Obama spends the last month of the campaign, October, continuing to court Texas. McCain runs around doing stupid pointless things like giving a speech in Florida proclaiming his support for more jobs. But McCain of all people should know that Florida is full of retired people who don't need jobs. Hey, McCain, that stuff plays in Pennsylvania and Michigan. But if you want to impress Floridians, speechify on Social Security, universal health care, or dangling chad prevention.

Also in October, we settle which national organizations will endorsement which candidate. Read about it after the jump.

There's a strange divide among gameplay mechanics in The Political Machine. Some are important early on in a campaign. For instance, operatives to raise awareness or modify a candidate's stats, or advertising to modify a candidate's stance on an issue, pay off best over time. You want to bring these in as soon as you can. But some things aren't worth bothering with until late in a campaign. For instance, an endorsement or an operative who modifies your candidate's stance on an issue is just as effective on the last game turn as it is on the first game turn. There's little point bringing these out early on when you should be doing other things. This is a crucial but unintuitive part of playing The Political Machine. When you do something can just as important as what you do.

So it's not surprising that neither of us has bothered much with endorsements. These are a one-time modifier to your candidate's stance on issues. Getting endorsements requires building outreach centers to accumulate political clout. But this is wasted if you accumulate too much too early. Once you grab all the endorsements you're going to grab, clout serves no purpose other than to remind you that you could have spent the cost of your outreach centers on advertising or campaign headquarters.

So I've carefully calculated my clout income to buy the endorsements from National Union Action Network (ALF-CIO) last month and to have enough for the Environmentalist's Club (Sierra Club) on the very last turn of the game. These two modifiers to the "more jobs" and "environment" issue will be helpful in many of the closely contested states. McCain, on the other hand, bought the endorsement from the National Gun Owners Association (NRA) last April, which doesn't seem to be helpful anywhere. Since then, he's certainly accumulated clout, but he hasn't spent it on anything. Since it requires no stamina to spend your clout, there's no reason to let it sit in the clout bank. It's not like it's accruing interest. Maybe McCain is cleverly waiting until the very last turn to spend all his clout and roll out a truckload of surprise endorsements!

By the time October is over and Obama has spent the month crooning lovingly to the fine people of Texas while wearing a cowboy hat and oversized belt buckle, he's leading the 34-vote Republican stronghold by a single point. The intimidator squad has lowered McCain's awareness in Texas down to 64%. "McCain?" a third of all Texans ask each other. "McCain who?"

At the end of the month, with only a week of campaigning left before the actual election, Obama's projected electoral vote count is 337. McCain's is 201. Assuming you can trust the polls (you can't), America is about to elect Barack Obama by a landslide. Tune in tomorrow to see how it actually shakes out, with a complete list of how each state voted.