A couple of weeks ago John McCain held an event in Iowa and everyone - including me - slammed him for wasting time and resources on a state that the public polling (and thus the Conventional Wisdom) says is beyond reach.

But David Yepsen of the Des Moines Register makes an interesting observation this morning:

Obama's spent more time in Iowa, bought more TV time and has a far larger campaign staff and field operation. Democrats hold a voter-registration edge of more than 100,000.

McCain's also done himself no good by not campaigning much in Iowa in the 2000 and 2008 caucuses. Nor has he helped himself by bashing ethanol and farm bills, criticisms he makes to show he's a maverick but that also leave many rural voters thinking he just doesn't understand our part of the world.

Yet despite all that, Obama had planned a campaign visit to Des Moines today before he scrubbed it to visit his gravely ill grandmother in Hawaii. And Palin plans to make appearances in Des Moines and Sioux City on Saturday. McCain's in Cedar Falls on Sunday.

Something's up here. At this stage of an election, campaigns don't waste their most precious resource - their candidate's time - on hopeless states. Strategists in both campaigns say privately that their internal tracking polls of the contest in Iowa show the race much closer than those public surveys. Some of those public polls also have month-old data in them.

So the same question can be asked of Obama: what in the heck are you doing going to Iowa with only ten days left? The most recent poll in Iowa, a SurveyUSA conducted Oct 8-9, has the race at 13 points. The other polls are, as Yepsen notes, from middle to late September.

I find it hard to believe that Iowa might be in play. But when the Dean of Iowa political reporters says "something's up here," you'd better sit up and take notice.