A Question on McCain's Static Position in the Polls

by: Matt Stoller

Sun Jul 27, 2008 at 11:55


There are a lot of people who think it's their job to criticize McCain for flip-flopping, lying, or just genuinely being an idiot, a criminal, or a Republican leader (sorry to be redundant).  What Obama has made clear is that he is going to run the race the way he wants to run it, and that other people are welcome to chirp, but Obama and McCain will control the narrative.  That's fine, the dude won the primary so he clearly is very smart.

Here's a question.  By all accounts from journalists I know that cover McCain and Obama, John McCain's campaign is widely considered to be a disaster and Obama's is considered to be excellent if a bit cold.  And that seems to be confirmed by obvious political mistakes by McCain pretty much every day, like this one.

Oil and gas industry executives and employees donated $1.1 million to McCain last month -- three-quarters of which came after his June 16 speech calling for an end to the ban -- compared with $116,000 in March, $283,000 in April and $208,000 in May.

So he's now taking over a million from the oil industry at a time of record gas prices?  The ad writes itself.  The question, though, if Obama's campaign is mesmerizingly good and McCain is sickeningly awful, is why the polls have basically remained static, with McCain in the low to mid forties and Obama in the mid to high forties.  I'm puzzling on this, and I don't have an answer.  And neither do any of my friends whose jobs are to put out opposition research on McCain.  I hope Obama does.

Matt Stoller :: A Question on McCain's Static Position in the Polls

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A Question on McCain's Static Position in the Polls | 42 comments
maybe the polls (4.00 / 1)
will never change that much because:

1. Voters know John McCain really well because he's been around a long time, ran in 2000, etc.

2. Voters know Obama really well because of the historically long Democratic primary, speech in 2004, books, Oprah, etc.

Maybe the final tally will be Obama 50%, McCain 46%, Others 4%. I'd be fine with that.

My silly little hope... (0.00 / 0)
...is that Obama will get at least 50.2% of the popular vote, so that we can honestly say he got a bigger share of the vote than any Democratic Presidential candidate since 1964.

More than that would of course be nice as well :)

[ Parent ]
Thats easy (4.00 / 3)
No one is paying attention right now.

My friends who are interested in politics aren't even paying attention right now.

The liberal wiki
Send an email to terra@liberalwiki.com

what are we talking about? (4.00 / 1)


Michael Bloomberg, prince of corporate welfare
[ Parent ]
I don't think so (0.00 / 0)
Poll after poll shows that people on the Dem side are much mroe interested and enthusiastic.  I think that a large percentag eof Dems have made up their minds and are going for Obama.  That probably gives him 30-32 points (75-80% of 40% of the electorate).  A smaller percentage of Indies have also made up their minds for him, say 33% of 33%, for another 11 points.  Then he also gets 10-15 of the 27% Rs, for another 3-4 points.  That's his 45-47%.  McCain gets about 10% of Dems, 33% of Indies and 70% of GOPers, for, respectively, 4 + 11 + 19, for 44%.  

So maybe 15% of Dems, 33% of Indies and 20% of GOPers are undecided, and some of both candidates' support is soft, made up of all 3 groups--Dems who are unsure if they can support Obama, Indies who are unsure both ways or just not paying enough attention yet, and GOPers who are wavering. So McCain and Obama can both lose people to Undecided (or 3rd parties), or gain from the undecided pool (or 3rd parties), but few people go directly from McCain to Obama or the reverse.  That accounts for the shifting in the polls for Obama from 44-49% and McCain from 40-44%.
But I think that at most 12-13% of the electorate is undecided at this point, and another 5-6% is squishy. I think most people are paying attention enough to know that we are electing Geo Bush's successor in November and they know who the candidates are.

And I'll also take a 4 point Obama victory any day, gioven the reluctance of some voters to support him.  I think Congress will reflect a much more decisive election (gain of 20-25+ House seats and 8 Senate seats for the Dems), making it a true realignment election.

 

John McCain--He's not who you think he is.

[ Parent ]
I think that's right (0.00 / 0)
Only the junkies are really paying attention to anything issue-related at this point. McCain's negatives are out there like neon blimps, but that's not enough. His amazing out-of-it behavior is still seen as "cute", as much as threatening. I think the danger is that the GOP noise machine will do its usual big-time slander campaigns while Dem issue groups seem to be short on funding and cohesion at this point.

Still, we worry too much at this point. In a way the campaign is irrelevant right now, and will be until after the conventions. That's when most people start paying attention and connecting dots. For now, for most people, it's all just a mile amusement at best.

[ Parent ]
I tend to agree (4.00 / 2)
While i have some fears that Obama will hesitate to go in for the kill, I think timing is still the biggest deal right now.

In addition to the post labor-day tune-in, there are going to be these wonderful events called "debates". Remember the first Bush/Kerry debate (W, massively underprepared, etc)? I think it'll be that multiplied by Nixon/Kennedy. Three times in a row.

And in spite of a lack of funding for 527s, I do expect a lot of samizdat anti-McCain stuff to start ramping up from activists and grassroots people in September/October. I also expect that there will still be at least one big late IE media pushes, against Obama's wishes.

It's Mortal Kombat, true, but we're not yet at the "Finish Him" moment.

Me | My Work | Future Majority

[ Parent ]
Keeping the Powder Dry (4.00 / 2)
One other thing to consider is that Obama's people are just cataloging all this stuff and holding on to it till necessary.  Given the current lead, the earliness of the race, the seeming inability for McCain to lay a glove on him, and his "above-the-fray" theme, they prob don't feel the need to go negative yet.

However, should it still be close later or McCain edges up, they have a ton of stuff to whallop him with.  Hard.

The media could help too (4.00 / 1)
He also seems to be playing a bit of the "poor me" card to slowly get the press to turn on McCain.  The more he looks like he isn't doing cynical BS, and the more McCain does, the more the media love wears off.  Heck, even Joe Klein is starting to become cranky at McCain.
[ Parent ]
This is also true (4.00 / 1)
McCain's low negatives are held up by generally favorable press coverage. Unless the tone of the coverage shifts (even slightly), the bottom will stay intact.

If McCain has a Stockdale moment in the debates, or finally does something else as a signal event, or perhaps if the overall narrative just adds up w/its crushing weight, the bottom can and will fall out.

Me | My Work | Future Majority

[ Parent ]
McCain's press coverage (4.00 / 4)
I think this is true. McCain's gaffes have only recently piled up to the point where you can't plausibly ascribe them to the random errors that politicians make through the course of the campaign. When he was messing up sunni and shia way back when I was hoping that he'd continue to make such gaffes but I didn't have a sense of whether or not he would. Now he's making them reliably. The press corp, as we all now, is extremely conservative about changing it's fundamental narratives about a public figure, especially one like John McCain, whose identity is so well established. But if we have another two weeks, or maybe a month, of this, they're going to feel safer about sending the message, implicitly or explicitly, that he just doesn't have his wits about him.

In fact, I think the size and frequency of his gaffes are actually working for him in the short term. He looks really bad out there to me. He messes up the facts all the time, he's flip-flopping, Maliki's timetable talk has taken the air out his one "strength", his surrogates are contradicting themselves, him, and each other left and right, they're giving bad media (Phil Gram, for instance), his maverick media credibility is easily assailable because he's surrounded himself by the most sinister breed of lobbyists, and he doesn't have a policy platform.

So the media don't have to change course just a little on how they've defined him. They have to change course a lot. The mental adjustment around this takes some time.  

But once it becomes easy and safe for them to make him an object of ridicule and contempt, once there's a bandwagon, they'll be all over it, and those negatives will tick up.

That's one scenario anyway.  

[ Parent ]
You hit part of it .. (0.00 / 0)
Obama said he was going to run an "above the fray" type of campaign .. so we'll see how well it works ... and if he can effectively beat back the Rovian campaign McCain is running ..  just look at his response last night to the new aid .. an honorable man running a dishonorable campaign? ... WTF?
[ Parent ]
Agreed (4.00 / 2)
He needs to stop positively framing McCain.  He can respond and look "above-the-fray" without stroking the guy who's slamming him.
[ Parent ]
"For Brutus is an honorable man; So are they all, all honorable men" (4.00 / 2)
I think Obama knows what he is doing.
[ Parent ]
Why can't he leave honorable out of it? .. (0.00 / 0)
call the campaign dishonorable .. but don't say that McCain is something that he isn't .. because he isn't honorable
[ Parent ]
TerraFF Has Part of the Answer, But.... (4.00 / 6)
It's true that most folks aren't paying attention, and it's also true that both campaigns know this.  What's happening now is mostly jockeying for position, and McCain's been doing a terrible job of it.

But, even with all that said, you're still quite right to say that something more significant should be showing up in the polls, and that there's a problem here.

My sense of it is quite simple, and echoes themes I've been blogging about for quite some time.  To wit: Hegemony is the enemy, and Obama is not about to fight it.  Instead, he's trying to court it, and this necessitates a kid-glove approach to McCain.  The real opportunity here lies beyond Obama's reach, given the strategic (or, more fundamentally, philosophical/ideological) choices he's committed to.

But that doesn't mean it's beyond happening due to forces beyond Obama--and I write about them in a diary that I was just polishing off when you published the diary before this one. So, now that you've got two diaries in a row, I'm going to push back its publication time a little further, but I do have some thoughts on how things could change quite radically between now and November.

Suffice it to say, even with Obama calling the shots, I think we have the power to drive things in a different direction, simply because we sit at one of those rare points in time where a fundamental transition is unfolding, and formerly marginal forces can interact with one another to profoundly influence the emerging shape of the next center.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

Yes, yes, yes (4.00 / 9)
I think most people fair to appreciate how much the focus has changed from the primary, when in the lead up to Iowa the driving question (because of Edwards and the mood of the people) was how best to take on corporate power. Corporate who? Don't hear much about that anymore.

You'd never know from listening to Obama that the country is angry and practically begging for someone to launch a front attack on corporate power and its whores in Congress. One of the most annoying things about the FISA thing is that Obama lost a chance to run against both corporate power and Congress, with its nine percent approval rating. Hell, if he want to be a non-partisan candidate, he should run against Congress. According the Gallup, the 3 least popular institutions in the country are HMOs, Congress, Big Business.

Is this reality reflected in Obama's campaign? Barely.

Or consider this from Democracy Corps:

If Americans have ever been angrier with the state of the country, we have not witnessed it...When you ask in a national survey the 70 percent who say the country is off on the `wrong track' what underlying developments they are thinking about, they point to three inter-related themes, fully consistent with the more emotional response of the groups: big business getting whatever they want in Washington, leaders forgetting the middle class and America doing nothing about problems at home.

Is this reality reflected in Obama's campaign? A little, when he links Iraq to the economy, for example--but not much.

His campaign is mostly divorced from the fundamental dynamic of anxiety and anger in the country, so there's only so well he'll do.


[ Parent ]
You've Zeroed In On It (4.00 / 3)
But let me put a cherry on top, if I may:  Obama is Versailles' anti-Versailles candidate.

What he rails against is precisely the "partisanship" that they rail against, which somehow only becomes an issue when its the DFHs threatening to upset things.

Only now, with those "wrong track" numbers, the DFHs no longer represent a mere 60% of the American people (as MoveOn did when it formed in 1998 to oppose the Clinton impeachment), they're now up to 70-80% or more.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
running against corporate power (4.00 / 1)
there do seem to be a few stumbling blocks in the way of that...

like, isn't AT&T a primary sponsor of the Democratic Convention this year, with their death star on the schwag bag given to every delegate?

and, isn't Fox Noose providing the totally absolutely neutral harmless don't worry about it pool coverage at the convention?

not that this year is any different from any other, really, just maybe a bit more visible

not everything worth doing is profitable. not everything profitable is worth doing.

[ Parent ]
I love that line .. (0.00 / 0)
about the Death Star
[ Parent ]
I think it's much simpler (4.00 / 1)
It's race and the other differences (youth, urban guy, name etc).  Obama just doesn't feel right to a large segment of the population.  Some percentage will vote for him anyway because he's a Dem and they generally like ghis policies, some won't.  Some won't vote at all.  But he will probably win.

I think it's because of the difference factor that he doesn't hit so hard, but has his surrogates do it.  That, and temperament.  He is well aware he's particularly vulnerable to the "he's not one of us" attack (especially with older voters; it's probably the reverse among the younger folks).  He knows he can't make McCain an object of sympathy or alienate the wavering voters he needs.  His job is difficult, but assuming a majority (or even plurality) will vote for him, that's enough.

John McCain--He's not who you think he is.

[ Parent ]
3 main reasons: (4.00 / 4)
1. Obama is a not-great general election candidate, a fact clear to many for months, with enough resistance among seniors and the white working class to pretty much preclude a big map-changing victory. You could argue that the benefit of electing Obama, with its historic ramifications and his ability to inspire, was worth the risk, but a risk it was. Anyone who tells you how his race and inexperience will play out is lying.

2. McCain--courtesy of his drilling-demagogy--has done the unthinkable, he's done a better job on the big issue, the economy, providing a bogus but concrete answer to economic woes. We're almost in August, and Obama has yet to link himself in the public consciousness with a signature economic proposal or package. Is he the health care candidate? Not yet. Is he the homeowner relief candidate? Nope. Is he the tax relief candidate? Maybe a teensy bit. He's certainly not the fair trade candidate. The time is ripe for patriotic populism, but he's not going after corporate greed or the oil companies. He's not even touting his own proposals, like the Patriotic Corporation Act.

3. The summer lull: this happened last year in the primaries, the polls locked in.

 

the economy (4.00 / 2)
You need the political acuity of a befuddled schnauser to realize that the economy is the issue of the campaign. You don't think Obama realizes this?

Here's what he said today: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters...

"A week of me focusing on international issues doesn't necessarily translate into higher poll numbers here in the United States because people are understandably concerned about the immediate effects of the economy," he said. "And that's what we will be talking about for the duration."

I've long thought the Obama strategy was to be aggressive on foreign policy and to make himself a credible commander-in-chief/head-of-state figure, which he started doing right away once the primaries ended, and which culminated with last week's trip.

Now, the election is going to focus increasingly on the economy, which means Obama's structural advantages will only grow. McCain - and the Republicans in general, for that matter - are just not credible on economic issues; and wandering around the frozen food section won't change that fact.

[ Parent ]
Absolutely (0.00 / 0)
He took the foreign trip during a lull period, and should have convinced many people that he can act presidential and, more importantly, be treated as presidential by the world's leaders.  

Now he is going to turn to the economy and energy, expanding on his stimulus, investment and refrom plans leading up to the Olympics.  He's got a $5M ad buy during the Olympics, and the best field organization by a Dem the country has ever seen.  McCain can't compete on either level.

Obama has a difficult job because of his race and youth, but in my mind it is certainly a gamble that is worth the risk.  Better that than a grumpy old white guy who looks out of place in a supermarket and hits below the belt in his commercials.  Look for Chuck Hagel and Colin Powell to endorse Obama.  They don't impress the folks here, but we are hardly representative.  He's got to run all over the country, not just in coastal SoCal.  He is smart, patient and very well organized.  The bump is already coming.

John McCain--He's not who you think he is.

[ Parent ]
Man! (0.00 / 0)
If Colin Powell endorses Obama? Game-set-match.
[ Parent ]
And you think .. (0.00 / 0)
people don't remember Powell's UN speech? .. if I were Obama .. I'd stay clear of Powell
[ Parent ]
Still a lot of "wait and see" going on (0.00 / 0)
Most folks aren't paying nearly as much attention to the campaign as we are, and the mainstream media simply isn't reporting all of McCain's gaffes. There is a new study out showing that Obama gets more press coverage, but his coverage is more negative than McCain's.

I think a whole lot of people want to go with Obama, but are going to wait and see a few things:

1. His VP choice
2. His convention & speech
3. Debates

The daily back and forth, the TV ads, that's all just filler. Those three items above are going to be the real meat of the situation. Obama should do "no harm" with his VP pick (don't pick Clinton, Bayh, Nunn), lay into McCain and present a great vision in his DNC speech, and memorize McCain's entire record in preparation for the debates (so that when McCain lies, Obama can call him out on it).

To avoid further confusion and headache (0.00 / 0)
...do as I did so long ago, and ask yourself "why should the polls be considered any more trustworthy than the corporate media or the politicians that they poll?"

Because they shouldn't be trusted. They'll keep the candidates close enough so that the GOP can pull off another election theft. If we let them, and if we don't turn out in overwhelming numbers.

I hope the explanation is not this: (4.00 / 3)
Ninety-five percent of McCain's current support is made up of a commbination of an irreducible core of right wing conservative cool aid drinking voters -- e.g. people who listen to Fox News -- and an irreducible core of folks who don't care for McCain but can't bring themselves to vote for an African-American. So, Obama can drive McCain's numbers down much but has to get undecideds comfortable with him.

John McCain doesn't care about Vets.


I meant to say "can't" drive McCain's numbers down much (0.00 / 0)


John McCain doesn't care about Vets.


[ Parent ]
What are they optimizing for? (4.00 / 4)
As everybody points out, the Obama campaign's smart.  So my assumption would be that they aren't optimizing for short-term poll results, but for the vote in November and the governing coalition starting in January.

Exactly (4.00 / 1)
Huge poll numbers just depress turnout.  So the media trying to keep it looking close helps Obama and his coattails.

And Obama has the time to organize everywhere and reproduce what happened in Iowa everywhere.  

The liberal wiki
Send an email to terra@liberalwiki.com

[ Parent ]
Maybe you asked too early .... (4.00 / 1)
http://www.gallup.com/poll/109...
Gallup has McCain at his lowest point yet, and Obama's lead the highest ever this campaign.

Gallup Daily: Obama 49%, McCain 40%
Third day with Obama holding a significant lead over McCain.....the largest for Obama over McCain measured since Gallup began tracking the general election horse race in March.


--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
McCain is riding on results of 30 years of Republican propaganda (4.00 / 3)
A few days ago I met a 50 year old woman who has lived in New York state all her life. She has been running her own delivery service and making about $4000 a month. She never got a high school diploma and is a staunch Republican.

Suddenly her business is losing its customers due to the economic downturn, she is having trouble paying her bills and is planning to move out of state to seek greener pastures without any appreciation of how the tanking US economy might affect her plans.

She repeated all the core premises that the Republican propaganda machine has been propagating for 30 years (Republicans create jobs, Democrats tax and spend, etc.) while stating her staunch opposition to Obama and intention to vote for McCain.

Although she is well-informed, she made no connection between her deteriorating finances and the policies of the Bush administration and the conduct of its predatory corporate allies. She is an ardent supporter of the war on terrorism and privatizing Social Security.

All of which leads me to conclude that McCain's standing in the polls is riding on the results of 30 years of Republican propaganda and the failure of the Democratic Party and candidates like Obama to frame their policies in terms that wean working class Americans away from Republican propaganda, combined with the difficulties that undiscerning American voters have in recognizing the systemic roots of their current financial and economic dilemmas.

So far neither Obama nor the Democratic Party have yet figured out how to attract voters like the woman I described above.

I agree with Harold Wilensky, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, that winning the 2008 presidential election depends on their potential to frame a platform and build a 2008 Democratic coalition around the "middle mass: about 52% of the 2006 total vote".

This voting bloc is comprised of Republicans and Democrats who have been pulling away from the two major political parties as part of the "de-alignment" phenomenon that has been weakening both.

But in addition to the "middle mass", I believe Wilensky's proposal can also appeal to the victims of Republican propaganda and disaffected and low information voters. He articulates his strategy for doing this in a recent Huffington Post article entitled 2008: Democratic Sweep or A Near Miss?.

The coalition he proposes would be built around "the [2006] voters [who] gave Democrats 59% to 40% for Republicans, a 9% point gain over 2002. This part of the old coalition returns to Democrats when they accent tax fairness, education, family policies, job security, crime control, and the protection of the universalistic programs of the welfare state (national health insurance, guaranteed pensions, disability insurance)".

Hopefully, Obama will study Wilensky's proposals and take them to heart.  

Ditto what others are saying+observations (4.00 / 4)
a) Race. He's black. McCain is white. I don't see why people don't get how that affects life in American.

b) GOP natural infrastructure of last 30 years. There is a natural knee jerk position taken by people now a days  due to their historic voting patterns.

c) I would add our expectations are unrealistic too- Reagan won the popular vote 50.7 to Carters 41 to Anderson (not clear where those votes would have gone) 6 percent . Why should now be any different? Why do you and your friends expect it to be?

d) He's not focusing on the issues that matter to people. Ditto David Mitzer and Paul Rosenberg above. If I had my pick we would have the a kind of fraken-candidate with Obama's inspirational appeal, but Edwards economic appeal. The reality is that a lot of people are suffering. He needs to really address tha suffering, but instead he's doing the Ophra WInfrey thing.

e) He 'gets' part of the times, but not the whole of it. People are not just hungry for a progressive shift , but also one that goes beyond fear. There is a gap between what Obama says he is about with hope and change, and what he then settles on as the issues. That gap is related to people's fears. He needs to find ways to talk about find ways to get people beyond what they fear. So long as fear - for example, of terrorsm- is there, then there will always be a mechanism to slow down change.

Good points, (0.00 / 0)
but I would add that d) and e) aren't necessarily unrelated, given that instability externalized equals fear. A successful progressive shift ought to address economics to go beyond fear. But clearly, as you and others point out, Obama's only doing so much to make to promote that kind of shift.  
[ Parent ]
Obama is a risk candidate. That's one. (4.00 / 1)
He is already breaking molds and peoples assumptions and taking new ground. I have argued in the past for Gore and Edwards for vice president not just because they are progressive, which they are and part of the reason I think we need them, but because they are NOT RISKS. They are comfort candidates, this exercise is not winning an online debate. It is an election, where the swing voters are one time Republican voters, and low information voters and lots of demographics that have not been well addressed in past campaigns. Obama needs factors that make it easy to vote for him, despite the fact that he is first and foremost- the risk candidate, the risk candidate by design. (CHANGE!!)

Obama is running a smart campaign. Can we move forward? can we move left from here? Is there room for better people at his planning sessions? You BET! Matt's article on Merkley was perfect in that regard. But to demand Obama choose your insights over the ones he has trusted to get him this far (and OMG have they done a fantastic job!) over ours, is a little like saying he has to listen to Perteus, and ignore all other considerations when deciding about a direction for Iraq.

It is still our job to get Merkley elected, and put better dems at the table.

--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky

Did I mention Obama has a 9% lead as of today? (0.00 / 0)
http://www.openleft.com/viewQu...

Gallup Daily: Obama 49%, McCain 40%

McCains worst position yet. What will he say, what is the message when he falls into the 30's nationally? Tomorrow?

--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky

[ Parent ]
No real mystery (4.00 / 1)
Obama is making the same mistakes that Kerry did and he is headed for the same fate by being obsessed with proving that he can be trusted on foreign policy. Meanwhile, the most salient issues in 2008 - the economy, gas prices - are for the moment not even being discussed very much.

And don't look now but McCain is about to use gas prices to propel him into the White House. You and I know that offshore drilling, etc. isn't the answer, but watch for McCain to start vigorously advocating such policies, and drawing a contrast between himself and Obama on energy.  

Umm... (4.00 / 1)
Hate to rain on the doom parade, but - Obama's led in like 50 straight national polls.

There is absolutely nothing whatsoever in the structural environment that suggests McCain will improve on his current standing.

Most folks aren't even paying attention to the campaign, and yet Obama - the relatively unknown quantity - has led in like 50 straight national polls.

Why are these facts cause for concern?

Agreed (4.00 / 1)
"Why isn't our candidate ahead by more" is not exactly the worst problem for a campaign to have.

And along the lines of what others have been saying, I think it's pretty hard to generate any real "bounce" in the polls in a presidential race outside of certain specific campaign events: post-primary consolidation of party support, convention acceptance speeches, or debates.  If Obama really is getting a post-overseas-trip bounce to take him close to a double digit lead (and we'll have to see plenty more polling results along those lines before we can really make that claim), I'll be surprised.

McCain's generally positive national image has been keeping him afloat in the polls (behind, but not getting stomped) in spite of his lousy campaign, but I think it would look different if the GOP had nominated anyone else.  Obama-Romney would probably have been 10-15 points in Obama's favor all along.  

[ Parent ]
Well... (0.00 / 0)
Some will say because Obama is a black man... and I do think that might effect a percent or two especially among older voters.  Then again, Hillary would have probably seen the same thing due to her gender.  

I think what ultimately happens is there are people who are afraid that Obama's lack of national experience will lead us into a problem and would rather have someone with a lot of EXTREMELY POOR EXAMPLES of experience vs someone with only 4 years of national experience.   I think a LOT of it depends on how you view the office of the presidency and the role of government in our life... a lot of older voters don't seem to  feel comfortable with someone they view as yound and inexperienced, whereas the younger voters seem to think that vision and ideas trump experience.  

Of course it could be because McCain has had way more paid advertising as of late, there could be some Clinton Supporter Resentment (enough to tilt 1-3% away from Obama), It could be that the LV modeling of the polls is way off (that could work both way) or it could be not enough are paying attention and as they tune in (just like what happened in the primaries) Obama's lead will grow (in the primaries, he closed in on Clinton and passed her).

But a few good attacks could probably end this thing pretty fast.  I can understand the principles vs pragmatic argument Obama would have to consider when attacking McCain... but based on the more desperate crap McCain is spewing, I think Obama needs to hit him hard, put this thing away and go home.

A Question on McCain's Static Position in the Polls | 42 comments
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