It's amazing what a bit of substance can do. On another note, I have the feeling Obama needs to come up with a punchy answer to what he'll do about the economy. He's not a soundbite guy, for the most part. But he needs a phrase or slogan to breakdown his message to an edible bite.

Pufferfish

And McCain is running on empty. Palin has brought her surge, the bounce has happened, people are realizing who these people are, and the polls are reflecting that.

McCain has lost his integrity, Palin still can't give interviews, what upshot do they have? Gaffe's by Obama/Biden are the only things they have unless somehow McCain goes Rambo and brings Bin Laden in by the hair to one of his debates.

The storm has passed. The outlook is sunny skies from here till November.

Danny:

So true. Maybe "We don't need 4 more years like the last 8 years or we'll need 100 years to dig us out of this mess."

These make me feel better but Obama is going to have to be up by considerably more in November to make up for the Bradley effect and for the Repugs who are going to try and steal it.

Remember that these are rolling polls. In order to account for the move away from the big McCain lead, that means that yesterday's polls showed much bigger Obama leads than this. Expect Obama's numbers to go substantially higher in the coming days.

Cant wait to see that triple P poll from Va later today

the lilt back toward Barack Obama is a reflection our economy and disastrous news thats accompanied the economy. Today, in Colorado Obama rip McCain a new ass' if he continues to talk assertive and forceful on the economy he will not only win the election, but he'll win in a landslide.

I guess we all needed a bit of good news after a jittery couple of weeks. But this doesn't mean much either.

I'm hoping economy stays at the front and the center, it's not palin, mccain, or even Obama- economy, economy and economy will take us home.

...and I promise you, WE WILL NEVER PUT AMERICA IN THIS POSITION AGAIN.

Blogger on Kos caught this at end of Mccain' yawner today...can Obama use it to frame the current issue as Mccain's doing? In essence Mccain is asking for a mulligan...

Please make a big splash video post of Obama's Economy speech from this morning in Golden, CO. It was nothing short of amazing in its judicious mix of serious policy prescription, quick history of how we got here, McCain's complicity in it and his paralysis after the fact.

It was political theater for intelligent people...

...and I promise you, WE WILL NEVER PUT AMERICA IN THIS POSITION AGAIN.

Probably not again in your lifetime, if you're lucky.

But believe me, American will be in this position again and much worse.

It's an historical loop - we go back and forth, right and left, up and down. All nations do.

The McCain camp wheels are falling off. People are all over the place with the message, and sure Obama is getting in great shots, but the McCain Camp is really off their meds this week. I do think btw that the effect of Karl Rove telling a small bit of truth is having right now has been overestimated. They never, ever do that. They have been robotic is their goal of staying on message and not being self critical. Now all of the sudden the "Architect" slips up? There is a piece of the puzzle missing. Is it possible that the choice of Palin was indeed McCain's middle finger to Rove? by extension then, is it also not possible that McCain is being sacrificed by his own party in response? While the numbers on the national polls are all over the place, the internals and polls on specific issues all but guarantee that the Repubs are going to get creamed. That being said, as the days pass and things start to look worse, how long are these gamblers going to back this lame horse? Actually, it might be advantagous for them to torpedo McCain for many reasons:
1) blame the problems bush and the repub congress created on a democratic administration. remember IOKIYAR
2) praise McCain for bravely falling before Obama's "scurillous" attacks
3) Have Mittens run as the great uniter of the party, and try to use his mormonism to paint the GOP as a diverse party.

It is still a long time untill the election, but it is clear that the McCain camp is having technical difficulties right now.

Any more than the CLEARLY republican biased rassmussen and gallup polling? eeegads fool!

HusseinTenaX says "Probably not again in your lifetime, if you're lucky. But believe me, American will be in this position again and much worse. It's an historical loop - we go back and forth, right and left, up and down. All nations do."

She should have added unless Oilbama, who voted for the Bush Cheney Energy Bill, is elected.
But I do have to give her congrats on being able to string together so many words without using vulgarities, it must have been very difficult for her.

McCain got a convention/Palin bounce. Now the race is gradually going back to an Obama 1-3 point advantage. Basically, both candidates riled up their base and that skewered the polling.

We now have a tighter race were previous "undecideds" who were always going to vote the same way they always vote have committed. I've never bought into the notion that up to 15% of the electorate is "undecided" even after the primaries. What's left is probably no more than the 3-5 percent of the electorate that can truly swing and waits til after the debates.

Can anyone tell me why Obama's ads aren't hammering McCain for

1) Trying to privatize Social Security again? You could put together a very hard attack pointing out that McCain's plan will destroy Social Security by cutting off the funds reserved for paying current and future beneficiaries.

2) As Bob Herbert pointed out in today's NYTimes, McCain is also trying to destroy the only part of today's anemic health insurance system that works -- group health insurance, in favor of moving everyone to individual plans. This is just plain stupid -- individual plans avoid spreading risk among a large group, with the result that your individual policy immediately becomes unaffordable if you ever need to use it.

3) If Obama really wanted to take a risk, he could point out that Palin wants to make it illegal for someone who's been raped to use the morning after pill. Considering the heat generated by any mention of abortion, however, that's perhaps best left to the Planned Parenthood Action Committee.

Nice, but still pretty close. It is hard to understand that after these eight years, this is still a hard fight. Makes me wonder if we all are from the same planet.

Expect OBama to continue to rise in Gallup and Rasmussen in the next day or so as +McCain numbers fall by the wayside.

There was little evidence of the Bradley effect in the primaries and in many instances, including states like Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, Missouri, South Carolina and Iowa, Obama actually over-performed his poll numbers.

Certainly there will be some who will vote against Obama based on his race and then claim otherwise, but I also think there are lots of life-long Republicans (some in my family in fact), particularly well-educated ones, who will vote for Obama, not only because of his ability and policies, but because voting for the first African American president will make them fell better about themselves and the country.

Finally, I think that any Bradley effect will be overwhelmed by a highly motivated African American vote (which seems to be getting little discussion in the press), and newly registered voters.

Well, doh! Of course, the polls are moving back. The Palin Convention bounce is at its tail end. The polls are going to move back to where they were pre-convention.

Add in some serious hammering on McCain on the economy and continuing Palingates and the trend in Obama's favor will continue. McCain will be stuck and unable to break through again. There will be nothing he can do except spew out endless negative ads and pray that Obama makes a gaffe. Which was the same strategy that Clinton tried as her campaign was in its death throes, and it didn't work. Won't work for McCain either.

This is proof in Obama's ability to play the long game. The guy has nerves of steel.

FWIW, Research 2000 now has Palin's favorable/unfavorables at +1

Forgive my ignorance, but has anyone bothered to ask, How accurate are the polls? If it is true that Obama's people have registered about 12,000,000 new voters in the last year or so, how -- if at all -- does this affect the validity of any national or state-wide polling data? When setting sample sizes and generating the list of voters to call in their polls, don't pollsters make certain evidence-based assumptions (premised on historical indicators and data) regarding the number of people and types of people (e.g. likely voter, registered voter, etc.) in the state or national electorate? If they do not accurately perform that function -- by failing to take into correct account the numbers and locations of new voters -- how does this affect their poll results/conclusions (particularly if you assume 12,000,000 newly registered voters nationally who have no voting history/record)?