Obama, in response to McCain's criticism of his declaration that he'd pursue Bin Laden into Pakistan, plays the hothead card by pointing to the "bomb bomb bomb Iran" moment, in what seemed like a response Obama had prepared in advance:

Now, Senator suggests that somehow I'm green behind the ears, and I'm just spouting off, and he's somber and responsible.

Senator McCain, this is the guy who sang "bomb bomb bomb Iran." Who called for the annihilation of North Korea. That I don't think is an example of speaking softly. This is the guy who after we had -- we hadn't even finished Afghanistan -- he said, "next up Baghdad."

An interesting dynamic: The heavy focus on economics tonight allows Obama to more directly criticize the Iraq War in economic terms, focusing on the huge amount of money we're spending on it, something that is probably way more vivid given the economic meltdown than it once might have been.

Obama, in the context of the night's argument about the economy, made the case against the war as a strain on our economy, pointing out that we're spending $10 billion a month and are on track to spending over a trillion dollars overall.

Notably, CNN's dial charts were soaring during that stretch.

Right now, Obama seems to be winning, and even if he does prevail by a modest margin, it's a huge loss for McCain.

The exchange over the candidates' tax policies strikes me as a critical one, and not just because McCain managed to introduce an element of Obama-as-scary-unknown into a discussion of tax policy:

Senator Obama's secret that you don't know is that his tax increases will increase taxes on 50% of small business revenue. Small businesses across America will have to cut jobs, and will have their taxes increased, and won't be able to hire, because of Senator Obama's tax policies.

The key moment came when Obama got a chance to directly confront these claims, which he did, at length, and convincingly, too.

Obama also said: "The Straight Talk Express lost a wheel on that one."

One of the most famous moments in recent political history came when Bill Clinton, during a 1992 debate with George H.W. Bush, approached an ordinary voter in the audience and asked her to reiterate just what she had gone through.

Tonight's town hall seemed to offer the potential for such moments, where the test is whether the candidate can relate to people's economic suffering. And a voter named Teresa just created that opening, asking the candidates why people should trust either party when they'd both landed us in this mess.

Both candidates responded by taking steps towards Teresa, just as Bill did. Obama said:

Well, look, I understand your frustration and your cynicism, because while you've been carrying out your responsibilities, most of the people here -- you've got a family budget. If less money's coming in you end up making cuts. Maybe you don't go out to dinner as much. Maybe you put off buying a new car. That's not what happens in Washington. And you're right -- there's a lot of blame to go around.

Obama then talked about the recent history of the Republican Party and how it had turned a surplus into an enormous deficit. McCain also approached the voter, made emotional overtures, and directly attacked Obama:

Senator Obama has never taken on the leaders of his party on a single issue. And we need to reform. So let's look at our records as well as our rhetoric -- that's really part of your mistrust here. And now I suggest that maybe you go to some of these organizations that are the watchdogs of what we do. Like the citizens against govt waste or the national taxpayer's union or these other orgs that watch us all the time -- I don't expect you to watch every vote. And you know what you'll find: this is the most liberal big-spending record in the United States Senate.

It's fair to say that neither candidate quite rose to Bill's performance. That said, Obama drew a difference between the two parties' ideologies on the economy, while McCain sank to a bogus negative attack.

The debate is underway, and the first exchange is a bit of a surprise: Obama gets in an attack, and McCain, who was expected to go after Obama aggressively, doesn't.

Obama hits McCain for having supporting the deregulatory policies that have created our current mess.

"I believe this is a final verdict on the failed economic policies of the last eight years, strongly promoted by President Bush and supported by Senator McCain that essentially said that we should strip away regulation, consumer protections, let the market run wild, and prosperity would rain down on all of us," Obama said, right on message. "It hasn't worked out that way, and so now we've got to take some decisive action."

McCain, by contrast, gets in a dig on Obama for not agreeing to previous town halls, but in his first answer, avoids directly faulting Obama on a policy level.

Late Update: McCain just hit Obama squarely over Fannie and Freddie, claiming his call for action on the mortgage giants shows he was out front on the crisis. Obama responded by reminding folks that deregulation, not Fannie and Freddie, was at the root of the problem, and that McCain's record on Fannie and Freddie isn't what he says it was.

In case you haven't read these elsewhere today, here are the rules for tonight's debate.

Tom Brokaw's role as the moderator will take a backseat to the true hosts of this debate: The audience, made up of undecided voters. Brokaw will select an audience member, and then that person will get to pitch his or her pre-submitted question.

The candidates will then have two minutes each to answer the voter's question, followed by Brokaw moderating a one-minute free-form discussion between Obama and McCain, and possibly asking follow-up questions.

The candidates aren't dealing primarily with some well-known TV personality in a suit, but instead with real-live voters, whose own reactions and presentations can have just as much of effect on the race as the candidates' own answers.

We'll be live-blogging the debate here at Election Central.

Senior McCain advisers have flatly declared that they want the subject of the campaign changed from the economic crisis to Barack Obama's past associations and the various things that allegedly make Obama a "risky" choice.

So the question going into tonight's debate is this: Will moderator Tom Brokaw let McCain do this? For that matter, will Brokaw himself ask about former Weatherman William Ayers?

And if the discussion does shift over to Obama's relationship with Ayers -- whether due to Brokaw's questioning or McCain's attacks -- will Brokaw play the association game fairly and ask about the Keating Five scandal?

No one is questioning Brokaw's professionalism or impartiality, but keep in mind that Brokaw has taken on a behind-the-scenes role as a kind of emissary to the McCain campaign for NBC, suggesting he may be sympathetic to the McCain team's claims that McCain has been treated unfairly by the media.

What's more, Brokaw has indicated that he may be less than sympathetic to efforts to recall McCain's role in the Keating Five scandal. He recently agreed with an assessment of the scandal as "ancient history."

One interesting side note: The McCain team would probably prefer that McCain not be the one to bring up Ayers, since that will allow Obama to remind everyone that McCain's own adviser said they were hoping to turn the page past the crisis and get back to explaining why Obama is "risky." That makes the question of whether Brokaw will bring up Ayers more pressing.

We'll be blogging the debate right here at Election Central.

Late Update: John Aravosis makes the key point that the suggestion yesterday by McCain's lawyer that McCain did nothing wrong amid Keating Five might make questions about his role newly relevant.

Here's tonight's run-down of the Congressional races:

New Dem Ad Dramatizes FBI Monitoring Ted Stevens
Check out this stunning new ad from the DSCC, depicting fictional FBI agents monitoring indicted Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) and listing his alleged crimes:

"And I voted for him," says a disappointed fictional agent.

Poll: Stevens Regains Narrow Lead In Alaska
A new Rasmussen poll has indicted Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) taking a narrow 49%-48% lead over Democrat Mark Begich, helped in now small part by the presence of the state's favorite daughter Sarah Palin on the GOP ticket. But Uncle Ted is hardly out of the woods yet -- there's a chance he could be convicted of a felony before Election Day, which would probably impact his numbers in a negative fashion.

Read more »

In a much discussed story, the Associated Press reported today that John McCain served in the mid-1980s on the advisory board of a right-wing group called the Council for World Freedom, which has been controversial because of the group's aid to the Nicaraguan Contras and the presence of anti-Semites in its ranks.

Now we've gotten a hold of another fun little nugget that shows how whacked out this group really is: A newsletter from the group from July 1985 that lashed out at people who criticized Ronald Reagan for visiting the Bitburg cemetery in Germany, which includes the graves of members of the SS.

The Reagan visit was widely controversial among Jews, but the Council newsletter -- which you can view right here -- was less than charitable towards Reagan's Jewish critics.

"Those misguided souls who accused President Reagan of insensitivity for visiting the German cemetery at Bitburg are wallowing in tears of pity over the past crimes of the Nazi regime which collapsed over 40 years ago," the newsletter said. "They claim they want to keep the memory of the holocaust alive so that it can never happen again."

"Crocodile tears! It is happening again," the newsletter continues, "and again, and again, right now, in the modern world; only the crimes of today are not being perpetrated by the Nazis but by their philosophical and demoniacal soulmates, the communists."

McCain reportedly was still associating with the group a few months later: A States News Service article from October 15, 1985, found via Nexis, confirms that McCain was on hand at a Council awards dinner.

McCain told the AP that he resigned the group's advisory board in 1984, and eventually asked to have his name removed from the letterhead. But the State News Service article places him at a group dinner a year later.

The reason this is worth noting is that John McCain has been attacking Barack Obama over Obama's minor ties to former 60s radical Bill Ayers -- putting associations like these into play.

Read more »

For the first time, both Clintons will campaign together for the Obama-Biden ticket.

Hillary and Bill will be campaigning alongside Joe Biden this Sunday at an event in Scranton, Pennsylvania, according to Obama Pennsylvania spokesperson Sean Smith.

Polls have been showing Obama-Biden starting to pull away in the Pennsylvania -- and that's before any appearance by the Clintons in the state.

The Clintons will hammer away at economic themes in their speeches at the Sunday rally, and they are likely to play up the roots in the Scranton area that both Hillary and Biden share. Further details will be announced later in the week.

As I noted below, in his piece today about the abuse that Palin supporters heaped on reporters at a Florida rally yesterday, WaPo's Dana Milbank wrote that one supporter had hurled an unspecified racial epithet at an African American sound man before saying, "sit down, boy."

A reporter who was there tells me what that unspecified epithet was: "Uppity negro."

Late Update: I should have made it clearer that this happened at a rally where Palin was stoking anger by attacking Katie Couric and the "mainstream media."

More polls today show Barack Obama leading in some key red states:

• In Ohio, Public Policy Polling (D) gives Obama a 49%-43% lead over John McCain, with a ±2.8% margin of error. Three weeks ago, PPP had McCain ahead 48%-44%. Take this as further evidence to suggest that the economic crisis is knocking John McCain down in a lot of places.

• In Florida, Mason-Dixon gives Obama a narrow lead of 48%-46%, within the ±4% margin of error, not significantly changed from a 47%-45% Obama lead two-and-a-half weeks ago.

• In Nevada, Research 2000 has Obama ahead 50%-43%, with a ±4% margin of error. Two weeks ago, Obama had slim edge of 44%-43%.

All totaled, these three states have 52 electoral votes, and they all voted for George W. Bush in 2004.

Dana Milbank -- the Washington Post reporter who wrote this morning's piece about the Palin crowd's disgusting abuse of reporters at a rally yesterday -- tells me that the McCain camp's repeated attacks on the media have spawned crowd hostility towards the press that's running at a "degree of intensity" he's never experienced in covering presidential politics.

As Milbank wrote, one Palin supporter hurled an unspecified racial epithet at an African American sound man, and told him: "Sit down, boy."

I checked in with Milbank to get a bit more on what happened yesterday, because the ugliness unleashed by McCain-Palin's nasty crowd-riling tactics are becoming a story in this campaign.

"None of this is new, but the degree of intensity is different," Milbank says. "It's taken an uglier turn. I've been doing this for years, and there's never been anything quite like this."

Milbank says that after the Palin attacked the New York Times and Katie Couric in her stump speech yesterday in Florida, he and other reporters were pelted with boos, with some saying things like "screw you" and "fucking liberal media."

"McCain has so overtly taken on the media -- they're doing it to rile the base," he continued. "And lo and behold, the base is good and riled."

Lots of people are linking to this piece by New York magazine's John Heilemann, which takes a crack at explaining how exactly McCain squandered his "maverick" brand.

Heliemann's basic point is that McCain's repeated campaign stunts, his choice of Sarah Palin, and his dishonest adver-sleazements conspired to produce a kind of tipping-point for the press. The media went into revolt and painted the suspension stunt for the ruse it was, hurting McCain on the most important issue right now: The economic crisis.

"By the time the financial crisis hit, we were past the tipping point," one national reporter explains to Heilemann. "Lipstick on a pig and sex ed were the last straw for some of McCain's old hands and media allies. And because of this cynicism, he didn't get the benefit of the doubt for his 'suspension,' and it was treated as the stunt it was."

Heilemann makes some solid points. But his analysis overlooks two other important factors -- ones that will in retrospect be viewed as critical should Obama win.

Read more »

Here's our daily composite of the four major national tracking polls. The race is in essentially the same place as yesterday, with Barack Obama ahead by a strong margin going into tonight's debate:

• Gallup: Obama 51%, McCain 42%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 50%-42% Obama lead yesterday. This is Obama's widest lead in the Gallup poll for this whole campaign so far.

• Rasmussen: Obama 52%, McCain 44%, with a ±2% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday. This is also Obama's new all-time highest lead in Rasmussen.

• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 46%, McCain 44%, with a ±3.3% margin of error, compared to a 47%-41% Obama lead yesterday. Note: This poll's partisan weighting a few days ago was 41% Dem to 36% GOP, but has been changed to 40% Dem and 38% GOP.

• Research 2000: Obama 52, McCain 41%, with a ±3% margin of error, compared to a 52%-40% lead yesterday.

Adding these polls together and weighting them by the square roots of their sample sizes, Obama is ahead 50.6%-42.8%, compared to a 50.5%-42.1% lead yesterday. John McCain has picked up over half a point, but Obama hasn't actually lost any support -- he may even have gained slightly.