I think drew that you STILL haven't gotten over your primary loss, and use every chance you get to bring Hillary into a conversation. And just to remiind you the G.E. is won state by state. We use the electrol college to elect the President. It's done state by state, and by that metric Obama is leading McCain. Thank you for your concern though, it's really helping to elect our democratic nominee.

Do not agree. At all.

The national polling trends are a little silly, since Obama has been making serious gains in the Electoral College all week. Rasmussen always leans a little right, especially in their "Likely Voter" model (something they indirectly admitted a couple weeks ago).

Obama's win in the primaries is a perfect model for what we can expect for the general election: He learned the rules, he played by the rules, he won by the rules.

Do we need an attack dog? No way. We need a member of the team. McCain can attack until he's blue in the face. His surrogates will continue to release contradictory, absurd, and baseless accusations. The RNC will continue to release ads and statements that paint Obama as an elitist  celebrity. This will not change, regardless of who we have as VP.

This election will be won on the ground. No matter what Rasmussen of Gallup is telling you, McCain's attacks do one thing really, really well: they fire up the Democratic base.

For me, I'll stick with the numbers at 538.

I don't put too much faith in tracking polls.

This far out, they're not very useful, but they're good for identifying a trend.

I'm not saying that the sky is falling and McCain is going to win.  What I'm saying is that this election is not going to be a cake walk.

Where have you been?  It was a big controversy a few weeks ago.  McCain troll rated a comment by Obama, and Obama responded by going into McCain's comment history and troll rating like ten random comments.  It was all over Fox News.  What rock have you been living under?  Obama should be banned from the blogs.  What a jerk!

I agree with (and I hate this username) puma.

We were never going to just sail into the White House.  It was always going to be a fight.

Well my claws are out!  Are yours?

It's only a small start on what needs to be done.

the pocket of the oil companies like Bush is.

Agreed.  But at least it's a substance attack.

He'll get photographed with his shirt off in Hawaii, and his poll numbers will rise.

I concur completely. Personally, I think McCain is trying to activate the base and get the low shots in now. It hasn't really dented the polls too much - it reminds of the Wright phase of the primary wars.

However, if you read comments on some of the bigger blogs and newspapers, there's definitely a concerted attack on the blogosphere too, and it does have an impact. Voter registration and local organisation is IMHO more important, but we're going through a dip in morale. Your diary is important to wake us up. The TREND is in Obama's favour, but he's an easy candidate to scare some folks with, and without the progressive left keeping his back, he would be vulnerable.

Remember RCP doesnot include the Research 2000 poll of last week.

Obama 51
McCAIN 39

There is a realignment, but these things are always tendencies. There's no one revolutionary moment. I remember last summer when Obama was well down in the polls, but during that time he and his team were out organising like mad.

There's nothing messianic or inevitable about this, but the strategy worked during the primaries. At this stage, a certain amount of trust is required. It has to be earned, true. But registration and participation at state level is extraordinary, and I am for one pretty convinced by that level of strategy. On the EVs he's still heading for a landslide.

On the bigger propaganda battle, this hopefully will wake the team up a bit. No one said it would be easy to defeat the republican machine. But this the best shot available, and I think it will pay off, bigtime.

There's nothing inconsistent with the two. Tracking polls show a close race, and anything outside of a 3-4 point final margin would be very surprising (for either side).

However, state-by-state electoral polling consistently shows Obama with a giant advantage (303/235 according to FiveThirtyEight, 284/147 with 107 tossup according to Pollster). Furthermore, these electoral maps show a great deal of realignment, with Obama picking up all Kerry states plus Ohio, and a number of formerly red states as tossup or Democratic.

So it's possible for this to be a close race in overall polling and yet not close at all in the Electoral College. There's very little room for McCain to win in the Electoral College -- he has to defend every single tossup state and pick off at least one Kerry state or Ohio, or he's toast. That's an extremely tall order.

Yes, Ras is showing a slight McCain lead. Negative campaigning will do that in the short term. In the longer term, he's trashed his image, started to actively alienate the press and some of his big-money donors, and only gained a couple short-term points for it. This is a pretty good ad campaign -- for late October. For late July it's a disaster.

Yes, Kerry was swiftboated by this time. The difference is that the swiftboating was done by 527's and Bush could pretend to be above it all, whereas this is McCain's campaign itself. The negatives from going negative didn't accrue to the Bush campaign the way the way these are hitting McCain.

Until we see significant movement in the state-by-state polling, this election is not "close" in the terms that actually matter. That doesn't mean there's any room for complacency, but it also means that there's no reason to get too excited about a one-point McCain blip in a tracking poll.

HRC is still a far tougher opponent than McCain will ever be, even counting the likely upcoming 527 slime ads.

That is not correct.  Hillary consistently polled better against McCain than Obama throughout the entire primary season.  And Rasmussen did a poll a couple weeks ago showing Hillary beating McCain by 9 points and hitting 50%.  Obama only beat him by 2 and now Obama is 1 point behind in Rasmussen.  The Clintons know how to beat McCain and have had a strategy to do that for years.  They know how to win.  Obama doesn't have a clue.

I understand your point and I agree with it, but still...a 15 point swing among any group in one week?  That just seems ridiculous. Nothing really happened this week.  

I found the LINK Maybe the diarist will be kind enough to add the link to his diary.  

Gallup has him up by three. Those are yesterday's numbers.

Aw come on BN....remember what I said about holstering your weapons?

Pyschodrew is NOT a PUMA...is NOT a McTroll...is NOT promoting/voting for McCain.

While you (and others, to be sure) like to accuse some C4O's of continuing the Primary battle...you fail to notice that you actively do so yourself.

Save your ammo for the real foes.
They are actually pretty easy to spot if you pay attention.