Marathon Man: For McCain, a Final Burst of Enthusiasm

As for those crowds, they might make up for their lack of size with a sheer hoarse enthusiasm. They shout so loudly and so constantly, they sometimes drown out the candidate. ("Tow truck drivers for McCain!" yelled one particularly insistent woman at an event in Springfield, Va.) They boo any mention of Obama, when they're not shouting things like "Marxist!" They have bestowed whistles on both the candidate's wife, Cindy, and his daughter Meghan. On Saturday, three young men showed up at a rally in Newport News, Va., shirtless, with their chests painted red, in weather so cold that people wore winter coats.

Former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore (R), who has been down as much as 30 poll points in the state's U.S. Senate race, took the stage to pump up that crowd.

"Look at the vast number of people who are here to stand up for our candidates!" he told an audience that, at a few thousand, was decidedly not vast.

"The polling up to this point has been designed to try to discourage our voters from going to the polls and voting," he said. "We're not gonna let that happen!"

The supporters, too, tend to feel the polls are either wrong or they're rigged: McCain is right where he should be.

"I'm very optimistic," says William Scott Maxwell, 52, a computer programmer and self-described "paleo-con" from Middletown, Pa. "Why? Because God wouldn't do that to us. This country is built on freedom. Obama is not basing his platform on freedom."

In the last mile of this marathon, the utter frenzy for votes obeyed the peculiar logic of campaigns. McCain flew on Saturday to an airport in Pennsylvania, only to load into a motorcade and drive three-quarters of an hour to another airport for a rally in a hangar. And then back to the first airport, and off to New York, and back again to Pennsylvania the next day. If the winner's circle still seemed achingly far away, no one was saying so. At least, not intentionally.

"Good afternoon, northeast Pennsylvania!" former governor Tom Ridge said in Scranton on Sunday. "If I didn't know better, I'd think that was McCain-Palin country!"

After Scranton, the campaign took off for New Hampshire, site of more than one McCain resurrection. And then the schedule called for another late night, with a midnight rally, and a punishing seven-state sprint to the end on Monday. Exhausting? No doubt. But no worries. Just enough time to catch up.

As Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) said to reporters Sunday, "We're surging in the right time."