In the predictions markets Obama is at his highest levels thus far. At Intrade he's sitting just below 75, I imagine it won't go much higher than that until maybe a day or so just before the election.
The last debate scheduled is next Wednesday Oct 15th, domestic policy is the focus of that debate. After that it's 20 days until the election. So what's the McCain strategy? Today in Pennsylvania both McCain and Palin, side by side, gave speeches but made no mention of past connections to controversial figurers (Wright/Ayers) that they want to link to Obama as Palin has been doing since last weekend. And 2 new McCain Ad's don't touch the subject either. So the strategy...
My guess: McCain will focus on trying to sell Obama as an out of control spender until the debate and then afterwards, seeing no bump from the debate, unleash the Pandora's Box of negative ad's that attempt to shift focus away from the issues and into scaring people away from voting for Obama, for example using his middle (Hussein) whenever they can fit it in without seeming so obvious of what they are doing. Republicans do love fear tactics after all.
And undoubtedly McCain in talking with his camp is using the metaphor about how the surge worked in Iraq when the U.S. was finding success hard to come by and the same thing can be done with his campaign. In the end, a McCain surge fueled by fear going against an Obama surge based on hope and solutions to the problems the country faces has no chance of winning the hearts, minds, and most importantly, votes of the American people.