about that battleground poll...Nate had a pretty interesting analysis  yesterday.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/09/w hats-wrong-with-battleground-poll.html

...and I almost just spit my cereal out when i saw those new numbers from Quinnipiac!

aight people here we go.

this race is going to get ugly, real ugly. I expect the GOP and their operatives to just go full on destroy Obama.

seriously if I were him I wouldn't laugh at the idea of beefing up that security.

they are going to get damn ugly now.

the McCain camp will start throwing it all at Obama pretty soon.

This maybe the understatement of the week :) It is going to get really ugly.

It's like we've come full circle. All those polloing numbers we saw in the summer on the state and congressional levels showing a Republican meltdown are back. Even Dina Titus is slightly favored in Nevada.

We know the GOP super ugly is coming, but do we think it's gonna work?  I hate to point out the obvious, but the main reason McCain got pwned at the debate is because he came across as mean and bitter.

I wonder out loud:

1) is it too late?  Is there too much ground to make up before election day.  People have already started voting in some places.

2) The primaries did Obama a big favor and pretty much exposed the public to his two biggest achilees heels, Rezko and Wright.  That being said, unless the GOP has something fresh, the ammo they have available has shown itself to be marginally effective the first time, I don't think that stuff has a good second life.  Also, with McCain already under fire for being an outright liar, I don't think the GOP can just make stuff up and have it stick the way it used to.  There are a lot of people doing factchecking now AND a lot of people are waiting for the "October surprise" anyway so the expectations game actually favors Obama.

3) Will it cause Obama to get even better polling numbers?  Honestly, going negative worked with HRC to an extent because she had a strong populist leaning message to go with it.  What does McCain have to couple with a strong negative attack?

4) Its the economy stupid.  It seems lately that whenever someone tries to go all super-partisan they are getting it shoved back in their faces, primarily because the economy is so craptacular that people on both sides are thinking there are far more important things to worry about now.  Unless things magically clear up by election day, the economy is almost like the best force field going for the Democrats.

In the end, the GOP will definately come full boar, especially after Palin stinks up the place tomorrow, but I'm just not sure they have much of a playbook that hasn't already been done or would be effective.

SWEEP!

My (over)confidence is no threat to the outcome. Please don't scold me.

I AM THOROUGHLY AND UNRESERVEDLY ENJOYING THESE NUMBERS!!!!

I was going to say "I can't wait to see Repub downticket candidates running from McCain/Palin," but, now that I think of it, I haven't seen them crowding around McCain/Palin anyway.

If this holds up, we have the makings of a landslide. This could really help down-ticket races. Could we actually get 60 Senators? Can we flip any state houses, or at least make major inroads?

Consider the Florida State House and Senate. You'd be surprised just how dominated it is by Republicans. If Obama can get a strong showing in FL, this would really help out the State Democrats. Not to mention the awesome candidates we have in the grotesquely gerrymandered Congressional districts in Miami.

More importantly, a landslide would put us in an unbelievable position for redistricting in 2010. We see what the Republicans pulled off after the 2000 Census - they basically manufactured their Congressional majority. Let's not even talk about the mess in Texas. If Democrats make inroads at the state level, we can AT LEAST undo the lopsided districting favoring Republicans, and just maybe create districts that favor higher Democratic totals. We have a lot riding on this election.

McCain has at least 100 Rezkos in his past (and present).

I hope Axelrod is ready to expose every one of them.

Remember, early voting is happening NOW.  The time for going hard negative is running out and the GOP will have a tough time coming up with a new tack.

There's a reason Obama has a taken a lead: the economy. Lots of culturally conservative Democrats who didn't trust Obama before are backing him now because of the economy. These voters know all about the "connections" and have stayed away from Obama because of them. But they are Democrats due to economic issues. And as long as the economy tanks, these voters will get beyond culture issues.

That doesn't mean the GOP won't try to push quasi-racist culture war issues. It's just that with the economy the way it is, those measures might not work as well.

It's October already. The time to destroy somebody on culture is August and early September.

Good lord, that's where they WANT the race to go?  Because I assure you, Obama won't go there first, but you can bet he has a map and a GPS to navigate all of McCain's troublesome relationships.

Fight Fire with Fire.  They Bring up Wright.  We bring up Keating Five.  When you just have lost your job, Wright is not going to help bring it back.  We've seen this already.  In away it's to late for McCain to pull that card.  

As for McCain going seriously negative, this is where I'm very glad for how long Clinton was in the race and how many of these issues were aired to the public for so long.  I think that'll be a godsend if the race goes seriously negative over the next few weeks.

Go Sagehens.

This feels like one time where the "throwing the mud" strategy might not work as advertised. Because people have been exposed (massively) to Rev Wright, it is unlikely to have the explosively negative effect it had the first time. Plus, the Obama campaign has been laying the ground work of the "he will say anything to get elected" meme so thoroughly that if McCain does this it is likely to play into that notion.

I do not doubt that they will try to slime Obama in the next week or two, but somehow it feels like this year these things will not prove a winning ticket.

"negative relationship" of all -- with the worst President in American history.

How much damage can Wright do at this point?   All the Republicans that I know, already know all about the Wright tapes and they have already worked them out in their heads.    This was not just a Democratic Primary issue.

I think there are very few people who are actually going to vote this fall who haven't already seen those 'God damn America' tapes.  Most have separated out Wright's actions from Obama's stance.

Jerome, my jaw nearly crashed through the Earth when I read this post. Not one pejorative comment about Obama or his campaign? I believe there is hope in the air, indeed!

In Indiana the RNC is running ads at least twice an hour blaming Obama for the current economic crisis and making a ridiculous claim that Obama wants to spend several trillion to solve it.

The RNC has already pulled out the stops.

I am very disappointed in this post.

For some reason I think this may backfire. People may ask themselves why it is that McCain has been relatively quiet, but then, in the midst of a financial/economic freefall, when job numbers will probably real shitty, unemployment up, and loans drying up, that he now thinks that Obama's relationship with Wright should be the issue to decide the election.

The Obama camp's first maneuver - before McSame gets his attack machine into high gear - should be to paint him as a completely unprincipled Washington politician. His connection to Charles Keating is a good start, followed by his 1250 position changes over the past twenty years, followed by his firm embrace of all things deregulatory and Reagalicious.

The key is to start NOW...don't wait for McCain to trot out Obama's spurious connections to urban terr'ists and snakey Chicago businessmen. They need to kick him while he's down and cover him with rocks.

Get more agressive?  How many often can they call Obama an uppity n**, and who is left to believe it?  

He may not go gutter the way you would normally expect a GOP candidate to do.  He has been known as a clean campaigner pretty much, and even when he took the gloves off against Romney, he was pretty much run of the mill stuff you expect on flip flops, etc.   He didn't pull a Huckabee and go to the religion thing (unless I am mistaken, I didn't follow that race all that close).

McCain may be content to make his case, run clean, and lose.  

I mean he is a month out and he hasn't raised 3 or 4 of the "low hanging fruit" attacks that I'd expect.   Even Clinton touched on cocaine, which might be a problem with Wonder Bread voters in a lot of states.

We're also overlooking the very real possibility that the GOP "attack machine" may be out of order.  What I mean by that is the party is thoroughly splintered right now on the economy, there's no clear ideological or logistical leader, and a lot of the GOP just isn't all that hot on McCain.  I don't know how much political currency the GOP is willing to throw down for McCain, especially given his recent tact from their core ideologies.

We will see in the next few weeks, but I think the lefts fear of "the great GOP smear machine" may be a little blown out of proportion, and that's not overconfidence, just an assessment of the GOP compared to previous election cycles.

Conventional wisdom is that it's been 28 years since the Republicans started dominating the political debate. Some political scientists say that the Republican era actually began in 1968. But whenever the last political era began, the last time we went from a Republican dominant era to a Democratic dominant era was in 1932. That's a whole lifetime ago. Now is the time to pay attention to politics. We may be witnessing a once in a lifetime event as the Reagan era comes to a close, ushering a new Obama era. But we won't know for sure for another 20 years.

Doesn't the electoral map on MyDD go by the RCP averages now? If so, shouldn't North Carolina (+0.07 RCP) be blue? Or do you wait for a lead of >1.0 to change a state? Just curious.

If you Cant Make It, Now It Seems You Can Fake It!  I have been in the real estate business for over 30 years!  Many Many colleagues have told me about their "secrets" to close the deal in order to make the standard 6 percent commission!  Using fake documentation for someone that couldn't qualify under a "normal" loan WAS ENCOURAGED!  With Websites like www.FAKEPAYCHECKSTUBS.com out there, it seems like the "hungry" real estate professional used it's services to defraud the Lender and "help" the loan through the pipeline!  SIC  When is big print going to write about real estates dirty little secret?  

Battleground massively under predicts the amount of young voters that will actually vote.  fivethirtyeight.com had a good post on this a couple of days ago.