Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for Friday, October 24th.

I am David Plotz.

I'm here in Slate's Washington office with Slate Political Editor and GabFest novice, Michael Newman.

Welcome, Michael.

Thank you.

And joining us by the magic of digital technology

from somewhere. New York. From New York is Slate senior editor Emily Basselon. Emily, welcome. Why are you in

New York? Shouldn't you be a New Haven? That's all right. You don't need to talk about it. At our Slate

office, you should be encouraging me. You should be pleased that I'm here.

Okay, well, we're getting really, really close to the election.

John Dickerson, as you might guess, is on the road, which is why he's not with us today.

But we will, of course, be talking a lot about the presidential election.

That will be topic A, topic B, will be Sarah Palin's $150,000 wardrobe.

Topic C is the secret topic, which we'll get to. And then we'll have cocktail chatter, of course. So let's begin. Emily, why don't you fill us in a little bit about setting aside Sarah Palin's wardrobe because we'll get to that. Fill us in a little bit better. How can we set that aside?

Well, that's going to be topic B.

I know.

It's so hard. All right, I'm clearing my mind. Tell us a little bit about what's going on in the presidential election this week. Well, I think. I'm hoping Michael's going to jump in at any moment. There are two things happening. One is that the polls have been a little bit seesawing, but look good for Barack Obama.

And then we're seeing this tightening of the race in terms of the states that John McCain has the money to contest. So he's pulling resources

out of some states to pour them into Pennsylvania in particular, which is extremely amusing to my family,

which lives in Philadelphia and now feels like the entire election turns on their block, essentially.

Wait, so, Michael, what states is he giving up on?

And what's his path to victory if he does this?

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