There were rightful celebrations across the country as Barack Obama became the next person in line for the White House. The historical significance of the event as well as a permeating feeling of hope and prosperity energized an electoral process that had been plagued by low turnouts and unenthusiastic voters. Despite all of this celebration, however, it’s important to realize that the next president is going to have to face some monumental challenges at a time when the country’s economy and way of life are being tested like never before.

Obama has been taking it easy today, looking to return to just a day or two of normalcy by seeing his children off to school before hitting th e gym. With only 76 days left to inauguration, however, he’s going to have a lot on his plate before he even walks into the White House. Top intelligence officials are planning on giving him daily briefings beginning on Thursday. Obama also planned to give the first of his own daily briefings to the press on Thursday while he works to construct his Whie House staff and selecting important Cabinet positions.

Internationally there were a number of cautiously optimistic responses. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev issued a congratulatory telegram, noting that there is a “solid positive potential” for the election to improve strained relations between the United States and Moscow. That was on the condition of Obama utilizing “constructive dialogue.” President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan urged the new president to put an end to civilian casualties in the country.

Further still, Obama will have to search for remedies in the minds of voters. The economy was listed as the number one concern by six of 10 voters in the election, and with the Federal deficit rapidly approaching $1 trillion next year, he’ll have his hands tied for spending while he tries to find solutions to soften the impact of a recession and the financial crisis. Obama has also promised to get America out of Iraq, and many are skeptical of his ability to do that in a way that doesn’t plunge the nation back into civil war. He’ll also have to come through on promised tax cuts for most Americans, expanding coverage for health care, and implement mandatory coverage for children. With the historical nature of his victory also comes historic challenges, and voters are anxious to see if Obama will rise to the occasion once again.

As the campaign trail winds down, the candidates have been frantically jumping from state to state to shore up support in area that will be the most vital to their victory. Sarah Palin is currently speaking in Erie, PA,  Obama was in Raleigh, NC on October 29 addressing his voters and spurring them into action. Which candidate has been most successful in these last ditch efforts? For now, it appears it’s Senator Obama, who’s captured leads in a number of swing states just days before election day arrives.
At present, polls show Obama leading McCain among “likely voters” by a margin of four points in Ohio, which has remained unchanged since the past week. He’s also gained leads in Nevada (52% to 45%) as well as North Carolina (52% to 46%), which have both increased slightly since a week earlier. Statewide, Obama is currently at a 12 point margin over McCain in Pennsylvania. McCain and Palin have both made a major push in the state recently despite lagging far behind in the polls, hoping to pull off an upset given that Obama was soundly defeated there by Clinton in the Democratic Primary. At present that doesn’t appear to be translating into votes for McCain, however. McCain does have an advantage over Obama in his home state of Arizona by a seven point margin as well (46% to 53%).
Obama is also currently trying to hold on to the closely contested state of Ohio, which is currently one of the tightest races in the nation state wise. By groups, Obama has improved his standing with women of all races, which is now at 55% to 43% for McCain. Men in Ohio, however, continue to favor McCain by a margin of 51% to 37%, increasing McCain’s influence in the state slightly.
As the campaign trail winds down, we’re still waiting to see the impact of the much-touted “30 minute infomercial” put out by the Obama campaign in a sweeping and expensive advertising move that displayed on 6 different TV networks. So far reviews of the piece have been positive, as it detailed Obama’s policies further and set out some goals he would hope to attain if he became president.

With election day just one day away, the pressure is on for both candidates, who are furiously heading to battleground states to make last offensives against their opponents, hoping to sway (still) undecided voters. Interestingly, both candidates are also cranking up “get out the vote” efforts. With election officials looking for a record turnout for voters, it appears that a lot of average Americans are making the effort to get out and make a difference. With Obama still firmly in the lead, McCain has focused on key states that could enable him to pull off a come back. Meanwhile, Obama is still campaigning in states that were previously thought to be Republican strong holds.
There’s not much question here that McCain has a lot of work to do if he expects to pull out an underdog victory. There are an increasingly few number of undecided voters as the election winds down, and a lot of the voters McCain is currently aiming for have already decided to vote for Obama. Nationally speaking, the latest CNN “poll of polls” showed Obama ahead of McCain fifty one to fourty four percent. About five percent were still undecided.
Heading into election day, it looks like Obama will win 291 electoral votes, putting McCain at 157. That leaves 90 electoral votes still out there for the taking. Candidates need 270 to pull off a victory and lay claim to the White House. McCain has been seen campaigning recently across seven states. They include Florida, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Indiana, New Mexico, and Nevada. McCain will wrap up the campaign in his own home state, Arizona.
Some states will be quite difficult for McCain to overcome. Pennsylvania, for example, currently shows Obama leading McCain by eight percent, with six percent still not sure who they’ll vote for. McCain’s campaign says their own polling shows the race much closer, but the chances that those numbers are quite biased are fairly high.
It’s a particularly exciting election year, with the economy in worse shape than it has been for well over a decade, the Iraq war continuing to erode public support, and many more voters becoming active in the process. With so much at stake, candidates will have to make extra efforts in this election to sway what few undecided voters there are left.

It probably wouldn’t surprise anyone to hear that the vast majority of Americans believe that the country isn’t in very good condition these days. From huge losses in the stock market wiping out billions of dollars from consumers’ retirement accounts, to the ever widening credit crisis that has spread to just about every part of the economy, to the massive Federal deficit that continues to deepened with each passing year. No matter what the reason, people are scared, worried, and angry over the future of the nation, and a recent poll conducted by CNN/Opinion Research Corp. showed it with widespread dissatisfaction.

The new national poll suggested that only about twenty five percent of the country believed that things are going well. The other seventy five percent are angry, scared, stressed, or all of the above. Surprisingly, as a nation, we tend to shrug off recessions and continue to go about our daily lives with a significant amount of satisfaction. Usually we try to downplay our fear and anxiety for the future. The borderline collapse of our financial system, however, combined with lowering retirement account balances, high fuel prices, high food prices, and lowering housing prices across the nation appear to have finally shaken our resolve.

Ultimately this means that the next president will face unprecedented challenges in the face of a public that appears to have given up hope. He’ll have to face a wide gambit of challenges, including addressing the public’s distaste for the Iraq war, controlling government spending, repairing the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, health care reform, social security and medicare reform, and a host of other issues.

The most recent political debates have gone a long way in helping to describe what the candidate’s plan to do if elected, but the question in many voters’ mind is what capacity the next president will have in making these changes. Bipartisan squabbles nearly torpedoed the $700 billion bail out package designed to help thaw out the frozen credit markets, and that’s at a time when many banks and other financial institutions had their backs to the wall. The only reason it passed was due to “sweetener” provisions in the bill, which added millions of dollars in pork barrel projects aimed at members of Congress who had previously voted no. If this is an emergency, why does the government have time for business as usual?

It’s a part of every campaign in recent memory and beyond. Presidential candidates must not only prove that they know what’s best for the nation and that their own policies, both economic, international, and domestic, are sound, but that their opponents policies are somehow flawed. As a result you can’t run through your list of TV channels without seeing at least one commercial from a candidate attacking another. Yet is this what voters want to see? Is this the best way to garner votes from moderates and independents who are still undecided even after the final debate? Not enough attacking an opponent can bring up issues of competency and the thinking that they have no argument against a particular issue, but too much negativity and constant bombardment can alienate voters and lead them to believe the candidate is just trying to divert attention away from their own failings. Where then, one has to wonder, is the balance?

The current presidential debate is no different. Both campaigns are waging a negativity war against the other, and both of them have spent quite a bit of money on spreading the idea that their opponent doesn’t know what they’re doing or that their policies will have a profound negative impact. Unfortunately this often means distorting the truth or taking quotes and other facts completely out of context. It gets worse as the time to election winds down, too. With less than 30 days left to the election, the campaigns are throwing out niceness in favor of an all out assault.

Swing voters carry the balance of power, and both sides are aiming to take that demographic. The base of voters on either side will vote for whichever candidate represents their party, so ads aimed at telling people what they already know doesn’t help to bring in more votes. Yet as the campaigns take an increasingly negative turn and the attacks become more personal and scathing, independent voters are taking note. Those same independents take note when a candidate is nothing but negative, and it’s shown in the polls. As more voters have referred to McCain’s campaign as negative, his numbers have continued to slip, giving Obama a double digit lead in the polls. Yet Obama has spent quite a bit of money on negative campaigning as well, and could cause a backlash from independent voters if he takes such spending and negativity too far. Time is running out for both candidates, as is their chances for influencing voters before election day.

Many voters and political pundits have noted the expanding lead that presidential candidate Barack Obama has gained over the past few months. With such a large lead, it may seem that the race may practically be won already, given that historically speaking it’s extraordinarily difficult to come back from a widening deficit. This is especially true given the overwhelming emphasis on the state of the economy, which many voters feel is McCain’s weakest point. With all the said, however, with two weeks and one day from the election, a new national poll suggests the race may be tighter than we think.

The poll, a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released on Monday showed that fifty one percent of likely voters supported Obama and fourty six percent supported McCain. This trims Obama’s lead from eight points down to five, and the reasons for such a drop are varied. McCain seems to have successfully begun to separate himself from President Bush, for example, who in the last monthsof his presidency has seen record breakingly low approval ratings from the general populace. In the most recent (and final) political debate, it looked like one of McCain’s main objectives was to show voters that he wasn’t a third term of President Bush, and tried to focus on ways he would differ from the Bush Administration. In that vein it appears he has had some success.

However polls still continue to indicate that Obama would do a better job dealing with a tough economic scenario like the one we are currently in, and the economy will likely continue to dominate the driving force in the minds of American voters. Only about thirty eight percent of voters believe that McCain would do a better job, while fifty three percent think that Obama would handle the current state of the economy better. Both candidates have recently rolled out economic plans designed to soften the blow of the oncoming recession and to help unclog the frozen credit markets to get lenders to begin lending again. At the moment, it appears that voters have sided with Obama on the issue.

Yet there are other factors at play here as the election winds down as well. Although I believe the notion is absurd, some experts have noted that the polls may not reflect the true intention of voters, citing race as an underlying issue. There have been a number of previous elections where voters said that they would vote for a black candidate, but then the actual voting numbers turned out to be widely different. Given the scale of the election and what’s at stake, opponents of this line of thinking say that this issue will have a minimal impact in November. Whatever the reason, however, it appears that the election is shaping up to be a tight race, and both candidates will have to work increasingly hard to convince undecided voters just a few weeks before election day.

Gaining in the polls and a solid performance in the recent debates, it appears that Obama has a lot going for his campaign. Many voters, however, have expressed concern that the presidential candidate hasn’t gone into enough detail as to what he plans to do about the economy and other issues. In response, earlier today Senator Barack Obama laid out what his campaign claims is a four part rescue plan to help the country’s ailing middle class. Some critics and voters have called into question whether the country can afford it and how the government will pay for it, while others have touted it as a major step in the right direction. Obama aims to take on one of the biggest issue that is on the mind of the average American voter: Jobs.

Obama’s rescue plan calls for new legislation that would allow individuals and families to withdraw about fifteen percent of their retirement savings, or a maximum of ten thousand dollars, without facing any tax penalties for this year or next. He also called for a lift on taxing unemployed insurance benefits on a temporary basis.

For housing, he also put forward a 90 day foreclosure moratorium to homeowners “acting in good faith” as well as additional efforts to combat the credit crunch at a state and local level. Under such a plan, the Treasury would also provide backing to the state and municipal governments much akin to how they did so for the commercial credit market.

For it’s part, the McCain campaign claimed the economic rescue plan was more political than helpful. McCain’s own plan called for a $300 billion bailout plan to allow the government to buy out troubled mortgages from lenders and allowing them to set their own terms. The plan has met with mixed reviews, and has caused a backlash amongst many fiscal conservatives within the party.

Both plans have flaws and it’s unclear currently which plan the public is more likely to support. Personally, I’m not a big fan of either plan. I don’t think consumers should cannibalize their own retirement savings, but I’m also weary of the government spending more money it doesn’t have when the deficit is already spiraling out of control. Regardless, it’ll be interesting to see how voters react to the rescue plan and the potential impact this could have on the upcoming final presidential debate.

There’s no question to that the next president will be facing a global scenario that we have never before seen in history. The stock markets have plummeted. Firms that survived the great depression like Bear Stearns suddenly went under, dragged down by sour mortgage securities sold with questionable lending practices and an obvious abandonment of risk management. As a result, many voters are starting to analyze the presidential race much more carefully. There is no time for business as usual, and so there are still many questions left in the minds of voters that we haven’t heard an answer to from either candidate yet.

Most importantly, we need to know exactly how the next president will address this financial crisis. When questions about the worsening situation arose, we were often referred to talking points about health care and energy, but that doesn’t really give us a solution to a problem that threatens to undermine our nation’s economic prospects and capabilities for some time to come. They know it’s there, they said as much, but how they’ll deal with it is still hazy.

Through it all there will be some key positions that will have to be filled, like the next Treasury Secretary, for example. Both candidates acknowledged that Warren Buffett, arguably one of the most successful investors of all time, would be a “pretty good choice.” But neither of them have said with any degree of certainty whether they will have Henry Paulson stay on or have him replaced. McCain noted that the job should be filled by someone we trust and have confidence in, while Obama stressed the importance of keeping an eye on the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots. It’s important to know who’s on that potential list and why.

Other important economic issues surface as well, such as how the government will continue to work with other nations to stabilize the economy. Even as the markets continue to falter, it’s obvious that the government may have to deal with additional economic threats around the corner. What insight does each candidate have to identify these threats and deal with them before they become a crisis? With the days to election day winding down, the time for concrete answers is running out.

Even after weeks of wrangling and negotiation, the House finally passed the estimated $700 billion dollar bailout plan intended to help the nation’s financial system and to free up frozen credit markets. The vote managed to pass 263-171, with a noticeable number of Republicans reversing their stance and voting for the bill rather than against. Both were shocked when the bill failed to pass the House on the first round, but a number of additions and pork projects tacked on help to garner enough votes for passage this time. The question remains, of course, as to whether the bailout will in fact help a struggling American economy from sinking into a recession or worse.

At the forefront of changes made to the bill was the additional funding available to FDIC insurance. The limit for coverage was raised from $100,000 to $250,000, and also allows the FDIC to tap the Treasury for funding in the case that funds on hand are not enough. A number of other projects were added that were completely unrelated to the bailout, including specified tax breaks for certain wooden arrow makers and producers of Puerto Rican rum and numerous others. Most politicians noted their reluctance in accepting the bill, but acknowledged that given the current economic scenario playing out in the markets they had no choice. Republican Sue Myrick noted that “We’re on the cusp of a complete catastrophic credit meltdown. There is no liquidity in the market. We are out of time. Either you believe that fact or you don’t. I do.”

Not all House Representatives were so optimistic. Many opponents of the bill warned that “being stampeded” into voting the bill through could prove to be a grave mistake. The implications for the bills passing and the value of the dollar has been brought into question. What this bill could mean for the Federal Deficit is also a serious concern, given that the government is currently operating at about $400 billion dollars over budget currently.

Whatever your viewpoint though, in all likely hood this bill will be approved by President Bush and for better or for worse the government will be buying up toxic mortgage securities. Expect it to be a turbulent couple of months.

There’s no question that as the economy has continued to worsen, McCain’s position in the polls has weakened right along with it. Whether this is a fair assessment of the Republican candidate or simply the fear of the average citizen driving their voting decision is anyone’s guess, but tonight’s final debate puts McCain in a tough position. The economy is expected to dominate much of the debate on October 15, and voters are expecting him to further differentiate his plans for repairing the struggling economy.

Many voters have complained that thus far, the debate has gotten off track and focused too much on personalities and not on issues. The precipitous fall in the markets over the past few weeks have narrowed the view of many citizens, and they want to hear why things will get better under either candidates watch. Obama’s connection to Ayers is increasingly seen as irrelevant, despite the fact that Senator McCain stated that he would be bringing it up. McCain’s strategy so far has been attacking Obama’s character, raising doubts by tying him to William Ayers and focusing on the risks of electing him president. Recent polls of voters have suggested that McCain has spent more time attacking his rival then explaining his own stance, compared to 63% saying that Obama spent more time explaining his own policies than one the offensive.

Yet the issues are at the heart of this next debate, not characters or personalities. Both candidates will have their work cut out for them if and when they get elected into office, and voters want to hear more about what they will do to help the economy and preserve the standard of living for many Americans. Both Obama and McCain will have to speak more about that in the final debate, as there are still a great number of voters left undecided as the time to election runs down. Obama is expected to unveil more details about his economic rescue proposals, so that we’ll have a bit more clarity in putting both candidates plans side by side.

The more traditional debate format, rather than a town-hall atmosphere that we saw at the last debate, should allow for some more interaction between the candidates. Voters decided and undecided alike will tune in to see what each candidate has to offer, and it’ll be one of our last chances to iron out our voting decisions.