John McCain’s campaign took another odd twist today when they announced that the star of the official election night watch party may only appear briefly in front of his supporters at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona. Instead, McCain plans on delivering his post-election remarks to a small group of reporters and invited guests on the hotel lawn.

McCain’s remarks will be piped electronically into the party and media filing center, aides said. Only a small press “pool” — mostly those who have traveled regularly with the candidate on his campaign plane, plus a few local Arizona reporters and others — will be physically present when he speaks.

Obama, by contrast, plans to address a giant outdoor celebration election night in Chicago’s Grant Park. The event is free and open to the public, but the campaign was charging media organizations a hefty fee for close-in spots on the camera risers and platforms and for cable and wireless Internet at those spots.

That “hefty fee” by the way is commonplace for news organizations at election night viewing parties and rings up to a whopping $935 per press agent. McCain is charging a “hefty fee” of $695 per press agent.

But as Obama spokesman Bill Burton pointed out, “Anyone credentialed for our filing center will also be able to watch the event live and in person, unlike the McCain event.”

In his most recent op-ed for The Huffington Post, Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm creator Larry David described his waking nights worrying about a McCain / Palin presidency. Naturally David’s particular brand of humor must be taken with a grain of salt, but there really is a truth buried deep inside his commentary. The country is anxious, nervous, jittery. The next (almost) 2 weeks will be nerve-wracking for a lot of Americans, many of whom are losing their homes, their savings and their sanity worrying about whether we’ll have 4 more years of Bush-style leadership in the White House.

I can’t take much more of this. Two weeks to go, and I’m at the end of my rope. I can’t work. I can eat, but mostly standing up. I’m anxious all the time and taking it out on my ex-wife, which, ironically, I’m finding enjoyable. This is like waiting for the results of a biopsy. Actually, it’s worse. Biopsies only take a few days, maybe a week at the most, and if the biopsy comes back positive, there’s still a potential cure. With this, there’s no cure. The result is final. Like death.

Five times a day I’ll still say to someone, “I don’t know what I’m going to do if McCain wins.” Of course, the reality is I’m probably not going to do anything. What can I do? I’m not going to kill myself. If I didn’t kill myself when I became impotent for two months in 1979, I’m certainly not going to do it if McCain and Palin are elected, even if it’s by nefarious means.

Political strategist and guru Charlie Cook had a great article yesterday touching on signs of McCain’s impending defeat on election day. Cook, who has been covering, predicting and involved in political campaigns for several decades, most recently went against the pundits during the Republican primaries by predicting that Rudy Giuliani would not become the Republican nominee. Sheesh, it seems like only yesterday everyone was claiming President Giuliani over the airwaves.

Anyways, here are Cook’s six factors that aren’t good for McCain, emphasis is ours.

First. The metrics of this election argue strongly that this campaign is over, it’s only the memory of many an election that seemed over but wasn’t that is keeping us from closing the book mentally on this one. First, no candidate behind this far in the national polls, this late in the campaign has come back to win. Sure, we have seen come-from-behind victories, but they didn’t come back this far this late.

Second, early voting has made comebacks harder and would tend to diminish the impact of the kind of late-breaking development that might save McCain’s candidacy. With as many as one-third of voters likely to cast their ballot before Election Day, every day more are cast and the campaign is effectively over for them. The longer Obama has this kind of lead and the more votes are cast early, the more voters are out of the pool for McCain.

Third, considering that 89 percent of all voters who identified themselves as Democrats voted for John Kerry four years ago and 93 percent of Republicans cast their ballots for George W. Bush, the switch from parity between the parties to a 10-point Democratic advantage would seem to almost seal this outcome irrespective of the candidates fielded on each side. The unprecedented surges seen in Democratic party registrations in those states that require party affiliations confirm that.

Fourth, just look at the money and spending. With Obama now outspending McCain routinely by margins of 3- and 4-to-1 in advertising in so many states, it’s hard to see how the Arizonan’s campaign can drive a message. For a time, Obama was matching McCain one for one in negative advertising, then spending double or triple on top of that in positive advertising. Now Obama seems primarily doing positive ads, probably the right move given his lead going into this final stretch. Organizationally, it’s hard to find any state where McCain is organized as well as President Bush was four years ago or Obama is today, a product of both money and enthusiasm.

Fifth, while many are talking about the so-called “Bradley effect,” voters telling pollsters that they will vote for an African-American candidate when they won’t, putting aside the question of whether it ever existed, it hasn’t been seen in at least 15 years and the likely surge in turnout among African-American and young people seems sufficient to offset it anyway.

Finally there are the states. Obama is now leading in every state that Al Gore and John Kerry both won, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and he is ahead in Iowa, New Hampshire and New Mexico, the three states that went once but not twice for Democrats in 2000 and 2004. He is also ahead in Florida, Colorado and Virginia. If that weren’t enough (and it is), he’s running basically even in Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio, and even threatening in Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia.

NBC and the Wall Street Journal, two organizations which apparently aren’t part of Sarah Palin’s real America (comments she apologized for earlier Today), have released the results from their recent poll showing Obama is up by almost 10 points over John McCain.

“Voters have reached a comfort level with Barack Obama. The doubts and question marks have been erased,” said Peter D. Hart, a Democratic pollster who conducts the poll with Republican Neil Newhouse.

And even more telling, more and more voters are concerned that Sarah Palin is incapable of being president, which is becoming more apparent everyday.

Fifty-five percent of voters say Gov. Palin isn’t qualified to be president if the need arises, up from 50% two weeks ago. And when given a list of possible concerns about Sen. McCain, voters were by far most likely to say they worry about Gov. Palin’s qualification to be president.

The great mind of Seth McFarlane, creator of Family Guy on FOX, is known for coming up with quite some exaggerated, sometimes controversial opinions on world views and pop culture. In a recent episode, the popular TV show brings in a bit of Nazi-themed humor into the Republican campaign, by suggesting that modern day nazis support John McCain and Sarah Palin.

McCain’s favorite Silicon Valley adviser, Meg Whitman, formerly of eBay, is being trumped by the Obama campaign, after Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced his endorsement of the Junior Senator from Illinois for President of the United States. Though quick to point out it is purely a personal endorsement, not an official company stance, having the CEO of the tech scene’s largest player come on board in an official capacity, Schmidt has been an informal adviser to Obama on tech issues for some time, is great news for the Obama campaign.

Welcome to the campaign Mr. Powell! During his much talked about interview on Meet the Press Sunday Morning, Colin Powell held a brilliant, 7 minute long speech explaining his endorsement of Barack Obama for President of the United States. We briefly touched on the gossip going around regarding Colin Powell’s endorsement earlier in the week, but now we’re relieved, excited and more than happy to hear Powell’s decision.

Explaining his disappointment with the Republican party tactics of trying to smear Obama, much in the same way McCain was smeared by the Bush campaign in 2000, as well as the inherent ugliness of the Republican party in the past few elections, Powell described Obama as cool, calm, collected and showing an intellectual curiosity required of the President of the United States.

Though we’re by no means fans of Colin Powell, he is showing genuine concern for the direction this country is taking and the direction a McCain / Palin administration would steer us towards.