Friday's McCain/Obama Round-up

Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report at 12:00 PM on July 18, 2008.

Campaign-related news items from this week:

* Resolving a simmering dispute, the Obama campaign has indicated that Barack Obama will not speak at Brandenburg Gate in Germany during his visit, but will instead give a speech at Berlin's Victory Column next Thursday.

* CNN: "Former President Bill Clinton said Thursday he's prepared to hit the campaign trail on behalf of Barack Obama as soon as the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee asks him to. 'Whenever he asks -- that is, we had a good talk, and he said he wanted me to campaign with him, and I said I was eager to do so,' Clinton told reporters in New York Thursday. 'He's busier than I am, with politics anyway, so I just told him that whenever he wanted to do it, I was ready.'"

* The Obama campaign has quietly organized a tight-knit group of foreign-policy aides, "supported by a huge 300-person foreign policy campaign bureaucracy, organized like a mini State Department."

* Rasmussen shows Obama pulling ahead of John McCain in Nevada by two, 42% to 40%.

* Rasmussen shows McCain leading Obama in Virginia by the slimmest of margins, 48% to 47%.

* A little further south, Rasmussen shows McCain leading Obama in North Carolina by just three points, 45% to 42%.

* The McCain campaign can feel a lot better about its chances in Arkansas, where Rasmussen shows McCain up by 10, 47% to 37%.

* Marc Ambinder asks, "When was the last time that a Democratic presidential candidate opened six campaign offices in Montana? As of Saturday, Obama For America will have 24/7 'Campaign for Change' outposts In Billings, Bozeman, Butte, Great Falls, Helena and Missoula."

* For that matter, when was the last time a Republican presidential candidate felt compelled to campaign in Nebraska?

* In case there were any doubts, Al Gore will not be Obama's running mate. "I've decided to impose a personal term limit of two terms as vice president," Gore said yesterday.

* I'm sure it was just a verbal miscue, but McCain inadvertently announced at a town-hall meeting in New Mexico this week that he would be in the Senate next year.

* The Weekly Standard and the RNC insist that Obama's campaign spending is "out of control." It's not.

* McCain and Phil Gramm are buddies again.

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