Today, both candidacies are going for the knockout punch. McCain's giving an economic speech to the Green Bay Chamber of Commerce before he and John Bircher Sarah Palin campaign in Blaine, Minnesota. Meanwhile, Barack Obama is in Coral Gables, Florida and Joey Biden is in Sterling, Virginia. Everyone is on offense. McCain's clearly trying to open up a Kerry state for takeover. But McCain desperately needs to hold on to both Florida and Virginia.

Obama will be in Daytona Beach and Jacksonville on Saturday. He's invested a lot in Florida and he clearly wants to keep the state in contention. I think he can win the state if he can hold down McCain's numbers in the North and the Panhandle.

Voter registration in Florida has surged in the Democrats' favor since 2006. They've gained 176,000 voters since then; Republicans have lost 8,262. Democrats now have an edge of 468,209.

However, a lot of the those voters are Wallace Democrats and Florida is one of the few battleground states with a Republican governor, and we know how that works, don't we?

As for Wisconsin, McCain brought the noise last night at the Resch Center in Green Bay.

"The days of me first, country second end on Nov. 4," McCain said, later adding: "That's how we see this election, country first or Obama first."

The crowd replied with chants of "Country first! Country first!"

When I see John McCain saying things like that, I just want to stick my fist in his mouth. Here's what Barack Obama said about this line of attack in his acceptance speech in Denver:

But what I will not do is suggest that the Senator takes his positions for political purposes. Because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other’s character and patriotism.

The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America – they have served the United States of America.

So I’ve got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first.

But John McCain is out there like some second-rate pasty fascist or old-school old-line segregationist, talking about how it's either 'country first or Obama first.' I'd like to meet John McCain in the middle of the street somewhere, mano y mano until one of us drops. I hear he's not one to back down from a challenge. I'd drop him like a sack of potatoes.

But I know I'll have to content myself with a symbolic asskicking. I am hoping that America has evolved beyond the point where they'll respond positively to McCain's hate speech. If McCain were truly ashamed of his defense of the Confederate Flag, he'll be ten times as embarrassed of his tactics in this campaign. He's a rodent.