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The Vice-Presidential Debate aside, ABC and NBC both ran Campaign '08 news and features. The news came from the John McCain campaign, with its decision to throw in the towel in Michigan, shutting down its advertising effort and most of its field offices. ABC's George Stephanopoulos called it "big news" reducing McCain's swing state targets to maybe three that John Kerry won in 2004: "There are many more paths to victory for Barack Obama than for John McCain." NBC political director Chuck Todd too called McCain's "a very narrow path." He identified two of the three states as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
As for features, ABC continued its 50 States in 50 Days series with Jeffrey Kofman describing the swing state of Florida. The state's northwest is solidly Republican and its southeast is solidly Democratic. Across the center, the highway travels through undecided counties stretching from Daytona to Tampa: "As I-4 goes, so goes Florida--and maybe the country." NBC's issues series Where They Stand moved on to Social Security. John Yang called the parties' platforms "dramatically different" in their proposals for an overhaul to keep the fund solvent past 2041: McCain would allow investment of Social Security funds in the stock market; Obama would extend the payroll tax to include annual earnings in excess to $250,000. Yang stated that Social Security is a key voting issue in swing states whose populations skew older--Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida.
NBC's Kevin Tibbles took us time-traveling back to the South Side of Chicago in the early '80s to describe Obama's first work as a community organizer. He was based in a tiny office in a church rectory, running a job center for workers laid off when the local steel mills closed and agitating for asbestos removal in the municipal housing projects. Loretta Augustine-Herron delivered the neighborhood's endorsement: "I am not waiting for Barack to come back and do anything for me because he showed me how to do it for myself."
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