Two Mondays before Election Day in 2008, Barack Obama was on stage at the Canton Memorial Civic Center in Ohio making his closing argument.

“It is time, Canton, to try something new. The question of this election is not are you better off than you were four years ago. We all know the answer to that. The real question is will this country be better off four years from now?”

Fast forward to 1:30, past the ironic scolding of Sen. John McCain for making a big campaign about small things:

Watch on as Obama makes bold, familiar, and broken promises, like getting rid of tax breaks for companies that ship business overseas, that the only change to your insurance will be that your premiums go down, and of course, that he’ll change the way politics as usual is done.

On this day in 2008, the Gallup daily tracker showed Obama up five points among likely voters, “while a CBS/New York Times poll put his lead at 13 points and an ABC/Washington Post poll said he was 9 points up,” as reported by the New York Post.

The New York Times ran a smoochy profile on David Axelrod— “an adviser fills a role that exceeds his title”— and noted both candidates were, “heading into the final week of the presidential campaign planning to spend nearly all their time in states that President Bush won last time, testimony to the increasingly dire position of Mr. McCain and his party as Election Day approaches.”

The Washington Post reported on its own poll showing Obama up eight points in battleground Virginia and highlighted a candidate Obama who “avoids partisan rhetoric, focuses on unity.”

Yeah, those were the days, huh?