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A Classroom That Stretches Across the U.S.

It belonged to Larry Kissell, a Democratic candidate for Congress, and Miller was eager to tell him why, at 49, he is quietly panicked.

He showed up for work one day at Alandale Knitting to find the factory doors locked. He got a job mixing mud at a tile factory, but it relocated to Mexico. He moved 100 miles to work in a meatpacking plant but injured his back lifting an 80-pound vat of scraps.

"The jobs are just disappearing overnight," Miller said. "Something's got to change." That's why he is voting for Barack Obama, and why he will scroll down the ballot to mark Kissell's name, too.

It was Kissell's fourth trip to the church, and he prays that African Americans turning out in unprecedented numbers for Obama will push him across the finish line as well.

Kissell is one of at least 10 white Democrats in white-hot competitive U.S. House races who are counting on a surge of black voters to carry them into office. Most are challenging incumbent Republicans, and they are central to Democratic hopes of picking up as many as 25 additional seats, strengthening the party's control of the House.

Many of these races are in Southern states where African Americans make up a sizable minority. But the dynamic is also at play in such states as Maryland, Ohio and Connecticut.

As many as 70 percent of voting-age African Americans could cast ballots on Election Day, said David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, who studies black voter patterns. That number would far exceed the 56 percent who voted in 2004 and bust the record for black participation set in the 1968 election.

There is a certain irony in the pivotal role that blacks could play in congressional elections, given how some of the districts were drawn, Bositis said. "When these districts were designed, certain assumptions were made about what black turnout would be so that the district would pretty much favor Republicans," Bositis said. "Now, all of a sudden, you have an election . . . where African Americans are enormously excited and mobilized. Not only that, you have the Obama campaign going out of its way to make sure these voters are registered and are going to turn out."

Add the dampened mood among Republicans and the situation "has the potential of putting the Democratic candidates over the top," Bositis added.

A hint of how Obama might affect congressional races came during a special election in Mississippi this spring. In the contest to fill a vacancy in the 1st Congressional District, Republicans tried to link Democrat Travis Childers, who is white, to Obama, as a way to turn off white voters in the conservative district. Instead, black turnout doubled in the two counties with the largest African American populations and Childers won.

Hundreds of miles north, black voters are playing a decisive role in Connecticut's 4th Congressional District, home to the manicured estates of Greenwich and Darien. Republican incumbent Christopher Shays is fighting a vigorous challenge by Democrat Jim Himes, an investment banker-turned-social entrepreneur.

Eight years later, this time running as the Republican presidential nominee, the senator from Arizona is again criticizing Bush and his financial policies, as he renews his efforts to demonstrate that he would represent a departure from the current administration.

At virtually every campaign stop, McCain is reprising a line he used last Wednesday in his final debate with Sen. Barack Obama: "I am not George Bush." And in a television ad introduced last week, McCain looks into the camera and says, "The last eight years haven't worked very well, have they?"

As he struggles to pull his campaign out from beneath the shadow of a president whose approval ratings have reached historic lows, McCain is offering some of his toughest criticism of the Bush White House. In recent weeks, he has focused his message on the administration's handling of the nation's financial crisis, suggesting that the Treasury Department has been more interested in "bailing out the banks" than helping struggling homeowners avoid foreclosure.

"I am so disturbed that this administration has not done what we have to do, and that is to go out and buy up these bad mortgages," McCain told Jewish leaders in a conference call Sunday morning.

The new rhetoric has drawn roars of applause at some campaign stops and represents a tacit acknowledgment that McCain has not distanced himself sufficiently from the administration in his bid. One senior adviser said the campaign had to do something to counteract the Obama operation's decision to spend "tens of millions of dollars pushing" the idea that McCain is a virtual clone of Bush. "The majority of the swing voters don't believe it, but some do, and we have to convince them that we are different from Bush," said this adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss campaign strategy.

Bush is hardly the only problem for McCain as he struggles to close a gap with Obama. Voters perceive Obama as better prepared to handle the economic crisis, the GOP brand has been severely tarnished in recent years, and McCain is at a huge financial disadvantage.

But with the Republican president's approval ratings languishing, the perceived connection with him is a significant drag on the party's nominee. Nearly half of all voters in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll said McCain would mainly carry on Bush's policies, and among those who would consider a McCain presidency as a continuation of the current administration, 90 percent support Obama. And the prized independent voters who link McCain and Bush also overwhelmingly tilt toward the Democrat.

McCain has made progress in distancing himself from the president. Among independents, 54 percent now see the senator as offering a new direction, up from 44 percent before the third presidential debate, where he introduced his new language on Bush.

Among all likely voters, the percentage associating McCain with Bush is less than 50 percent for the first time, albeit barely, at 49 percent. Forty-eight percent said McCain would mainly continue to lead in Bush's footsteps.

A senior Republican close to the campaign said internal GOP polling underscores those findings.

"It's night and day," the source said. "You have somebody whose public approval is in the 20s. There's just not a 'there' there anymore in terms of residual support."

updated 17 minutes ago

"We're going to be in a tight race and we're going to be up late on election night. That's just -- I'm confident of that. I've been in too many campaigns, my friend, not to sense that things are headed our way," McCain said Sunday on Fox News.

Sen. Barack Obama leads McCain by 6 points, according to CNN's latest average of national polls.

"I love being the underdog. You know, every time that I've gotten ahead, somehow I've messed it up," the Republican candidate said.

Asked if Gov. Sarah Palin has become a drag on his ticket, McCain said, "As a cold political calculation, I could not be more pleased."

"She has excited and energized our base. She is a direct counterpoint to the liberal feminist agenda for America. She has a wonderful family. She's a reformer. She's a conservative. She's the best thing that could have happened to my campaign and to America," he said.

In response to a question from Fox's Chris Wallace, McCain said he has considered the possibility that he could lose, but added, "I don't dwell on it."

"I've had a wonderful life. I have to go back and live in Arizona, and be in the United States Senate representing them, and with a wonderful family, and daughters and sons that I'm so proud of, and a life that's been blessed," he said.

"I'm the luckiest guy you have ever interviewed and will ever interview. I'm the most fortunate man on earth, and I thank God for it every single day."

McCain said if things don't turn out his way on Election Day, "Don't feel sorry for John McCain, and John McCain will be concentrating on not feeling sorry for himself."

CNN's latest poll of polls shows Obama drawing 49 percent of voters nationwide, while McCain stands at 43 percent.

The 6-point lead represents no change from a CNN poll of polls released late last week, though it is 2 points smaller than one week ago.

The national poll of polls consists of three surveys: Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby (October 15-17), Gallup (October 15-17) and Diageo/Hotline (October 15-17). It does not have a sampling error.

McCain on Sunday was campaigning in Ohio, the state that put President Bush over the top in his re-election bid four years ago.

The Arizona senator had rallies scheduled in Westerville and Toledo, Ohio.

The most recent CNN poll of polls in Ohio suggests that 48 percent of voters there are backing Obama and 46 percent are supporting McCain.

Obama on Sunday was campaigning in North Carolina, a once reliably Republican state in presidential contests that is now up for grabs.

The last Democratic presidential candidate to win North Carolina was Jimmy Carter in 1976. The most recent CNN/Time Magazine/Opinion Research Corporation poll in the state has the contest deadlocked at 49 percent for each candidate.

Obama's campaign events come on the heels of a big endorsement from Colin Powell, the former secretary of state. Watch what Powell says about Obama »

"I think he is a transformational figure, he is a new generation coming onto the world stage, onto the American stage, and for that reason I'll be voting for Sen. Barack Obama," Powell said as he announced his endorsement Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

As for the running mates, Palin on Sunday had a rally scheduled in New Mexico, a state that narrowly went for President Bush four years ago.

"In the month of September, we raised over $150 million and added 632,000 new donors for a total 3.1 million donors to date," the campaign announced.

"The average donation for the month was less than $100."

The previous record, also set by Obama, was $67 million.

The number explains why Obama has been able to saturate the airwaves in swing states, and afford luxuries such as the half hour infomercials he plans to run later this month.

It also answers definitively the question of whether it was strategically shrewd to forgo public funds.

Republican National Committee officials have expressed concerns about the potential for abuse with small dollar fundraising on this scale. They have noted examples of fake names used to donate through the Internet. The Obama campaign has said it has vetted donations as fast as possible and would return any questionable contributions.

The number of questionable contributions identified at this point is tiny in the face of the kind of money the campaign reported today.

Plouffe describes the haul as evidence of the power of ordinary people.

"When Barack entered this race, he put his faith in the power of ordinary supporters like you coming together and building a movement for change from the bottom up," his e-mail said.

"That's exactly how we got this far -- and you should feel proud of all we have accomplished together."

Obama has courted Republicans all along, but in Powell he gets party crossover plus military credibility. Powell is a retired U.S. Army general and served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the first President Bush.

As Secretary of State under the current President Bush, Powell helped to build the case for the Iraq war, a role that hurt him with many Democrats and moderates, who had viewed him as somewhat apolitical. Powell made his endorsement today on the NBC program "Meet the Press."

Powell said he had watched both Obama and Sen. John McCain in the last "six or seven weeks," since the national political conventions, and paid special attention to how they reacted to the nation's worsening economic situation.

"I must say, he seemed a little unsure about how to approach the problem," Powell said of McCain.

"He didn't have a complete grasp of the economic problems we have."

Powell also expressed concerns about McCain's selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. "I don't believe she's ready to be President of the United States, which is the job of vice president," Powell said, adding that it raised "some questions in my mind" about McCain's judgment.

As for Obama, Powell said, "I think that he has a definitive way of doing business that would serve us well."

McCain sought to shrug off the endorsement, telling Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday he has always "admired and respected" Powell but that the endorsement of his rival "doesn't come as a surprise."

"I'm also very pleased to have the endorsement of four former secretaries of state, Secretaries Kissinger, Baker, Eagleburger and Haig. And I'm proud to have the endorsement of well over 200 retired Army generals and admirals," McCain said. "But I respect and continue to respect and admire Secretary Powell."

McCain dismissed Powell's suggestion that Obama is ready to lead the country. "We have a respectful disagreement, and I think the American people will pay close attention to our message for the future and keeping America secure," he said.

Powell emphasized that Obama is seeking to build a broad coalition. "He's thinking that all villages have values, all towns have values, not just small towns have values," Powell said, in an apparent reference to remarks Palin made earlier this week that she enjoyed visiting the "pro-America" areas of the country.

The retired general continued that "John McCain is as non-discriminatory as anyone I know," but he expressed serious concerns about his campaign's, and the Republican Party's recent focus on Obama's past association with William Ayers and robocalls the campaign has placed in battleground states this past week.

"I think this goes too far. I think it's made the McCain campaign look a little narrow. I look at these kinds of approaches to the campaign, and they trouble me. The party has moved further to the right," he said.

Powell's endorsement of Obama also has a personal aspect of repudiation for McCain. In early 2000, well before the primaries were over, when asked by The Post's Tom Ricks who might be his secretary of State, McCain responded without hesitation: "Colin Powell."

Powell said he would not campaign for Obama, noting the short amount of time that remains until Election Day. He later said he is "in no way interested in a return to government," but said he would consider any offers made by the next president.

He said that if his endorsement of Obama were focused solely on the historic nature of his candidacy, "I could have done this six, ten, eight months ago."

Powell appeared uncomfortable throughout the interview and cleared his throat several times while talking to Brokaw. He made a clear effort towards the end of the interview to make it clear his endorsement was "not out of any lack of respect or admiration of John McCain."

He said: "I strongly believe that at this point in America's history, we need a president that will not just continue basically the policies we have been following in recent years. I think we need a transformational figure. I think we need a president who is a generational change."

Powell also spent several moments discussing the false rumors that Obama is a Muslim, saying he was upset he had even heard the rumors from senior Republicans.

"What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?" he asked. "The answer is no."

McCain entered the night trailing in the polls and needing a clear victory to reverse the direction of his campaign, which has been hurt by the continuing focus on the troubled economy. The GOP nominee has struggled to separate himself from the policies of the unpopular Bush administration, and tonight he repeatedly made clear that he was his own man and would go in a "new direction."

"Senator Obama, I am not President Bush," McCain said, after the Democrat pointed out that he had voted for Bush's budget proposals. "If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago."

That forceful line did not deter Obama from his most frequent avenue of attack. "If I've occasionally mistaken your policies for George Bush's policies, it's because ... you have been a vigorous supporter of President Bush," he said.

The tone of the debate was more aggressive than the previous two, as McCain came prepared to criticize Obama on seemingly every front and put a dent in the Democrat's growing lead. Twice, McCain sarcastically noted Obama's "eloquence" and suggested that he was fudging the issues. While Obama on several occasions was forced to rebut McCain's attacks, none seemed to visibilty throw the Democrat off stride or mark a campaign-changing moment.

McCain also raised for the first time in any of the debates Obama's relationship with Weather Underground founder William Ayers, and also referenced ACORN, a community organizing group that has been accused of fraudulent voter registrations.

Having been criticized in previous sessions for not discussing the middle class, McCain sought tonight to identify with the common man, specifically "Joe the Plumber," an Ohioan whom Obama met on the campaign trail this week and who asked whether the Democrats' plans meant his taxes would go up. McCain made repeated references to the plumber in taking potshots at Obama and his economic proposals.

There was considerable speculation in the run-up to the debate over whether McCain would raise the subject of Obama's relationship with Ayers, a subject of McCain campaign ads and campaign speeches by Gov. Sarah Palin, McCain's vice presidential running mate.

Obama reiterated previous statements that he was only eight years old when Ayers engaged in domestic terrorist activities 40 years ago, that he only knew him casually, and rejected the suggestion that Ayers helped launch his political career in Illinois. (Both Obama and Ayers were members of the board of an anti-poverty group, the Woods Fund of Chicago, between 1999 and 2002. In addition, Ayers contributed $200 to Obama's re-election fund to the Illinois State Senate in April 2001. They lived within a few blocks of each other in the trendy Hyde Park section of Chicago, and moved in the same liberal-progressive circles.)

The subjects of Ayers and ACORN arose as moderator Bob Schieffer broached the issue of negative campaigning, reciting a litany of tough words each campaign had said about the other, asking whether the two men would say it to each other's face.

"It's been a tough campaign," McCain acknowledged. "If Senator Obama had responded to my urgent request" for frequent town hall meetings, "I think the tone of this campaign could have been very different."

McCain singled out Rep. John Lewis' (D-Ga.) statement associating McCain and Palin with former segregationist presidential candidate George Wallace, demanding that Obama repudiate that comment. (Lewis later tempered his initial comments).

"I do think that he inappropriately drew a comparison between what was happening there and what happened in the civil rights movement," Obama said of Lewis, after complaining about heated rhetoric at the GOP ticket's events.

As to the overall point, "I think that we expect presidential candidates to be tough," Obama said, pointing out that polls had shown Americans believe McCain has been far more negative. The two men then bickered over which had been more negative, with Obama alleging that more of McCain's ads had been negative while McCain pointed out that Obama had been spending record amounts of money on his spots. And after McCain spoke extensively about Ayers and ACORN, he concluded by saying that his campaign was really about "getting this economy back on track," prompting derisive laughter from Obama.

McCain and Obama also had their most substantive exchange of the campaign on abortion and the Supreme Court, as they were asked whether they would only appoint Justices who agreed with them on Roe v. Wade.

McCain, an abortion foe, said he "would never impose a litmus test on any nominee to the court," but that he thought Roe v. Wade "was a bad decision."

"I think it's true that we shouldn't support any litmus test," Obama agreed, though he added that he " believes that Roe v. Wade was rightly decided" and that "women are in the best position to make this decision" about abortion.

McCain argued that we must "change the culture of America. Those of us who are proudly pro-life understand that."

He then accused Obama of aligning himself with the "extreme pro-abortion" movement while in the state Senate for not supporting a bill that required the provision of life-saving treatment to infants. Obama called the charge "not true" and suggested McCain had distorted the details.

McCain sought to distance himself from the Bush administration and its policies on the first question, which asked each candidate to say why his economic proposal was better than the other's.

Americans "are angry, and they have every reason to be angry, and they want this country to go in a new direction," McCain said.

Describing his plan to have the government buy up home mortgages, McCain said, "I am convinced that ... we ought to put the homeowners first, and I'm disappointed that [Treasury] Secretary [Henry] Paulson and others have not made that their first priority."

Obama, as he did in previous debates, focused on the middle class, saying they need a "rescue package" of their own. Obama added that he agreed with McCain on the idea of buying up mortgages, but disagreed on how it should be done, saying the Republican's plan "could be a giveaway to banks."

McCain then took his first real shot at Obama, criticizing the Democrat for an incident in Ohio yesterday during which he told a plumber concerned about a tax increase that he needed to "spread the wealth around." McCain said he stood on the side of "Joe the Plumber." (The Associated Press reports that the now-famous man is Joe Wurzelbacher, an Ohioan who is looking to buy a plumbing business.)

McCain strongly reiterated his separation from the Bush administration during discussion of the second question, on spending and the deficit.

McCain said he would "have an across the board spending freeze," an idea that Obama mocked as impractical. As for specific programs he would cut, McCain cited ethanol subsidies and wasteful defense spending. Obama suggested he would cut money for the Medicare Advantage program, which sends cash to private insurers.

Schieffer next brought up the two ticket-mates, asking McCain and Obama why their vice presidential candidates were best.

Obama called Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) "one of the best public servants in this country" who has "never forgotten where he came from" and whose "consistent pattern throughout his career is to fight for the little guy."

McCain then gave tribute to Palin, his running mate. "Americans have gotten to know Sarah Palin. They know that she's a role model to women and reformers everywhere," he said. "She's a reformer through and through, and it's time we had that breath of fresh air coming into the nation's capital."

Asked whether Palin was qualified to be president, Obama demurred, saying: "Obviously that's going to be up to the American people" and that she was a talented politician.

McCain said Biden is "qualified in many respects, but I think he's been wrong on many national security issues," criticizing the Delaware Senator's "cockamamie" idea for dividing Iraq into pieces.

McCain and Obama followed with a foray into trade policy, with the two men disagreeing over whether the Colombia free trade agreement should be ratified; McCain supports it, Obama doesn't.

"I don't think there's any doubting Senator Obama wants to restrict trade and raise taxes, and the last president who tried that was Herbert Hoover," McCain said.

On health care, Obama suggested his plan was both the best way to expand coverage and cut costs. McCain accused Obama of wanting to fine small businesses -- including the aforementioned "Joe the Plumber" -- that didn't provide health insurance, while Obama said that wasn't true and that small businesses were exempt.

Obama then criticized McCain's health care plan for imposing taxes on health care benefits people receive from their employers; Mccain retorted, after again referencing the famous "Joe," that "95 percent of people in America" would be better off financially under his plan.

The faceoff at Hofstra University may have represented McCain's last and best chance to reverse the course of a contest that has slipped away from him over the last month. As bad economic news has mounted -- with titans of Wall Street disappearing and Congress passing a massive rescue package -- the Republican nominee has seen his electoral standing slip while voters migrate to the Democratic party and Obama, the candidate they increasingly prefer to handle the financial crisis.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 733 points today, the second-largest point-drop in the Dow's century in existence, amid continued fears of a prolonged recession. That backdrop was fueled an even more intense emphasis on economic policy at a debate that was already designed to focus on domestic concerns.

Both of the first two McCain-Obama debates included extensive discussions of foreign policy. Polls taken after the first two sessions -- one at the University of Mississippi on Sept. 26, and one at Belmont University on Oct. 7 -- suggested that viewers thought Obama had won both meetings.

Before the general election debates began, friends and foes alike said Obama's primary task was to convince voters that he was up to the job of being president. McCain's goal was to convince voters of the opposite, that the Democrat was too inexperienced and too naïve to hold the nation's top job in these serious times.

Whether due to their respective debate performances or the larger issue climate, recent poll numbers suggest Obama has been largely successful and McCain hasn't. In the most recent Washington Post/ABC News survey, more respondents actually rated Obama a "safe" choice for president than did so for McCain, a 26-year Senate veteran.

The poll showed Obama leading McCain by 10 points on a national level. A New York Times/CBS News survey released today put Obama's lead at 14 points, while several other surveys have pegged the Democrat's advantage in the single digits. Perhaps more importantly, a host of polls have shown Obama tied or leading McCain in up to a dozen states won by Bush in 2004, while McCain now trails in every state that voted Democratic in the last cycle.