Beginning in 2007, candidate Obama suggested that his administration might take unilateral action against extremists in Pakistan if the Pakistani government proved to be intransigent. It brought him reproach from then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), now his secretary of state, and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), still the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. And over the past year, as the Pakistanis have, with U.S. pressure and guidance and support, launched military offensives first to drive the Pakistani Taliban out of the Swat Valley and then to extirpate it in south Waziristan, the vow has faded. But it’s apparently returned.

A recent letter from Obama to his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari — whose position is rather tenuous at the moment as he faces a restive military — outlined a series of carrots in the event of accelerated action against the extremists, including “enhanced development and trade assistance; improved intelligence collaboration and a more secure and upgraded military equipment pipeline; more public praise and less public criticism of Pakistan; and an initiative to build greater regional cooperation among Pakistan, India and Afghanistan.” And then the stick, shown by national security adviser Jim Jones:

Jones, a retired Marine Corps general, was more precise in conversations with top Pakistani government and military leaders, U.S. and foreign officials said, stating that certain things have to happen in Pakistan to ensure Afghanistan’s security. If Pakistan cannot deliver, he warned, the United States may be impelled to use any means at its disposal to rout insurgents based along Pakistan’s western and southern borders with Afghanistan.

That’s a modified version of the vow, but there it is. Officials on the campaign stressed that it was a last resort, and a very conditional one. And it’s a questionable thing to reiterate after the Pakistani military has done more to go after al-Qaeda and its affiliates in 2009 than it did in the previous eight years. But with Obama planning to outline the ultimate end of the Afghanistan war on Tuesday night, perhaps it means something rather specific: if you won’t bring us the head of Osama bin Laden, we’ll get it ourselves.

He said that for all the trauma that came of the 2008 campaign, he is not ready to declare that it had been a mistake to run, calling that a “very complex question.” He believed, he said, that he had pushed Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton in a more progressive direction on issues including health care — Edwards was the first to propose an individual insurance mandate — and that the value of his having run will be determined partly by what Obama achieves on these fronts.

“Did it make sense to run and stay in the race? Time will tell,” he said.

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

The result makes it even more likely that, barring an unforeseen circumstance, Franken will prevail in the election lawsuit that Coleman filed in January to contest the Democrat’s 225-vote recount lead. The court has not said when it will issue a final decision in the case.

Coleman will appeal the case to the Minnesota Supreme Court, his  lawyer Ben Ginsberg said after court adjourned today. One of the grounds for the appeal will be unequal treatment of the ballots, he said.

And that might not be all. Yesterday, Minnesota GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty suggested that the loser of the state Supreme Court case will likely appeal to the high court in Washington — a process Pawlenty said he supports.

Don’t hold your breath — this one’s not going away for awhile.

Franken currently holds a 225-vote lead, but a three-judge panel is scheduled to count 400 contested ballots tomorrow. Asked if he would sign the election certificate if that panel finds Franken the winner, Pawlenty said he would not, instead waiting on the likely appeals process to play itself out.

From Pawlenty’s interview with MSNBC:

The Minnesota Supreme Court said, in a recent decision, that a certificate shouldn’t issue — or isn’t likely that it should issue until the state court process has run its course. That would include the appellate process.

It’s pretty clear that one side or the other’s going to take that next step … and it wouldn’t be appropriate for me or anyone else to step in front of it.

It’s frustrating that this has taken so long, but we need to get a proper and just and accurate and legal result, and it’s going to take, it looks like, a few more months to get that.

For Republicans, of course, the delay itself is the desired conclusion.

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Lieberman had threatened to defect to the Republican Party if Democrats pulled him from his perch atop the powerful Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. (Instead they agreed to remove him from a lesser chairmanship, that of a subcommittee beneath the Environment and Public Works Committee.)

The compromise, though, didn’t satisfy Sanders. From Politico:

Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — one of 13 caucus members who voted against the deal — challenged Lieberman over his threat to leave the party if he lost control of the Homeland Security panel. “If you are a Democrat in your heart, why do you need your chairmanship to remain one?” Sanders asked Lieberman, according to a senator who attended the closed-door session.

No word on Lieberman’s response.

For the first time since 1964, Virginia is in play in a presidential election. Many residents are surprised to see Virginia shaded blue on some electoral maps. The state will indeed make history if it favors Sen. Barack Obama. But in my mind, Virginia is already making history.

Polls show Obama leading, on average, by about 4.4 percent. This is monumental because the first African-American presidential candidate might take the state and because, more important, he’s so close to actually pulling it off.

Slavery, segregation and racial hatred clouds Virginia’s past. In some parts of the state, racial hatred is still alive — a reality we’ve been forced to face this election season. But another reality has also surfaced: Virginians have looked beyond skin color to learn about the candidates and what they stand for. In doing so, they’ve become so energized about the issues that they are turning out in record numbers to vote.

White that’s exciting, it’s also worrisome. High turnout and wet weather have caused problems at polling places throughout the state.

Twenty-five percent of Virginia’s polling places use optical scanning machines. There are reports that some are acting up because paper ballots were wet and the machines couldn’t read them. There have been voting-machine malfunctions in Louisa, Petersburg and Chesterfield counties, as well as elsewhere. In Richmond and Virginia Beach, precincts opened late. Long lines in Richmond and its suburbs have reportedly created some voting problems.

Hopefully, most of these problems will get sorted out, and all registered Virginians who haven’t already voted will make it to the polls by 7 p.m. Any voters encountering problems can report them to the CNN Voter Hotline at 1-877-462-6608.

No matter the outcome, this election is groundbreaking for Virginia. My state may still have a long way to go — but it’s on the right track.

Today, The New York Times reports on the responses from some of those outlets. And here’s a hint: Dingell won’t be pleased.

Paul Friedman, senior vice president at CBS News, for example, told The Times that the results from just a few East Coast states could reveal an early winner:

“We could know Virginia at 7,” he said. “We could know Indiana before 8. We could know Florida at 8. We could know Pennsylvania at 8. We could know the whole story of the election with those results. We can’t be in this position of hiding our heads in the sand when the story is obvious.”

Similarly, Slate’s David Plotz told The Times that, depending on early returns, he might call the race before 9 pm.

“Our readers are not stupid, and we shouldn’t engage in a weird Kabuki drama that pretends McCain could win California and thus the presidency,” Mr. Plotz wrote. “We will call it when a sensible person — not a TV news anchor who has to engage in a silly pretense about West Coast voters — would call it.”

The fear, of course, is that the networks will either flub their predictions (like they did in Florida in 2000) or paint a false portrait of victory that leaves West-Coast voters wondering why they should bother participating at all — the scenario suspected in 2004 after leaked exit poll results found Sen. John Kerry the likely winner.

On the other hand, if the early predictions are correct, we might at least get some sleep tonight.

Uploaded on Tuesday night, “So You Think You Can Be President — Debate Remix,” only has about a thousand views so far, but it is a masterfully edited commentary on the three presidential debates. The video, remixed by Jonathan McIntosh, deserves a wider airing.

The accompanying promotional text tweaks the candidates for staking out similar positions on energy policy, while also knocking the U.S. voting system in general:

In this week’s episode only two weeks before the election, Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain have their feet held to the fire over shockingly similar positions on both energy… Who will be this season’s champion and take home the grand prize? You’ll have to watch and decide that for yourself, then participate by casting your vote* for your favorite performer on Nov. 4th!

*Some restrictions may apply. In certain areas these include, but are not limited to, faulty electronic voting systems, racist voter laws and/or voter roll purges. See your local polling place for details.

It’s a bit long, at nine minutes, but the surreal mood builds over time:

PRODUCTION NOTES: By splicing the political cant of modern debates with the hyperbolic feedback of celebrity judges, this mashup imagines a world where politicians are called out on their double-talk in real time.

Team McCain tells us that their path to 270 runs through Pennsylvania, rated by Real Clear Politics as “Solid” blue, with an 11.7-point average polling advantage for Sen. Obama. The smartest Democrat we know e-mails: “I get the appeal of trying to win one state (Pa.) rather than having to run the table on a lot of little ones (Nevada, Colorado, Iowa …), but this is the equivalent of Kerry deciding it would be easier to just stage a comeback in Texas.”

In a conference call with reporters yesterday, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis predicted a McCain sweep of the current toss-up states that went for President George W. Bush in 2004, including: Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Indiana, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. However, RealClearPolitics reports Obama is leading in major polls in each of those states except Indiana.

CNN’s John King reported late yesterday that one McCain campaign official had written off Colorado and New Mexico — a combined 14 electoral votes that would hand Sen. Barack Obama the victory.

To counter the loss of those states, if the reports are accurate, the McCain campaign will seek to flip Pennsylvania’s 21 electoral votes to the red column. The electoral handicappers over at FiveThirtyEight.com give McCain a two-percent chance of winning The Keystone State — which is slightly better than Obama’s prospects for winning McCain’s home state of Arizona.

Politico’s Jonathan Martin lays out the inside baseball of what McCain needs to do to have a shot at winning Pennsylvania:

If McCain can drive margins in western and central Pennsylvania, like Hillary did in the primary, win the northeast part of the state, hold down losses in the Philly suburbs and, with the help of ethnic white wards, hold down margins in the city of Philly, he could be competitive.

To do that, McCain appears to be banking on the appeal of his “Joe the Plumber” line of attack with blue-collar workers and latent anti-communism by repeatedly raising the specter of socialism in Obama’s “spread the wealth” tax policies. McCain has three campaign stops scheduled today in the state to push his message.

However, with two weeks left until the election, the McCain campaign has one potentially powerful ace left up its sleeve. CNN reports the campaign is walking back McCain’s pledge not to use Obama’s controversial former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, as a campaign issue, in light of comments by Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) likening the McCain campaign’s rhetoric to that of the late segregationist Gov. George Wallace.

From CNN:

“Look, John McCain has told us a long time ago before this campaign ever got started, back in May, I think, that from his perspective, he was not going to have his campaign actively involved in using Jeremiah Wright as a wedge in this campaign,” Davis told conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt.

“Now since then, I must say, when Congressman Lewis calls John McCain and Sarah Palin and his entire group of supporters, 50 million people strong around this country, that we’re all racists and we should be compared to George Wallace and the kind of horrible segregation and evil and horrible politics that was played at that time, you know, that you’ve got to rethink all these things,” he added. “And so I think we’re in the process of looking at how we’re going to close this campaign. We’ve got 19 days, and we’re taking serious all these issues.”

McCain and the Republican National Committee reportedly still had $124 million on hand at the beginning of October. A last-minute swing-state advertising blitz, as Republican pundits are urging, tying Obama to Wright’s most inflammatory comments in moderate regions could do substantial damage to Obama — though McCain could receive significant blowback for breaking a vow not to play the Wright card.

But with McCain’s presidential ambitions hanging in the balance, it’s probably wise not to rule out anything.

Gov. Sarah Palin at the vice presidential debate in St. Louis. (Getty Images)

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – During Gov. Sarah Palin’s relatively brief time in the national political spotlight as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, she’s developed a reputation for making misleading or inaccurate statements about her own record and that of Sen. Barack Obama’s.

Palin has claimed she’s been a champion of earmark reform, for example, though her record while Alaska governor shows she requested millions in earmarks. Even as mayor of Wasilla, she hired a lobbyist who succeeded in shuttling federal dollars back to her hometown for local projects.

When talking about Obama on the stump, Palin has repeatedly mischaracterized the Democratic nominee’s positions on taxes and abortion. She’s also falsely accused the Illinois senator of “palling around with terrorists.”

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Most recently, Palin has claimed being vindicated by a the Troopergate investigation, though the report says she broke a state ethics law. Palin claims the scathing report actually clears her of all accusations of wrongdoing, despite a finding that, in conflict with state law, she had state employees and her husband pressure her public safety commissioner to fire her ex-brother-in-law from his job as a state trooper over a family feud.

This campaign tactic of misleading listeners is new for Palin. Making false statements was not a key weapon in her Alaska campaign arsenal. Though she didn’t hesitate to throw an elbow during her bid for governor, or when pressing an issue once in office, Palin’s signature tactic was to dodge. When asked a tough question by the media or when dealing with complicated policy matters in office she invariably gave non-answers or evaded the issue.

Palin’s record of skirting and silence does not always paint her in a positive light. Sometimes, her efforts were deliberate acts of concealing records of state business, including email messages, from the public. Other times, Palin’s maneuvering was an effort simply to avoid publicly taking on topics in which she was not well versed.

A look at some of the defining moments in Palin’s political career, including stumping for governor, fighting the state’s biggest policy battles and addressing the Troopergate scandal, reveals a candidate more likely to duck and weave than to tell a lie to get ahead.

When Palin ran for governor, in 2006, she was criticized by her opponents for not getting into the meat of policy issues. When pressed, she often skirted specifics. For example, when asked during debates about complex issues like health care, Palin tended to evade the question.

“My attitude and my approaches towards dealing with the complexities of health-care issues,” Palin said during an AARP debate, “is a respectful and responsible approach, and it’s a positive approach. I don’t believe that the sky is falling here in Alaska.”

During other campaign events Palin, would sometimes decline to answer questions completely.

Palin’s goal in the gubernatorial race wasn’t to win over voters with her policy expertise. She aimed to satisfy voters’ hunger for an outsider to clean up the corruption plaguing Juneau at the time.

“The election of 2006 was a little bit unusual,” said Steve Haycox, a history professor at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, explaining Palin’s appeal. In the middle of that campaign, a dozen lawmakers’ offices were raided by the FBI in Juneau and Anchorage as part of a broad federal probe into corruption in the state.

Haycox noted the mood of the state made Palin, who branded herself an outsider and a whistleblower, an unusually attractive candidate.

On the trail now, Palin still avoids details, choosing to talk about reform and often referring to herself, and her running-mate Sen. John McCain, as “mavericks.” She avoids tough questions when she can.

But her most famous moments in the 2008 presidential campaign have been her questionable mud-slinging and her deceptive self-promotion.

“This is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America,” said Palin, referring to Obama at a campaign stop in Colorado in early October. “Our opponent though, is someone who sees America it seems as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country?”

Palin has been widely criticized for her remarks linking Obama to terrorism. The McCain-Palin campaign has defended her statements, saying Obama served on an education board with William Ayers, who was a member of the 1960’s radical group the Weather Underground.

Palin has also made repeated misstatements about Obama’s tax policies, saying he would raise taxes on most Americans, though his tax plan would lower taxes for most American families.

When a pool of campaign reporters asked if she thinks Obama is dishonest in disputing her claims about his tax policy she said, “I’m not saying he’s dishonest. But in terms of judgment, in terms of being able to answer a question forthrightly, it has two different parts to this — that judgment and that truthfulness.”

During several public events, Palin has chided Obama for saying McCain’s health-care proposal includes new taxes. Though McCain’s health-care initiative would include a $5,000 tax credit, the plan would fund the credit by taxing employer-provided plans.

Palin has said she identifies with families that face out-of-pocket payment for coverage — though her husband and their children would qualify for free, federally funded care as the descendants of Native Alaskans.

Observers in Alaska say that these statements reflect a change in Palin’s public persona since becoming the GOP vice-presidential nominee.

Even her critics say they’re seeing a new Palin in this tactic. Many political observers have said they assume the McCain campaign has been shaping her new public persona.

“I don’t think this is Sarah Palin,” said state Rep. Les Gara, an Anchorage Democrat who has been critical of Palin. “Had Sarah Palin run this campaign, she wouldn’t have designed it the way it’s happened.”

Gara has criticized Palin on a number of issues, including not following-through or not being interested in specifics of government. “Most governors would have this political vision that is amazingly important to them,” Gara said. “I don’t think she has this broad political vision. She’s not really the most hands-on governor or the most interested in policy.”

Others in the state legislature have criticized Palin for her absence and silence on important issues. Legislators in Juneau were seen wearing buttons that read “Where’s Sarah?” during an important debate over Alaskans yearly oil and gas royalty checks.

Palin’s policy of keeping quiet on certain topics has extended to the public’s request for information as well. In an attempt to do government business without facing scrutiny, Palin used personal email accounts after she was advised they are not subject to subpoena.

She has also made it more difficult to obtain public documents through freedom-of-information requests.

Similar secrecy marked her response to probing questions about Troopergate when the scandal broke in June.

Palin initially said she would cooperate in the probe. When the state legislature appointed an independent investigator, Steve Branchflower, to handle the matter she told a local radio show host, Dan Fagan, on the air she would sit for an interview with Branchflower.

“Oh absolutely,” Palin said. “In fact, I’m ready to be interviewed today.”

When Fagan pressed on details about emails her administration had declined to release to Branchflower she replied with a dodge: “Which emails?” Palin asked. Before Fagan could respond, Palin provided a long, winding answer that did not address the question.

The combination of willingness to cooperate, mixed with evading certain questions was a classic Palin move.

Things changed at the end of August, though, when Palin was tapped by McCain as his running-mate. Stall tactics kicked in and Palin declined to be interviewed as she had previously agreed.

Palin’s transformation from dodging to lying was complete when Branchflower’s report went public. Branchflower found that Palin broke a state ethics law in directing employees, and her husband, to pressure her public-safety commissioner to fire her ex-brother-in-law from his job as a state trooper over a family feud.

Palin claimed she was vindicated by the findings. “Well, I’m very, very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing … any hint of any kind of unethical activity there,” the governor told the Anchorage Daily News.

The Daily News editorial board was surprised by Palin’s comments on such a serious finding against her. “Her response is either astoundingly ignorant or downright Orwellian,” the Anchorage Daily News editorial board wrote.

Others view her statements as a shock, particularly her Troopergate statement.

However, one long-time GOP Alaska political consultant, Art Hackney, who has worked for Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young, said he hasn’t been surprised by Palin’s shift. He says it is not much of a change.

Hackney said that Palin has always seen campaigning as being about winning, rather than a particular vision or set of political values. “She’s just saying what will sound good on television,” Hackney said. “It’s that simple.”