ABC/WaPo: Obama 53%, McCain 43%.

If anything the internals are even more devastating than the topline …

Overall, Obama is leading 53 percent to 43 percent among likely voters, and for the first time in the general-election campaign, voters gave the Democrat a clear edge on tax policy and providing strong leadership.

McCain has made little headway in his attempts to convince voters that Obama is too “risky” or too “liberal.” Rather, recent strategic shifts may have hurt the Republican nominee, who now has higher negative ratings than his rival and is seen as mostly attacking his opponent rather than addressing the issues that voters care about. Even McCain’s supporters are now less enthusiastic about his candidacy, returning to levels not seen since before the Republican National Convention.

Conversely, Obama’s pitch to the middle class on taxes is beginning to sink in; nearly as many said they think their taxes would go up under a McCain administration as under an Obama presidency, and more see their burdens easing with the Democrat in the White House.

Once McCain loses the contest on leadership, unless he’s going to run on green backgrounds, what’s he got?

Late Update: Just a few more of the internals because they’re pretty striking. On who’s the stronger leader: Obama 54%, McCain 40%. Who better understands the economic problems people in this country are having: Obama 58%, McCain 28%. Given that McCain’s entire campaign is based on his leadership credentials and that we’re in the throes of an historic economic crisis, I don’t know which of those two numbers are more devastating for McCain. But they’re both awful bad.

Wow. With the election and the collapse of the economy, I don’t think I even realized we were about to hear this award announced. But Paul Krugman, Princeton professor and Times columnist, has won the Nobel Prize in Economics.

A hearty congrats from TPM.

Late update: We’ve set up an open thread at Cafe to offer congratulations and discuss.

A we noted yesterday, over the weekend John McCain’s campaign leaked word he would release a major new economic policy aimed at the middle class. It later ended up to be aimed at investors. And then a few hours later the campaign scrapped the idea of releasing a new economic plan entirely.

Now word comes that in place of a new economic policy they’re releasing a new stump speech.

“My friends, we’ve got them just where we want them,” McCain will say.

McCain has added a new line to his stump speech: “We’ve got them just where we want them.” That and the day’s other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.

Late Update: Here’s the video:

Sarah Palin declares that the Trooper-Gate probe cleared her of any wrongdoing (and that “rogue,” as she applied it to the state official she fired, is not a “negative term”).

McCain can’t quite bring himself to condemn a Virginia GOP official’s comparison of Obama and Osama.

Late Update: The video:

Is Gordon Brown, Labour Prime Minister of the UK, the man of the hour? So says newly-minted Nobelist Paul Krugman. The major economic powers are quickly converging on direct bank recapitalization as the road to economic stabilization. And it’s Brown’s government that has moved most rapidly and most decisively in this direction.

Brown’s action — and what now appears to be a united Europe following his lead — provides an unflattering contrast with the indecision and reactive response from Paulson.

For the past few weeks John McCain and Sarah Palin have been running a systematic campaign of fear against Barack Obama. But when their campaign crowds got too rowdy, McCain was forced to concede that “you do not have to be scared” of an Obama presidency. How will the campaign hold up under the weight of that contradiction?

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

I’m going to see this as an outlier until I see some other confirming evidence but the Minnesota State University Moorhead has a new poll out of North Dakota that shows it all tied up — Obama 45%, McCain 43%, but with a 4% margin of error.

Sarah Palin knows a thing or two about abuse of power when she says John McCain is ready to put a stop to it: