storm-battered east coast, the campaign is still going on, the Associated Press ' Thomas Beaumont and Brian Bakst point out, saying that Romney campaign ads have started to pop up in so-called Rust Belt states in the northern Midwest that the challenger has rarely targeted before. Ads are running in Minnesota and Pennsylvania, where Republican presidential candidates haven't won since the 1970s, and even Michigan voters are now seeing more of Mr Romney's arguments. On Esquire.com , Charles Pierce takes a sweeping view of the effect the "superstorm" might have: This entire campaign has been fought out over the issue of whether or not we are all members of a viable political commonwealth with implicit mutual obligations to act through our government -- a self-government that is, or ought to be, the purest creative project of that commonwealth -- for the common good, or whether that government is a some sort of alien entity repressing our fundamental entrepreneurial energy. Over the next few days, I believe, we are going to see that argument brought to the sharpest point possible. If you want to see how this event will "impact the election," look to what answer to that question emerges from the storm. It will tell us a lot about the election, and about ourselves. In the Financial Times , Stephanie Kirchgaessner looks far beyond Sandy to the political storm that will face whoever triumphs on polling day: As Mr Obama and Mitt Romney, his Republican challenger, head into the final