Despite an intense effort to distance himself from the way his party has done business in Washington, Senator John McCain is seen by voters as far less likely to bring change to Washington than Senator Barack Obama. He is widely viewed as a “typical Republican” who would continue or expand President Bush’s policies.

The US electoral map is going to look very much like it has the past two elections. With the new-found enthusiasm in the Republican base, I think it is extremely unlikely that John McCain will lose much in the south. Barack Obama, on the other hand, will win the overwhelming majority of the northeast, and the Pacific coast.

In last the three months, Senator McCain’s campaign has been a transformed into an elbows-out, risk-taking, disciplined machine. The catalyst for the change is Steve Schmidt, a veteran of the winning 2002 Congressional and 2004 presidential campaigns, where he worked closely with Karl Rove, President Bush’s senior strategist.

With just over eight weeks left until Election Day, the two sides are settling into a set of state-by-state face-offs, with an increased focus on turning out supporters and tough decisions looming about where to invest time and advertising money.

Here’s the deal: Sarah Palin is the latest G.O.P. distraction. She’s meant to shift attention away from the real issue of this campaign — the awful state of the nation after eight years of Republican rule. The Republicans are brilliant at distractions. Willie Horton was a distraction, and we all remember the Swift-boat campaign.

Democrats arriving here said they remained confident that Senator Obama would leave Denver at the end of the week in a strong position to defeat Senator McCain. But a convention that the Democrats had once anticipated would be a breezy celebration of Mr. Obama has turned into a more sober and consequential event.

In 2004, Harold Simmons donated $2 million to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, whose advertisements against then-Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry included one that, with allegations since discredited, impugned Senator Kerry’s military service as a Swift boat captain during the Vietnam War.

In its timing, authorship and style of reporting, the book, “Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality,” is strikingly reminiscent of the one Mr. Corsi wrote with John O’Neill about Senator John Kerry, “Unfit for Command,” which included various accusations that were ultimately undermined by news reports pointing out the contradictions.

Even in confessing to preening, former senator John Edwards was preening. His diagnosis of narcissism was weirdly narcissistic, or was it self-narcissistic? Given his diagnosis, I’m sure his H.M.O. would pay. The creepiest part of his creepy confession was when he stressed to Woodruff that he cheated on Elizabeth in 2006 when her cancer was in remission. His infidelity was oncologically correct.

In his statement Friday, the former senator and vice presidential candidate emphasized that his wife, who became a hugely sympathetic figure when she announced that she had breast cancer, had been aware of the affair since 2006.