Well, the needle on the Democratic Anxiety O’ Meter seems to have moved this morning, from “Deep Anxiety” to “Near-Panic.” A few developments have made the dread more palpable than usual.<\/p>\n
Development #1<\/b> — A new LAT\/Bloomberg poll<\/a> shows Barack Obama’s national lead over John McCain down to just two points <\/p>\n , 45% to 43%. Most Americans don’t think Obama has the “right” experience to be president; there are far too many racists who question the color of Obama’s skin; and after a barrage of negative attacks and smear tactics from McCain, Obama’s favorable rating has slid from 59% to 48% since June.<\/p>\n Development #2<\/b> — A new Reuters\/Zogby poll<\/a> shows McCain taking the national lead over Obama by five <\/p>\n , 46% to 41%. The poll showed Americans preferring McCain on the economy by nearly double digits, and about one-fourth of Democratic voters withholding their support for Obama.<\/p>\n Development #3<\/b> — Real Clear Politics’ electoral-vote map shows McCain crossing the 270-vote threshold<\/a> for the first time today, leading Obama 274 to 264.<\/p>\n So, is it time to jump out the window? Probably not. To borrow a Douglas Adams line, “Don’t panic.” Compra Minocin Online<\/a><\/p>\n , effectively topping the single best week McCain has had in months.<\/p>\n For that matter, McCain and his cohorts have been attacking Obama relentlessly and dishonestly, and going negative tends to work.<\/p>\n Why not panic <\/p>\n , then? Because, to borrow a sports metaphor, the regular season is ending and the playoffs are poised to get underway. Obama may be “backing in” to the post-season, but by most estimations, despite all of the discouraging developments, he’s still<\/i> positioned pretty well, both in national polls<\/a> and in the electoral-vote count<\/a>.<\/p>\n Obama has been pacing himself, and the more aggressive tone we’ve seen the past couple of days is pretty new. What’s more, in a trend we’ll talk more about later, Obama’s campaign has been focusing heavily on the ground game, which isn’t reflected in the polls.<\/p>\n It’s not a completely analogous situation, but I can think of plenty of times I heard Obama fans’ handwringing last fall, when it appeared he just wasn’t going to be able to defeat Hillary Clinton. Obama was, however, taking his time, methodically executing a specific strategy. I underestimated him more than a few times before, but he managed to do pretty well, and I’m still inclined to give the campaign team at least some of the benefit of the doubt.<\/p>\n Forgive the cliche , but everything’s about to change pretty dramatically — running mates + conventions = new campaign dynamic.<\/p>\n Breathe. And stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well, the needle on the Democratic Anxiety O’ Meter seems to have moved this morning, from “Deep Anxiety” to “Near-Panic.” A few developments have made the dread more palpable than usual. Development #1 — A new LAT\/Bloomberg poll shows Barack Obama’s national lead over John McCain down to just two points Taking conditions may restrict […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16652\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
\nHas Obama lost some ground recently? I think it’s pretty obvious that he has, but let’s also consider the context — Obama was off the campaign trail completely a week ago, while McCain was responding daily to Russian aggression. For that matter, McCain was the perceived “winner” of the event at the Saddleback Church on Saturday night <\/p>\n