More than 100,000 people – the largest crowd to date at a Barack Obama rally – jammed Denver’s Civic Center Park and surrounding streets Sunday to see and hear the Democratic nominee. Meanwhile, Republican Sen. John McCain, in an appearance on “Meet the Press,” expressed confidence in his campaign and his running mate, and declared he would win on Nov. 4. 
 
The two major party nominees for president head into the final week of campaigning focused on battleground states such as Iowa, Florida, North Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire and Colorado.
 
In several battleground states, polls show Obama with an edge.

A recent CNN poll for Colorado shows Obama with a 12-point lead. In Florida, the lead is 49 percent to 42 percent, according to the CNN poll.
 
Sunday morning, McCain said he feels like Newt Rockney at half time when he said “go out there and get one for the Gipper.”
 
When "Meet the Press" interim host Tom Brokaw asked the Arizona senator about recent polls that show him trailing Obama, McCain said, “We are very competitive. I am very happy with where we are, and I am very proud of the campaign.”

In recent days, there has been finger-pointing inside the GOP over who is to blame for McCain's struggles, reports of friction between his top advisers and aides for running mate Sarah Palin and continued fallout of the Republican National Committee's $150,000 purchase of high-end clothing for the Alaska governor and her family.

As thousands applauded in Denver on Sunday, Obama, according to published reports, walked on stage amid a sea of waving placards and loud chants. He took issue with the attacks McCain has leveled against his campaign and reiterated his message of working for the middle class.

“Sen. McCain has been throwing everything he's got at us, hoping something will stick. He's even called me a socialist for suggesting that we focus on tax cuts, not for corporations and the wealthy, but for the middle class,” Obama said in an article published in the Denver Post online edition.

Today, McCain and Palin will visit Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio, with other stops during the week in Indiana and North Carolina.
 
Obama is scheduled to return to Florida this week and will be joined on the campaign trail Wednesday by former President Bill Clinton.
 
The feverish, last-minute pace of the campaign is not unusual in presidential races. And in some cases, the voters who make their decisions at the last minute are the one’s who control the outcome of the election, said James Taylor, a political science professor at the University of San Francisco.
 
“This is going to be historic one way or another,” Taylor told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “Either America will elect its first black president or the moderate Americans will turn on Obama and reject what has been projected in the polls.”
 
Obama’s strategy, Taylor said, has worked.
 
“He’s going after all of the 50 states. He’s placed all states in play like no Democrat has done,” Taylor said. “He has rejected the red-state and blue-state mentality.”
 
Florida has long been considered a red state because it has been led for years by Republican governors and has a large population of white senior citizens, who tend to be conservative. According to the latest CNN poll, Florida appears to be leaning toward Obama.
 
Political analyst Ron Walters said the McCain-Palin campaign is trying to get a mathematical strategy that will give them the needed 270 electoral college votes to win, but they should also compute the states that may be slipping away.

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