President Bush will be in Virginia today trying to give Jerry Kilgore a last-minute lift.  The latest Mason-Dixon poll has this a one-point race (Kaine 45, Kilgore 44), so to the extent Bush can energize the Republican base at all it will be a boon for Kilgore. The big question is whether Tim Kaine can close the sale with voters as a conservative Democrat in the Warner mold. I'm not sure he can. Either way, this race is going to end up looking like the end of the New York City Marathon yesterday.

 The other interesting question about this race is what it means, if anything, for 2008. Hillary's camp thinks it has significant meaning for them:

 "Hillary stole the oxygen out of the room because she is who she is, but the consensus was that Mark Warner was the breakout candidate in Columbus [at the DLC annual meeting]," said a top party official in the Clinton camp. "But if Kaine loses, we think it will hurt [Warner's] chances to become the so-called 'anti-Hillary candidate.'"

Don't buy this preemptive spin. Mark Warner is going to remain a popular, conservative-leaning figure within the Democratic party and a threat in 2008 regardless of what happens in Virginia tomorrow. Unlike Hillary Clinton and Evan Bayh, the other DLC-alternative in the potential 2008 race, Warner isn't stuck in the Senate casting votes on Supreme Court nominees and other crucial matters trying to walk the fine line between presenting a moderate face to the public and placating  the far left wing base of the party.

But back to the race at hand.  The current RCP Average stands at Kaine +2.0 with a SurveyUSA poll in the pipeline and scheduled for release around noon.  With anywhere from 3-7 percent still undecided, it's anybody's race. Get all the late breaking news and polls on the RCP Election 2005 VA Gov Race Page.