And the USA Today Poll has confirmation: (4.00 / 3)

Obama 50%, McCain 43%.

---

by: Nudge @ Mon Sep 01, 2008 at 17:30:33 PM CDT

My world is torn asunder! The center cannot hold! (4.00 / 2)

I thought all news was GREAT NEWS FOR JOHN McCAIN!!!

---

by: stevie314 @ Mon Sep 01, 2008 at 17:36:03 PM CDT

You didn't hear... (0.00 / 0)

An Electoral blowout is fantastic news for John McCain.  It means he can go spend more time at his many houses.

---

by: yitbos96bb @ Mon Sep 01, 2008 at 19:38:22 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

But the center does hold. (4.00 / 1)

   The center is held in place by turtles...turtles!  All the way down!

John McCain lets lobbyists shape his economic policy

---

by: cilerder86 @ Mon Sep 01, 2008 at 21:25:48 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Let's Not Be Hasty (4.00 / 1)

This is definitely a good sign, but I think jubilation would be misplaced at this juncture.  As I recall, there was a great deal of confidence surrounding Kerry's lead (although if memory serves me, things were already trending Bush at this same point then) only to see him lose the election in Ohio.  Really, I don't think we can heave a sigh of relief until Obama is inaugurated given the inevitable legal challenges and likely GOP tricks even after he wins the election.  

---

by: planefinder @ Mon Sep 01, 2008 at 17:39:20 PM CDT

No one has a sigh of relief. (4.00 / 6)

I for one am driven harder by this. Now we can begin to move to get 62 Democratic Senators in this election, now I am eager to elect Darcy Burner and a House full of Better Democrats. Now is the time to open more conduits of discussion, now its time to encourage more voices to speak, now its time to say that single payer healthcare will cover every American without a bill, no matter how sick you are or ever were, and cost the country 30 % less than we pay now.

Im not relieved, because now I cant just sit back and feel angry and shout blame, now I have to actually build a country worthy of Americans. If you sighed in relief its because you haven't realized how much work saving the country and the world will be.

Change
"We must break up the banks and never again let them get so big that they distort our politics and take down the economy.

---

by: HousesofProgress @ Mon Sep 01, 2008 at 17:55:05 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Houses, you ALWAYS provide the right boost attitude-wise! (0.00 / 0)

62 Democratic Senators - I haven't heard anyone say that in months!  Thanks.  :)

---

by: Syrith @ Mon Sep 01, 2008 at 18:07:56 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

And there's always the super-secret fail-safe option too (4.00 / 1)

to get two more Dem senators if we need to.

Chuck Grassley for Sec. Ag. and Susan Collins for Sec. Transportation!

---

by: adamterando @ Mon Sep 01, 2008 at 18:10:36 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

I stopped getting excited about inter-convention polls... (4.00 / 1)

...after 1988, when a poll taken after the Democratic convention showed Dukakis leading Bush by 18.  A few weeks later, just after the Republican convention (during which time the only news was the selection of Dan Quayle, the draft-dodging controversy about him, and Bush's "thousand points of light" acceptance speech), the same poll had Bush ahead.

For that matter, in 1984 (the year the Democrats managed to capture a whopping one state in November), a poll taken immediately after the Democratic convention showed Mondale leading the incumbent Reagan by a few percentage points.  Needless to say, after the Republican convention, Reagan was back up by double-digits, and matters only went downhill from there.

I thoroughly expect McCain to be tied or ahead a week from now.  My hope is that his convention bounce, too, will dissipate, and mid-September will find us either tied or with a narrow Obama lead.  I will say, however, that, if next weekend still finds Obama ahead by five points or more, the G.O.P. ticket is in deep trouble.

---

by: regnaD kciN @ Mon Sep 01, 2008 at 18:11:59 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

true (0.00 / 0)

a small but significant Obama lead has been the norm for months regardless of the occasional poll showing him ahead by more or the race even. But one thing we didn't have in the 1980s was the shear volume of polling which allows us to look at "poll of polls" like the one at pollster.com:

http://www.pollster.com/polls/...

I do expect a things will be back to the 3-4 point lead in mid-September but unexpected events (Palin) could change that. That's part of what makes it interesting.

---

by: tremayne @ Mon Sep 01, 2008 at 18:22:06 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Interesting... (4.00 / 1)

I notice that "poll of polls" includes the CNN result (O +1), but not the Gallup/USA Today (O +7) or CBS (O +8).

Even so, what's most notable about the trend lines is that both candidates are going steeply up.  In other words, undecideds are starting to fall one way or another, and Obama is maintaining his lead.  That makes it much harder for McCain to win by simply winning over the remaining undecided voters -- he'll have to peel some away from the Obama camp, and, as time goes on, that will become increasingly difficult.

(Of course, I'll add the caveat that nothing should be regarded as highly significant until after the Republican convention is history, and we can judge one convention bounce against the other.  But, if the main goal of a convention is to sway undecideds to your side, McCain is going to have to do a heckuva job this week to catch up or pull ahead that way.)

---

by: regnaD kciN @ Mon Sep 01, 2008 at 18:32:54 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

And, yet, they are still pursuing the Rovian... (0.00 / 0)

...base strategy!  Palin was a pick generated to energize the base...

McCain was smart enough to know that he had to pick someone like Lieberman that could appeal to independents, but then his base would collapse...

We'll see what happens... as long as they don't effectively play the "Good Ol' Boys club picking on Sarah Palin" card, we should be in pretty good shape, hopefully!

REID: Voting against us was never part of our arrangement!
SPECTER: I am altering the deal! Pray I don't alter it any further!
REID: This deal keeps getting worse all the time!

---

by: lord_mike @ Mon Sep 01, 2008 at 17:42:34 PM CDT

state polls please (4.00 / 1)

This is encouraging for sure, but where are all the state polls? It's still an electoral college contest in the end. I want to see how the 2 complete tickets fare against each other in polls in Ohio, Colorado, North Carolin, Virginia, Montana, Florida, Nevada, Alaska, and New Hampshire.

---

by: redwards95 @ Mon Sep 01, 2008 at 18:04:07 PM CDT

No point in doing state polls until both conventions are over (0.00 / 0)

---

by: NR @ Tue Sep 02, 2008 at 00:53:59 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Some cautionary advice from Joe Trippi (4.00 / 8)

Until reading Joe Trippi's recent comments (see excerpts below), I couldn't see any McCain-Palin strategy that could do more than mobilize the hard core of the rightwing base.  Trippi sees a more expansive strategy and suggests Obama and the Dems take it seriously and be ready to counter it as effectively and quickly as possible.  

As usual, the facts favor us, but that hasn't stopped the Repubs in the past from bamboozling enough voters to win.   And, as many have pointed out, the Palin pick and McCain overall are very vulnerable on multiple fronts.  

I think the key is to nip this potential "narrative" in the bud, and to do so clearly and forcefully (with a compelling counter-narrative backed by easy-to-understand facts).  And while Obama has shown himself to be a very capable counter-puncher, I'd also like to see his campaign be proactive on this, laying out and linking some key foundational arguments, facts and contrasts with McCain ASAP.

http://www.realclearpolitics.c...

Here are some excerpts from Trippi:

McCain said of this pick..."I found someone with an outstanding reputation for standing up to special interests and entrenched bureaucracies; someone who has fought against corruption and the failed policies of the past."

The McCain campaign plans on making an assault on Barack Obama's strength as a change agent. And challenge, what the McCain campaign will describe as, Obama's weak or non-existent attacks on corruption within the Democratic party and other institutions throughout his career.

The McCain/Palin duo will challenge Barack Obama's claim of "a new kind of politics" and chastise Obama and Democratic Vice Presidential Nominee, Joe Biden, for their "silence" in taking on corruption in their own party in Illinois, Delaware and Washington, DC.

The McCain campaign intends to claim that "more of the same" in Washington means Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and will make the argument that if you want to "shake things up" then McCain and his reform minded running mate from Alaska will get the job done.

...I expect John McCain to say "I love my party, but I love my country more".  Sarah Palin amplifies that part of the McCain brand, and helps to move McCain further from being identified with the Bush GOP even while exciting some of the most conservative elements within it.

...Can the McCain of 2008 morph back to the McCain of 2000? Only if Democrats laugh out loud at Palin, let their guard down, and let it happen.

George Lakoff has some cautionary words that compliment Trippi's:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

The initial Democratic response to Palin -- the response based on realities alone -- indicates that many Democrats have not learned the lessons of the Reagan and Bush years.

They have not learned the nature of conservative populism. A great many working-class folks are what I call "bi-conceptual," that is, they are split between conservative and progressive modes of thought. Conservative on patriotism and certain social and family issues, which they have been led to see as "moral," progressive in loving the land, living in communities of care, and practical kitchen table issues like mortgages, health care, wages, retirement, and so on.

Conservative theorists won them over in two ways: inventing and promulgating the idea of "liberal elite" and focusing campaigns on social and family issues. They have been doing this for many years and have changed a lot of brains through repetition. Palin will appeal strongly to conservative populists, attacking Obama and Biden as pointy-headed, tax-and-spend, latte liberals. The tactic is to divert attention from difficult realities to powerful symbolism.

...What is at stake in this election are our ideals and our view of the future, as well as current realities. The Palin choice brings both front and center. Democrats, being Democrats, will mostly talk about the realities nonstop without paying attention to the dimensions of values and symbolism. Democrats, in addition, need to call an extremist an extremist: to shine a light on the shared anti-democratic ideology of McCain and Palin, the same ideology shared by Bush and Cheney. They share values antithetical to our democracy. That needs to be said loud and clear, if not by the Obama campaign itself, then by the rest of us who share democratic American values.

Our job is to bring external realities together with the reality of the political mind. Don't ignore the cognitive dimension. It is through cultural narratives, metaphors, and frames that we understand and express our ideals.

---

by: mitchipd @ Mon Sep 01, 2008 at 18:06:20 PM CDT