The Final Weekend

There are a few things worth contemplating as we begin the final weekend of the 2008 presidential campaign.

• For openers, it was on the Friday before the election in 2004 that a taped message from Osama bin Laden was played on Al-Jazeera.
  
  In that message, bin Laden acknowledged his culpability in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks for the first time.
  
  Many political observers sensed a shift in voter attitudes that weekend, culminating in George W. Bush's re-election the next week.
  
  Some speculated that bin Laden timed the release of the tape in an attempt to influence the outcome of the election.
  
  Is bin Laden planning something similar this weekend?


• Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune has been writing this week about his "08 reasons" why, first, John McCain would win and then, yesterday, why Barack Obama would win.
  
  His final reason why Obama will win — Obama’s been lucky — ties in with what I just mentioned.
  
  It's true that Obama has been lucky in this campaign, as Zorn writes.
  

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  "Things have been relatively quiet all year on the terror and national security fronts — McCain’s strengths. And the major crisis of the campaign season — the economic meltdown — not only played into one of Obama’s perceived strong suits, it also caused McCain to appear impulsive and indecisive in the face of a sudden challenge."
  
  Eric Zorn
  Chicago Tribune

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  Zorn says he thinks Obama's luck will hold through the election.
  
  I hope he's right — for all our sakes.
  
  But, even though he's been mostly quiet the last couple of years, I expect bin Laden to make some noise after the next president takes office.
  
  Whether he will choose to remain quiet through the election remains a mystery to be resolved.


• At this point, it appears virtually certain that Obama will receive more newspaper endorsements than McCain.
  
  In most previous elections, Republicans have received more endorsements than Democrats — in spite of their protestations of a "liberal bias."
  
  But, in some exceptional elections, when the "Republican brand" has taken a beating, the Democrat wins more newspaper endorsements than the Republican.
  
  That appears to be the case in 2008. Editor & Publisher reports that, as of Thursday, Obama held more than a 2-to-1 advantage over McCain in endorsements.
  
  And many of Obama's endorsements have come from large metropolitan newspapers while the majority of McCain's endorsements have come from small-town newspapers.
  
  That means, as E&P observes, that Obama's endorsements represent a circulation of more than 21 million while McCain's endorsements represent a circulation of about 7 million — roughly a 3-to-1 advantage.