With precisely three weeks left in the lengthiest presidential campaign in U.S. history, John McCain is making no bones about the hole he finds himself in. A new L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll, due out later today, won't give him cause to doubt his underdog status, but it may illuminate some of the ways he potentially could close the gap against Barack Obama.

We can't reveal the matchup numbers quite yet; for that, check elsewhere on our Web site about 5 p.m. EDT (2 p.m. PDT). Along with the horserace numbers, the survey gauges voter perceptions about the two candidates' stengths and weaknesses.

The findings generally are favorable for Obama. But the poll underscores that should a foreign policy matter elbow its way alongside the economy as a major voter concern between now and election day, McCain is in position to benefit.

The survey also indicates that McCain, presumably to his detriment, has failed to clearly distance himself from the fellow Republican -- and unpopular incumbent -- he seeks to replace: President Bush. It will be worth watching how agressively he seeks to do that when he squares off Wednesday with Obama in the last of their debates.

-- Don Frederick

Antonio Villaraigosa is no Gavin Newsom when it comes to same-sex marriage.

Newsom, after all, spearheaded the effort to legalize gay marriage by officiating over same-sex couples’ ceremonies at San Francisco City Hall shortly after he took office in 2004. That led to this year’s California Supreme Court ruling striking down the state’s ban on such nuptials.

It also led to Proposition 8, the initiative on the Nov. 4 ballot to create a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between a man and woman -- and to the promoters' ad airing statewide featuring Newsom in a rather unflattering light declaring same-sex marriage is a reality “whether you like it or not.”

Like Newsom, Villaraigosa is seriously toying with the idea of running for governor in 2010. He too has officiated over same-sex marriage.

Now he is putting his campaign money where his politics are. The Los Angeles mayor announced today that he is giving $25,000 to defeat Proposition 8.

"We need to redouble our efforts now to match the flood of money raised by supporters of Prop 8," Villaraigosa said in a statement.

Rick Jacobs, chair of the liberal activist group Courage Campaign Issues Committee, is using the announcement in an e-mail pitch to raise more money to defeat Proposition 8. Courage Campaign is working with the on-line ActBlue site to raise money. Jacobs said today that within five hours, the appeal had netted $13,000.

Recent polls show Proposition 8 is leading. Its backers are out-raising foes, $25.4 million to $15.7 million for the opponents by the end of September.

Strategists for No-on-8 to held a news conference last week to sound an alarm that they were being heavily outspent.

That seems to have jolted gay marriage supporters. In the first two weeks of October, the No-on-8 campaign had raised $2.7 million in donations of $1,000 or more.

Backers of the measure raised $706,000 in that period, according to the California Secretary of State. However, proponents raise much of their money in increments of less than $1,000 -- and small donations won’t be disclosed until next week.

-- Dan Morain

In the ongoing struggle for the Jewish vote, as our blogging buddy Frank James has noted over at the Swamp, comedian Sarah Silverman has made her profanity-laced pitch to young Jews to withhold visits to their grandparents if they refuse to vote the correct way: for Barack Obama.

The freshman Illinois Democrat is not doing as well among older Florida Jews as even Bostonian John Kerry in 2004. And they are a crucial voting bloc.

So now, thanks to Mark Silva, here comes Jackie Mason who seems to favor John McCain, but sometimes it's hard to tell.

--Andrew Malcolm

Breaking nuptial news in a nutshell:

Because it has so much to do with the upcoming presidential election, we're bringing you urgently all the important fascinating news from the Associated Press' interview today with Levi Johnston.

He's the shy hockey-playing-kid who was ferociously hunted down by the media during the early Sarah Palin feeding frenzy because it was so essential that day to protect the public's right to know who knocked up the daughter of the governor no one ever heard of 24 hours before.

So now he's the 19-year-old future husband of 17-year-old Bristol Palin, whose mother is the 44-year-old governor of Alaska and vice presidential running mate for the 72-year-old John McCain.

According to the AP driveway interview: Levi likes to hunt. They've dated for years. Talked marriage before you-know-what. Baby due Dec. 18. Sounds like a boy. He's excited. He's an apprentice electrician. Drives a red Chevy Silverado. Wedding next summer. Barack Obama "seems like a good guy." Can't vote; didn't register. Still hopes Britol's mom wins.

--Andrew Malcolm

Photo credit: Paul Sancya / Associated Press

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will campaign in Indiana on Friday.

Not a good sign for the Republican ticket.

The 44-year-old vice presidential candidate wows the faithful wherever she goes. She's mobbed by fans, especially young girls. She draws publicity. All good.

But the Republicans should not have to campaign in Indiana less than three weeks out from election day.

Latest state polls show the McCain-Palin ticket ahead by two points in the Hoosier state; Karl Rove's national electoral map, published regularly here in The Ticket, shows the Republicans just having regained Indiana from the tossup category.

But it's a measure of how the Obama-Biden campaign, rolling in money, has forced the GOP candidates to play defense far too long into the campaign. They've recently also been forced to shore up support in two other once-staunch-Republican states -- Virginia and North Carolina.

Even if the Democratic ticket doesn't take Indiana on Nov. 4, it's forced the Republicans to "waste" a precious day of candidate time defending the heartland state and not chipping away at Democratic states elsewhere.

Indiana hasn't voted Democratic in a presidential election since the year Palin was born.

--Andrew Malcolm

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Photo credit: Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press

His father, dead before age 30, left a musical legacy that will live on as long as American songs are sung -- a lengthy list of classics that includes "Your Cheatin’ Heart," "I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, "Hey, Good Lookin’" and "Honky Tonkin’."

Hank Williams Jr. can't match that. But then, few can. And at 59, he can claim a solidly successful career as an entertainer that includes a niche in popular culture as the kickoff act for "Monday Night Football."

Now he's made a foray into politics, penning new lyrics to a song he wrote called "Family Tradition" In the original tune, he linked himself to his dad's drinking and drug-abuse demons. The new version -- a paean to John McCain and Sarah Palin -- takes a decidedly different tack, as evident from its opening lines:

The left-wing liberal media have

Always been a real close knit family.

But most of the American People

Don’t believe 'em anyway, ya see.

An ABC News report on a Palin rally in Richmond, Va., today includes video of Williams performing the reworked song. And a more polished, studio version of it can be listened to below:

-- Don Frederick

Remember Rep. Mark Foley? Republican. Florida. Suggestive text messages. Congressional pages. Scandal. One of several. 2006. GOP loses the House of Representatives.

Well, according to ABC News, Foley's Democratic successor, Rep. Tim Mahoney, now has a mistress problem. Actually, a mistress payoff problem. To buy her silence. And avoid her lawsuit for something.

Mahoney, who is married, also promised the woman a $50,000-a-year job for two years at the agency that handles his campaign advertising, Mahoney staffers said.

Senior Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives, including Rep. Rahm Emanuel, chair of the Democratic Caucus, have been working with Mahoney to keep the matter from hurting his reelection campaign, the Mahoney staffers said.

Good luck with that 22 days out.

A spokesperson for Emanuel denies that account, but said Emanuel did confront Mahoney "upon hearing a rumor" about an affair in 2007 and "told him he was in public life and had a responsibility to act accordingly."

The spokesperson added that it was a "private conversation" that had nothing to do with Mahoney's reelection prospects.

Mahoney's district leans Republican. President Bush won 54% of its vote in 2004 and 53% in 2000. Mahoney's in an already tough reelection race against Republican Tom Rooney, grandson of Pittsburgh Steelers founder Art Rooney.

Coincidentally, it was ABC News in 2006 that broke the Foley story right before that election that cost Republicans control of the House.

Thank goodness those reformers got into office after 2006 because now things have totally changed there in Congress and everything's just fine. Our blogging buddy Frank James has the full Mahoney story over at the Swamp.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo credit: Office of Rep. Tim Mahoney.

The Ticket professes surprise that the fellow occupying the top slot on the Democratic presidential ticket relied on his most important surrogate -- rather than himself -- to roll out a crowd-pleasing response to one of the high points of Sarah Palin rallies.

Then again, the line probably suits the style that Hillary Clinton developed as a presidential campaigner better than Barack Obama's more reserved demeanor.

Clinton, doing her part for her onetime rival in suburban Philadelphia today, referenced the popular "drill, baby, drill" chant that punctuates Palin appearances when the Republican discusses energy policy. Clinton told her listeners that Democrats have a better slogan: "Jobs, baby, jobs."

Obama, campaigning in Ohio, spotlighted the same subject with a different rhetorical technique. "J-O-B-S," he spelled out to his crowd. "Jobs. We've got to work on jobs."

A package of new economic proposals he unveiled included a temporary tax credit for businesses that create new U.S. jobs over a two-year period. The Times' Seema Mehta has more on this and Obama's other suggestions elsewhere on our website.

The audience-participation part of Palin rallies, by the way, may expand. As she campaigned in Ohio Sunday and spoke of the efforts a John McCain administration would make to increase production of so-called clean coal, she was interrupted by this chant: "Mine, baby, mine."

"That is very good, and that is new," she said. "We haven't heard that yet. OK! Mine, baby, mine... . May I plagiarize that?"

-- Don Frederick

No sign yet that John McCain plans to follow the most well-publicized piece of unsolicited advice he's received of late: the recommendation from leading conservative Bill Kristol that the Republican "fire his campaign" because, the columnist asserts, it's "now close to being out-and-out dysfunctional."

Kristol's proposal, of course, had no chance of being taken seriously by McCain. Although a sweeping staff turnover ultimately served the candidate well in the battle for the GOP presidential nomination, a similar move three weeks before election day hardly would quell qualms Democrats like to raise about his temperament.

For the record, though, here's what McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds -- presumably one of those with a risky job status -- had to say about the shake-up suggestion when asked about it by Fox News:

"I know Bill Kristol is an intelligent guy. I just don't think what he had to say was very intelligent."

-- Don Frederick

It was just four weeks ago that a nip-and-tuck presidential campaign seemed to pivot in the Democratic direction -- in part because of a John McCain miscue.

After a weekend that drove home the fragile state of several leading financial institutions, McCain at a rally in Florida insisted the U.S. economy was fundamentally sound -- a claim that since then has been called into serious question.

Today, at a rally in Virginia, McCain sized up the state of the race, freely acknowledged being behind in the polls, anointed Barack Obama as a front-runner who is "measuring the drapes" at the White House -- and eagerly proclaimed, "My friends, we've got them just where we want them."

The Times' Maeve Reston was at the event and has more from McCain, including the arguments it appears the Republican will focus on during the campaign's remaining three weeks (in summary: Obama is a tax-and-spend liberal who will bend over backwards to help unions and "concede defeat" in Iraq).

As McCain -- with a smile -- cast himself in a beleaguered position and eagerly accepted the challenge, it rang a bell with us. And here's a quote he provided reporters in late June:

I'm the underdog in this race.... I'm behind. I've got to catch up and get ahead. And I expect to do that about 48 hours before the general election.

So partisans on both sides of the battle can take heed -- by his own lights, McCain has plenty of time for a stretch run.

-- Don Frederick

Photo credit: Associated Press

John Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

CHICAGO -- Turn on the TV news when John McCain is picking up undecided voters by invoking Barack Obama's relationship with unrepentant American terrorist William Ayers and, invariably, some liberal talking head will sniff in disgust and say Ayers is no big deal where Obama comes from.

Unfortunately, that's true. Ayers is a terrorist. But this is Chicago.

Obama and Ayers are neighbors, and they worked together on school issues with the same foundation. Obama's political coming-out party was held in Ayers' living room when Obama was running for his first political office.

And the boss of Chicago is Mayor Richard Daley. Mayor Shortshanks has thrown his protective embrace around both men. These are facts.

But the reason Ayers is not a big deal in Chicago has to do with the Chicago Way, and the left fork of that road that has been bought and paid for by the Daley machine, subsidized by taxpayers who foot the bill for public relations contracts from City Hall.

The new Daley machine is much more sophisticated than his father's. And the stereotype of knuckle-draggers and wiseguys -- they're....

As The Ticket, among many online sites, has noted in recent days, much has been made about the anger and fears expressed by a vocal few and aimed at the Democratic ticket by some attending rallies for Sen. John McCain.

At one recent event in Minnesota, an angry woman called Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama, the awful A-word -- "Arab."

McCain quickly retrieved the microphone and said, "No, ma'am, he is a decent family man, a citizen I just happen to have serious differences with on some fundamental questions."

On Sunday, Sen. Joe Biden, the Democratic party's vice presidential nominee, again sought to stoke the angry McCain supporter story line by criticizing the GOP nominee for "ugly inferences" about the top of the Democratic ticket.

So as a growing number of political bloggers, including Wake Up America, have asked in recent hours, how long do you think before the mainstream media starts reporting on scenes like a Philadelphia event on Saturday where people wore T-shirts that bore an explicitly crude reference to Sarah Palin? With 22 campaign days left, might perhaps the Democratic ticket also feel the need to warn its supporters to tone it down?

If these T-shirts showed up at a McCain event on people proudly posing like this to proclaim that Obama was the N-word, do you think we might have heard about it by now?

--Andrew Malcolm

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