Now this is just plain embarrassing. In 2004, George W. Bush pulled in about 60 percent of the vote in Nebraska's second congressional district, but there have been signs for a while that the districts single electoral vote may be in play. Indeed, just last week the Obama campaign announced that it was adding another office in Omaha to help in the efforts in the second, and news emerged that the Obama campaign had spent $350,000 advertising in the city (the media market of which spills into Iowa as well) while the McCain campaign had not yet made a similar investment.

The McCain campaign, getting skittish about all of these developments, sent Sarah Palin to Omaha this weekend in the hopes of staving off a loss of this single electoral vote. But rather than just let the action stand for itself, or even being forthcoming about the fact that the electoral vote was in play, the McCain campaign trotted out what has to be the lamest excuse I've heard in a while: Palin saying she just wanted to visit Nebraska.

Sarah Palin said at a hastily scheduled Sunday night rally in this solidly red state that the decision to come here was hers alone and was not the defensive move by her campaign to lock up Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District that many pundits have suggested.

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"And you can ask -- and probably the reporters will ask -- the top dogs in our campaign why am I in Nebraska, and it's truly because I asked to come to the heartland of America today," she said.

It's bad enough that the McCain campaign has been forced to defend Nebraska of all places, but to try to spin away this embarrassment by claiming that Palin just wanted to visit Omaha only compounds the problem. With all we have heard about the able press shop of the McCain campaign, you'd think they'd be able to come up with some better spin than that.

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The Democrats have earned electoral votes from Nebraska once in the last 70 years. Could this be the year to change that trend?

I have noted the possibility before. In short, Nebraska is one of two states that allows its electoral votes to be split up according to the winner of of individual congressional districts, and at the least the anecdotal evidence to this point has suggested that Barack Obama has a chance at making a play for one or even two of the state's five electoral votes. Now, polling out of one of those two congressional districts underscores this reality of this possibility.

According to a new survey from Democratic pollster Anzalone Liszt out of Nebraska's second congressional district (7/27-8/2, likely voters), Obama is down just four points -- 46 percent to 42 percent -- behind John McCain. For reference, George W. Bush pulled in somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 percent of the vote in NE-2 back in 2004, so McCain is significantly underperforming in the Omaha-based district. Considering that campaigns often advertise in the Omaha media market in order to reach into Western Iowa, which is in play on the presidential level this year, we may just need to keep an eye on Nebraska for the first time in a long time.

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