MyDD summarizes PPP on the early-vote advantage Obama has built, suggesting McCain may have already lost the election in key states. Consider Nevada:

71% of the state's likely voters say they have already cast their ballots and with those folks Obama has a much broader 57-43 lead. McCain's bringing the race to within four points is predicated on winning election day voters by a margin of 57-38.

Or Ohio:

[Obama's] banked a huge lead with early voters, who made up about 30% of the sample. He's up 65-34 with those folks. McCain's tightening the race to two points is predicated on his winning election day voters 54-44.

In other news, my prediction for tomorrow is more optimistic and unrealistic than even Kos's. I can live with that. Get your guess in before the polls close in Virginia and win an Apple MacBook Awesome No-Prize.

Politics links.

* The NSA has been shamelessly spying on people they knew had nothing to do with terrorism. More at Washington Monthly. Why is nobody in jail over this?

* Matt has a flashback back to 2004 to argue that thinking we would win back them is nothing like thinking we're going to win now.

* Will a reverse Bradley effect benefit Obama? Maybe, but it's certain that corrupt voter-roll tampering will once again help the Republicans. Why is nobody in jail over this?

* You can only steal a close election. West Virginia is a tossup?

* The GOP is grumbling in Nevada and Virginia.

* Can the Dems hit 60 in the Senate? Ezra Klein look at the possibilities, while Matt Yglesias says 59 isn't really all that different from 61. (Maybe, but I'd still like 61.)

* What are the candidates transition teams like? Did you just say one of them doesn't have one?

* Obama gives his most direct statement on Ayers yet.

Obama "had assumed" from Bill Ayers' stature in Chicago, he told the Philadelphia-based Michael Smerconish, that Ayers had been "rehabilitated" since his 1960s crimes.

In the interview, which was taped this afternoon and will air tomorrow, and which you can listen to above, Obama recalled moving back to Chicago after law school, and becoming involved in civic life there.

"The gentleman in question, Bill Ayers, is a college professor, teaches education at the University of Illinois," he said. "That's how i met him -- working on a school reform project that was funded by an ambassador and very close friend of Ronald Reagan's" along with "a bunch of conservative businessmen and civic leaders."

"Ultimately, I ended up learning about the fact that he had engaged in this reprehensible act 40 years ago, but I was eight years old at the time and I assumed that he had been rehabilitated," Obama said.

* And George Packer, touring rural Ohio in the lead-up to the election, writes up his experiences there in the New Yorker.

Dave Herbert was a stocky, talkative building contractor in an Ohio State athletic jersey. At thirty-eight, he considerably lowered the average age in Bonnie’s. “I’m self-employed,” he said. “I can’t afford to be a Democrat.” Herbert was a devoted viewer of Fox News and talked in fluent sound bites about McCain’s post-Convention “bounce” and Sarah Palin’s “executive experience.” At one point, he had doubted that Obama stood a chance in Glouster. “From Bob and Pete’s generation there are a lot of racists—not out-and-out, but I thought there was so much racism here that Obama’d never win.” Then he heard a man who freely used the “ ‘n’ word” declare his support for Obama: “That blew my theory out of the water.”

A maintenance man at the nearby high school, who declined to give his name, said that he had been undecided until McCain selected Palin to be his running mate, which swung his support to Obama.

“So you’re a sexist more than a racist,” Herbert joked.

“I just think the guy Obama picked would do better if he got assassinated than McCain’s if he died of frickin’ old age in office,” the maintenance man said.

Four women of retirement age were sitting at the next table. All of them spoke warmly of Palin. “She’d fit right in with us,” Greta Jennice said. “We should invite her over.” None had a good word to say about Obama. “I think he’s a radical,” a white-haired woman who wouldn’t give her name said. “The church he went to, the people he associated with. You don’t see the media digging into that.”

“I don’t know anyone who’s for Obama,” said Jennice, a Democrat who supported Hillary Clinton and who won’t vote in November.

“If they are, they don’t say it, because it would be unpopular,” an elderly former teacher named Marcella said. That had not been true of Bill Clinton, Al Gore, or John Kerry, she added.

“I think the party-line Democrats are having a hard time with Obama,” Bobbie Dunham, a retired fourth-grade teacher, told me. When I asked if Obama’s health-care plan wouldn’t be a good thing for people in Glouster, she said, “I’ll believe it when I see it. If it’s actually happening, I’d say that’s good.” But she and the others had far more complaints about locals freeloading off public assistance than about the health-insurance industry and corporations. Dunham declared her intention to write in a vote for either Snoopy or T. Boone Pickens. “I’m not going to vote for a Republican—they’ve had their chance for the last eight years and they’ve screwed it up,” she said. “But I really just don’t trust Obama. He only says half-truths. He calls himself a Christian, but he only became one to run for office. He calls himself a black, but he’s two-thirds Arab.”

I asked where she had learned that.

“On the Internet.”

Ugh, looks like Clinton won. My prediction for next week is still a significant Obama victory in South Carolina—hard to see that not happening—followed by Edwards dropping out and presumably endorsing Obama, for whatever it's worth.

No clue at all how this affects the possibility of a Gore endorsement before Super Tuesday, which is Obama's other major potential ace in the hole...

UGHDATE: Double ugh.

UGHDATE 2: Watch this story: the Obama campaign is talking about widespread election irregularities.

We currently have reports of over 200 separate incidents of trouble at caucus sites, including doors being closed up to thirty minutes early, registration forms running out so people were turned away, and ID being requested and checked in a non-uniform fashion. This is in addition to the Clinton campaign’s efforts to confuse voters and call into question the at-large caucus sites which clearly had an affect on turnout at these locations. These kinds of Clinton campaign tactics were part of an entire week’s worth of false, divisive, attacks designed to mislead caucus-goers and discredit the caucus itself.

True or not, this seems like exactly the wrong thing to say after a close loss—but what do I know. In any event, it looks like maybe he doesn't want to be vice president after all...

It's the night before Nevada and nobody has any clue what's going to happen there. The polls seem to give Clinton a slight edge, trending towards Obama, but then again the polls can't tell you much about an event that's never happened before. Things are generally looking good, though, not merely for Nevada and South Carolina but thinking ahead to Super Tuesday as well; a new poll from Rasmussen puts Obama only five points down in California, where Clinton once led by twenty-five. The Linda Chavez Sanchez endorsement is another good get, too.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the spectrum, Talking Points Memo is all over Rudy's epic collapse.

UPDATE: I just noticed that the Clinton camp has decided to take Obama's bait and attack him for his recent comments about Reagan. I still contend this is a winning issue for Obama's part, the political equivalent of judo—I guess we'll see if I'm right.

UPDATE 2: Barno in the comments takes me to task for typing the last name of almost-Secretary-of-Labor Linda Chavez when I meant Congresswoman Linda Sanchez. Brain fart, sorry. gerrycanavan.blogspot.com regrets the error.

UPDATE 3: Here's two links with the Obama camp hitting back.

UPDATE 4: There's still more to this story...

A judge has ruled against the legal challenge to the Vegas strip at-large caucus precincts in the Nevada caucus this Saturday. This is good news for Obama, who of course has been endorsed by the Culinary Workers Union; the right call from the judge; and dirty pool from the Clintons, who have definitely earned the black eye they've received over this whole mess.

Quick links for Tuesday morning:

* Can't stand waiting to see how Super Duper Tuesday will turn out? poblano at Daily Kos has a huge diary that tries to crunch the numbers. I can't say that there's much truth to any of it, but for my part I found the numbers encouraging—Obama already has significantly more strength in Super Tuesday states than I thought he did, and his prospects for a big bump after winning both South Carolina and Nevada are quite good. (By the way, the bogus Michigan primary is today. Go Uncommitted!)

* Peter Saunders argues in Policy capitalism is good. Marxists, Leftists, environmentalists, and rabble-rousers of all stripes, be advised.

* I'm definitely tucking this awesome Flickr photo away for future use. For now, it'll have to serve as this week's blog icon—I forgot to change it yesterday because of the semester changeover.

Nevada's Culinary Workers Union has endorsed Obama. I'm sorry this blog has turned into the Obama News Network the last few days, by the way. I'll calm down shortly.

But while we're on the subject: When is Gore going to secure permanent sainthood in the Church of Canavan by stepping in and endorsing Obama? Any day now, Al.

It's a brisk 56° in New Hampshire today, only adding to what will surely be record turnout for the Democratic primary. There are even reports that polling stations are already running out of ballots. None of this is good news for the old guard—and strong reports that the powerful Nevada culinary union will endorse Barack tomorrow are just another nail in the coffin. Stay tuned.