Now a relevant question is: will Obama pull some sort of "October Surprise" in order to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat (assuming his lead continues to erode)? He could go for the politician's favorite tool: war. Or, in the event of an economic disaster, he could issue some hare-brained but politically popular executive orders: paying down student loans, paying down home mortgages, "stimulating the economy" with a five thousand dollar government check mailed to each household. Would these be constitutional? Of course not. But neither R's nor D's care about THAT.