The Poll Up My Keister

Much sturm und drang has been made of the recent August polls showing McSame has tightened up the race considerably, to the point where he's even ahead now in one of them. As I said yesterday, I do not honestly see how McSame can possibly be leading Obama on the issue of the economy at all. In a number of polls, "the economy" ranks as the number one issue of the election with around 45-50% saying it's the most important issue, and yet in the Zogby poll, McSame leads Obama by 9 points on the issue.

So what's the deal? Big Orange says it's just a poll, you should really just relax...after all it's a Zogby poll.

Some people are frackin' hopeless. Really. At the same time, a new Q-poll has Obama up five, Gallup has him up three (after being tied a couple of days ago), Ras has him up two, as does Bloomberg/Times.

Look, the race is tightening at the national level, but it's much less tight when you look at the state-by-state numbers that, you know, actually decide the presidency. So while it's not exactly a cakewalk, freaking out over single polls from shitty, discredited pollsters like Zogby is pretty pathetic.

We've got the veep announcements and the conventions to get through, and then the race will start in earnest. Be zen. Freaking out over crappy pollsters is just lame. Keep your eye on the composite -- Obama still leads that by 1.4 percent -- and maintain perspective -- McCain has never crossed the 45 percent threshold while Obama bobs between 45 and 50.

I'll be officially worried when McCain shows the ability to break that barrier of support. If he suddenly starts hovering in the upper 40s, then we might have trouble. But ultimately, this is a state-by-state battle. And in the electoral college fight, Obama still has a solid lead -- without even taking into account the ground machine Obama is building (pollsters aren't).

Kos has a very valid point, last night I realized that while McSame has succeded in peeling off some Obama supporters back into the undecided category, he hasn't put those undecided supporters into his bank yet. McSame is still polling right around 45%. Again, things are about as good as they get for McSame: only recently has Obama really gone on the attack, Russia/Georgia is still fresh on voter's minds, and Obama did reverse his position on offshore drilling. And even with all that...he's still at 45%.

If this is the pinnacle of McSame's power, then Obama can only get better from here. I honestly believe he will.