In a McCain campaign conference call today, Davis said he was “jazzed up” and assured reporters that “we are witnessing, I believe, probably one of the greatest comebacks since John McCain won the primary.”

Davis pushed back against recent questioning of the campaign’s continued pursuit of a win in Iowa — I believe “smoking crack” was one of the terms used by one prominent GOP strategist –despite many polls consistently showing Obama with a double-digit lead in the state. He said the campaign’s internal polling showed the race is “dead-even” in Iowa but did not elaborate. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is scheduled to appear Monday in Dubuque, Iowa.

He also rejected the notion that Palin is a drag on the ticket, citing the huge crowds at her rallies.

With some campaign officials accusing Sen. Barack Obama of attempting to buy the election in recent days, Davis bragged that Republicans have remained financially competitive.

“In the course of the general election period, since the end of our convention until today, the combined amount of spending between the Republican National Committee and the McCain campaign, not counting any state dollars whatsoever, is $325 million. … When you are looking at all the various amounts of money spent in this campaign, you will be surprised to learn that we have been very competitive.”

Davis predicted that the McCain campaign is on track to outspend Obama on advertising by $10 million in the final week of the race. He also welcomed the news that the Obama campaign intends to ramp up advertising in previously uncontested states, including Arizona, North Dakota and Georgia.

“We encourage them to please pick other states that we intend to win, to spend their final campaign cash and spread it out as much as they can.”

Finally, Davis previewed McCain’s schedule for the final day of the campaign. He said McCain is slotted for  a last visit to New Hampshire Sunday, the state that launched his primary comeback.

“We do plan to campaign pretty actively throughout the last 24 hours of the campaign. We will hit a little bit of a nostalgia tour Sunday night, where John will have a final New Hampshire event. … Monday [McCain will] hit seven different cities in seven different states before winding up in Phoenix, Ariz. for Election Day.”

As the Prescott [Ariz.] Daily Courier reported today, McCain plans one final campaign event Monday. According to the Yavapai County Republican Party Website, he will visit northern Arizona for an evening rally in Prescott, the heart of one of the state’s fastest-growing regions.

The Democrats, naturally, seized upon the report, sending out an email stating that McCain was “forced to campaign” in Arizona.

For comparison, I dug up a presentation (PDF) by Obama campaign manager David Plouffe from the same month.

The result: The Obama campaign was spot-on in its assessment of its prospects, while the McCain people were way off the mark. Let’s take a look.

First, here’s Davis’ perceived electoral map, just four months ago:

Looking at today’s RealClearPolitics map (below), we can see that every single toss-up state is now in Sen. Barack Obama’s column. While all the “Lean GOP” states have held, three of the “Solid GOP” states — Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana — have turned blue:

Meanwhile, Plouffe was announcing the Obama team’s plan to turn these red states blue:

Lo and behold, every one of these is now in Obama’s column, mostly by substantial margins.

Another slide in Plouffe’s presentation indicated the states in which the Obama campaign would be advertising early and extensively:

Admittedly, a few of these are still unlikely to go for Obama — Alaska, for instance, effectively came off the table when Gov. Sarah Palin joined Sen. John McCain’ticket — but for the most part, Obama’s strategy paid off.

Here’s proof:

Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana, which McCain considered in the bag, now lean Obama by 7, 2 and 2 points, respectively, according to RealClearPolitics.

Connecticut, which McCain hoped to nab, is going for Obama by 19 points.

However, after he and Missouri’s Republican Gov. Matt Blunt finished denouncing ACORN as a “fraudulent, law-breaking organization” — for a more balanced assessment of what ACORN does, look here — Davis answered a question from MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell about why the McCain campaign has not been saying much lately about the stock market.

John McCain talked yesterday at length about what he’s trying to do to help stem the financial crisis that exists today, and announced on Monday and talked aggressively every day since then about his new mortgage proposal. There’s very little a candidate for president, and frankly, after watching today, very little even the president can say about what’s happening in the stock markets other than to hope that they correct themselves.

I think John’s recommendation for the government to get involved with the purchase of mortgages before they default is probably the best elixir for doing that. Obviously, I can’t imagine a situation where, on a daily basis, a campaign would put out statements related to whatever the market was doing. We hope the market gets better. We think we’ve got the economic policies that, if John McCain is elected president, will improve the markets because they will actually add stability to the financial system that is in so much turmoil today…

I don’t know if you really want to turn a campaign into a CNBC news show on the stock market. It doesn’t mean that we don’t care and aren’t trying to something about it. It’s just I’m not exactly sure what you’d say every day.

Well, I have an idea of what you might say.

You get out there and you demonstrate that you’re engaged with what’s going on. You reassure people that you understand that their IRAs and 401(k)s lost a substantial percentage of their value in the last week. Even if you don’t necessarily have any idea what to do about the crashing stock market, it’s probably best to at least talk about it — rather than spend all your time trying to gin up phony controversies about your opponent that nobody really cares about anyway.

Now, I have to go. The McCain campaign has scheduled another conference call about Bill Ayers.

Rick Davis, John McCain’s campaign manager, has remained the treasurer and a corporate director of his lobbying firm this year, despite repeated statements by campaign officials that he had ended his relationship with the firm in 2006, according to corporate records.

The McCain campaign this week criticized news stories disclosing that, since 2006, Davis’s firm has been paid a $15,000-a-month consulting fee from Freddie Mac, the troubled mortgage giant recently put under federal conservatorship. The stories, published Tuesday by NEWSWEEK, The New York Times and Roll Call, reported that the consulting fees continued until last month even though, according to two sources familiar with the arrangement, neither Davis nor anybody else at his firm did any substantial work for the payments.

Stefanie Mullin, a spokesperson for the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which has taken over Freddie Mac and its sister entity Fannie Mae, confirmed Wednesday that the Davis Manafort contract is being terminated. “All lobbying activity has stopped and political consulting contracts at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are in the process of being terminated,” said Mullin.

The McCain campaign twice lashed out at The New York Times for being a “partisan paper” that is “in the tank” for Sen. Barack Obama.

It is now clear that one of two things is true: either Sen. John McCain himself lied when he said Davis “had nothing to do” with lobbying for the mortgage industry; or Davis lied to McCain about his activities.

Either way, Davis is becoming a major liability for the campaign. The two men have longstanding ties — Davis headed McCain’s presidential campaign in 2000 — so it won’t be easy for McCain to toss him under the bus.

But with these revelations coming at such a rapid pace — three so far this week — McCain will have to address his Davis problem at some point.

Without denying the veracity of The Times’ story, Schmidt lashed out today at the journalistic integrity of the newspaper and it’s alleged bias in favor of Sen. Barack Obama, during a 45-minute conference call with what seemed to be just about every political reporter in Washington.

“We are first amendment absolutists on this campaign, in that the press, and anybody who wishes to cover this race, from the blogosphere perspective or a media perspective, of course is constitutionally-protected with regard to writing whatever they want to write.

But let’s be clear and be honest with each other about something fundamental to this race, which is this: whatever The New York Times once was, it is today not, by any standard, a journalistic organization. It is a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day attacks the McCain campaign, attacks Sen. McCain, attacks Gov. Palin and excuses Sen. Obama. There’s no level of public vetting with regard to Sen. Obama’s record, his background, his past statements. There’s no level of outrage directed at his deceitful ads.

This is an organization that is completely, totally, 150 percent in the tank for the Democratic candidate, which is their prerogative to be. But let’s not be dishonest, and call it something other than what it is. Everything that is read in The New York Times that attacks this campaign should be evaluated by the American people from that perspective: that it is an organization that has made a decision to cast aside its journalistic integrity and tradition, to advocate for the defeat of one candidate — in this case, John McCain — and advocate for the election of the other candidate, Barack Obama.”

Davis got two questions about his ties to the Homeownership Alliance, the group that was the focus of The Times’ piece. Both times, Schmidt changed the subject to a critique of The Times and the news media in general.

Schmidt also blasted reporters for not pursuing the Obama campaign’s questionable connections as aggressively as it had McCain’s. Schmidt specifically cited Sen. Joseph Biden’s son, whom Schmidt referred to as a lobbyist on behalf of the credit card and banking industry (Marc Ambinder notes The Times has published two articles on Biden’s son); Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod’s lobbying activities, and Obama’s relationship to former Weatherman William Ayers.

Schmidt alleged the existence of a “fierce campaign of intimidation” against Obama critics.

“The reality is this: you may not read it on the front page of The New York Times, but the Obama campaign is surrounded by people who have worked in the lobbying industry, and he has been able to make these charges for months with no scrutiny about the reality of his record, and the reality of the records of the people around him. We would hope that in the final 43 days of this campaign, there is a restoration to some degree of the level of symmetry in coverage on these type of issues, because the American people deserve no less.”

While reporters were looking for quotes to follow up on The Times’ article — following a string of ads released by the McCain campaign hitting Obama for his campaign’s ties to Fannie Mae –  Schmidt appeared to have pretty successfully deflected questions about Davis’ own connections to the current financial crisis by engaging in the classic now standard conservative pasttime of bashing The New York Times.