NBC/WSJ pollFollow

Obama's polling was in the same 2% band (46-48) pretty much since May. This is the first time he's really dropped out of it (with 45% average).

The WSJ poll seems to show that McCain's bounce is leveling off (Rasmussen today was Obama +1 again although Gallup still shows McCain +5). We're back to a nearly tied race from a national standpoint, same as it was just prior to the conventions when you were last gloating over some poll.

Jo, in the article I linked it showed...

In that poll, Obama holds a narrow one-point lead over McCain (47-46 percent), which is down from his three-point advantage in August (45-42 percent) and six-point edge in July (47-41 percent).

July: 6 percentage lead
August: 3 percentage points
September: 1 percentage point

This shows a steady and hopefully inexorable decline in Obama's popularity, which would lead to a solid McCain victory in November.

Totem

Yeah, that would be why people use polling averages and not one exclusive poll.

Those who think that grossly underestimate the number of conservative women and the number of moderate and even traditionally Democrat voting women who identify with the goal of empowering women but don't necessarily buy into the rest of the feminist movement. You're assuming those latter groups have voted historically Dem because they agree with the whole Liberal platform rather than in spite of it.

They also grossly underestimate the degree to which a candidate's personality and history matter more than their gender.



You wont see much of that because it's a losing argument outside of those people who'll be voting for him anyway. Only those in the hard core "Bush lied and our soldiers died" crowd will be swayed by that line. It also ends up smacking too much of looking backwards rather than forwards. And it opens up the far more recent and relevant issue of the surge, which Obama just plain loses on. What it says is that Obama opposed the war, but when it happened anyway, instead of looking forward and figuring out how to make the best of it, he acted like a child who wanted to take his toys away when he didn't get what he wanted. That's not exactly presidential. People expect presidents to make decisions based on how the situation is today, not make decisions that'll make that situation worse in order to lend strength to an "I told you so" argument.

Oh. It also highlights his own inexperience. He wasn't in Congress to be part of making that decision anyway, so he ends up looking like the armchair quarterback. It's easy to hold an opposing position when you weren't actually responsible for having to make the decision at the time, and doubly easy to say "I was right" after the fact. Ultimately, this line of attack loses him more than it gains IMO.

Additionally, the torture thing is a no-gainer since McCain also opposed many of the Bush administration policies in the area of prisoner interrogation. Quite strongly, in fact. He'll only make himself look bad in comparison and weaken his whole "McCain is just like Bush" argument. Once more, it's just lose/lose if Obama goes in this direction.

If it were that much the be-all, we wouldn't have a dozen other outfits.

I know you really want to make the point that Obama is in a free-fall or whatever but chosing to use one exclusive poll over the collected data of many polls isn't the way to make that argument.