Q: Bill Burton, you're going up with ads in Arizona, Georgia, North Dakota. These states are about as red as red has ever been in the history of America. Can you tell us about it?

Burton: Well, you know, as we get closer to Election Day it's clear that the playing field is expanding, it's not contracting, for Barack Obama. And, you know, polls have shown that North Dakota, Georgia, Arizona are all getting closer and closer, and we think we've got a real shot. We've got ads up in all those states so that we can make our case to voters in those states that Barack Obama's the sort of change that they're looking for.

Q: Well, but Arizona, it's his home state...

Burton: I know. I'd be lying if I told you that we weren't surprised that it was as competitive as it is but, you know, it is. And so we're doing what we can to make sure that voters there know exactly what it is that Barack Obama's all about, and that's why we're up on the air.

Q: Another question I want to ask you about is that you guys tossed a couple of reporters off the plane -- the New York Post and the Washington Times and, I believe, the Dallas Morning News. Do you want to tell us about that?

Burton: Well, you know, as we get close to the end of the campaign here there is so much interest in being on the plane that literally every news organization -- we had to tell them that they couldn't get everybody that they wanted on. And with the Chicago Tribune getting their photographer back on the plane, the Chicago Sun-Times getting folks back on the plane, we just have to make a lot of really hard decisions. And so, you know, the decision that we made was that. to reach as many swing voters as we possibly can, we had to get folks on.

Another point is that, you know, Michelle Obama is joining the campaign, too, in the final days here, so that means more Secret Service agents, it means more staff and just fewer seats for reporters, unfortunately.

Q: So you guys weren't angry at them?

Burton: No, of course not. I mean, if we kicked somebody off the plane every time that we were angry at them -- first of all, it would be a pretty scantily-filled press section. But no, it wasn't about that; it was just a tough space decision.

Q: Well, I should say that the McCain campaign had tossed off Maureen Dowd and Joe Klein.

Burton: Right.

Q: It was probably harder to toss those two off; they're such big names, as opposed to the folks you guys tossed off.

Burton: Yeah, exactly. And then also, you know, their relationship with the press is an interesting one. They stopped -- you know, they canceled an interview with Larry King for John McCain just because Tucker Bounds had a tough interview with Campbell Brown. I mean, that's just -- that's how they play. We're just doing this on the basis of what sort of space we've got.

Q: Well, where do you think you really have to push? I mean, McCain is putting everything into Pennsylvania. Can you take us inside your Pennsylvania numbers?

Burton: Well, we think that we're in a very strong position in Pennsylvania, but, you know, it's tight going down to the wire. And it's a state that John McCain needs to win in order to win the White House. And I don't know if the arithmetic is there for him, but we think that the polls are tightening up, and we're working as hard as we can every day, pounding the pavement, making the phone calls and getting our folks out to vote. We've got Ed Rendell and Senator [Bob] Casey working as hard as they possibly can to do it, and we feel good.

Q: Also you're working the text messaging. You have a lot of sore thumbs in the campaign. How successful is that drive to get the volunteers out?

Burton: Oh, it's great. We've got so many volunteers who are out there making the calls and going door-to-door that we've pretty effectively been able to put in place our get-out-the-vote operation.

And that includes the early vote -- where the numbers are just staggering, of how many people have early-voted so far; you know, you look at a place like Florida or North Carolina and it's through the roof. And it's not just people who vote every single time. You know, take Florida for example: The Democrats who have early-voted, by our calculations, are -- about 28 percent of them are sporadic Democratic voters. So they weren't votes that were going to be in the bank for us. They're votes that we're glad are now in the bank, but weren't necessarily going to be.

Q: Do you have any sense of how the early voting is going for the Obama campaign in real numbers?

Burton: That statistic I just gave you is the only one that I know off the top of my head, but it looks like in some of the states where there's early voting -- I think there's 31 states where you can do that -- you know, the range of folks who've already cast their ballots is from 20 to 30, 35 percent. So...

Q: Well I asked because typically it's more Republican.

Burton: Right.

Q: Have you been pushing people to early-vote?

Burton: Yes, yes.

Q: Do you think your audience is more early voters than Election Day voters?

Burton: You know, it's a real mix. But the advantage to the early voting is that, you know, on Election Day there are going to be really long lines -- there's already really long lines for the early voting locations -- but the advantage to getting folks out to vote right now is that a) if something comes up on Election Day and they don't get a chance to vote they've already cast their ballot, and b) on Election Day it frees up, you know, those voting locations so that people don't have to wait as long, and can make sure that they can get in there and cast their ballot.

Q: Yahoo has a poll out today saying that one in seven people have not decided. Is that shocking to you?

Burton: It is shocking. And to the extent that -- they take a look at the same pool of people that they've been polling throughout the campaign, so it's a very specific audience of folks. And you know, it's our experience that there are some folks who are still making up their minds, and we're hoping that, you know, we're closing strong here with our core economic message about the sort of change Barack Obama is going to bring, and we feel good about how those undecideds have been breaking so far.

Q: How effective do you think McCain's words are -- let me read to you what he said today: "Senator Obama's economic policy is from the far left of American politics, and ours is from the center." He said center, not right. "He wants to raise people's taxes; that's clear." What's your reaction?

Burton: Well, I think that their message has been pretty ineffective if you look at how they've been doing state by state, considering that people realize that what he wants to do is a continuation of what George Bush has been up to. And I heard him today saying that he didn't think that that argument had worked, and you know, if he doesn't think so then that's fine. But the record doesn't bear that out, and neither does the sort of support that he's losing as a result of it.

Q: Do you have a rabbit's foot in your pocket?

Burton: I have a lucky pair of socks, but I'm not going to put them on until Election Day.

Q: And what color are they?

Burton: Green.

Q: And what designer are they?

Burton: J. Crew.

Q: Thank you, Bill Burton. Good luck on Tuesday.

Burton: Thanks, Tammy.

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