
McCain 48
Obama 47
Undecided/Other 5
(Rasmussen Reports)
NEVADA (5 ELECTORS)
CANDIDATE PERCENT OF VOTE
Obama 47
McCain 45
Undecided/Other 8
(Rasmussen Reports)
ARKANSAS (6 ELECTORS)
CANDIDATE PERCENT OF VOTE
McCain 52
Obama 39
Undecided/Other 9
(Rasmussen Reports)
BLOGOSPHERICS
Marc Ambinder unearthed a new Web site that must send chills down the spines of Democrats hoping for party unity:
“A company associated with Hillary Clinton‘s top presidential campaign advance staff has purchased a Web site domain that hints of a 2012 presidential bid for the vanquished senator from New York. HRC2012.com was bought by the Markham Group on June 8, according to whois.com. … In 2006, HillaryClinton.com was used as the principle Senate re-election site, so it’s not clear why a separate 2012 site would be required. If Obama loses in November, Clinton would have to pick between running for re-election and running for president.”
