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As you may have noticed, the election is over. Which means that this blog, like all things with the word ''trail'' in them, must come to an end. Thank you for reading, and do come back in 2012 -- by which we mean next week, when Mitt Romney announces.

Just because Barack Obama is president does not mean you can now violate traffic laws. From today’s Obama pool report: Obama left his house at 11:27 am, and heading to a security briefing at the FBI building (Chicago division). The motorcade drove along Lakeshore Drive, and past Grant Park (where there were scores of construction workers still ...

John McCain and his staff spent the last night of the campaign at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix. But early Tuesday afternoon, the biggest McCain booster in the place appears to a 13-year-old boy. “The reason I disapprove of Obama is his liberal economics,” says Conor O’Connell, decked out in an oversize McCain T-shirt covered in buttons. “He ...

John McCain capped off his seven-day marathon Monday night with a midnight rally in Prescott, Ariz., the town where Barry Goldwater launched his Senate and presidential campaigns. After 26 straight hours of campaigning, McCain kept it brief. “We’re gonna win tomorrow,” he said. “And we’re gonna be this …” he paused, catching himself. “We’re gonna ...

Candidates love to tell crowds that they know they’ll win a state by the energy in the room. Of course there’s energy in the room, genius—these are the die-hard fans. It’s the people who didn’t show up that matter. But at McCain’s midnight rally in Miami last night, he could be forgiven for being optimistic. Before McCain entered, a band and ...

Hundreds of marathoners filled the lobby of the Manhattan Hilton Sunday morning. John McCain was there, too, post-SNL, lacing up his proverbial shoes, stepping into his figurative short shorts, and rubbing metaphorical Vaseline on his hypothetical inner thighs. Whereas the runners’ race was a marathon, McCain was prepping for his final sprint to ...

Political comedy is hard. On-message political comedy is damn near impossible. But John McCain managed to pull it off on last night’s Saturday Night Live, where, with the help of Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin, he poked fun of Barack Obama’s much-viewed half-hour special. McCain would have bought time on all major networks for his own infomercial. “We, ...

Barack Obama's half-hour infomercial Wednesday night didn't teach us a lot we didn't already know—except that an Obama administration would likelyfeature immaculate stagecraft. The spot opened with a shot of—I’m not making this up—amber waves of grain. Obama reiterated his plan to cut taxes for families making less than $250,000 in a softly lit ...

Farhad Manjoo has a great piece up about the Obama campaign's text-messaging superiority. But the campaign's technological dominance extends to all corners of the Internet, as evidenced by this new video:   It's a prime example of the Internet gap in 2008. Obama's people understand the Web—what works, what doesn't, and what's funny ...

Yesterday, Sarah Palin said that this election is going to ''come down to the wire.'' She may have meant it's going to be close. But she also may have been suggesting that this election rests in the hands of the hit HBO series. If so, McCain's screwed:Cast of ''The Wire'' Campaigns in North Carolina  for Obama Stars Will Make Stops in ...