The N.Y. Times reports this nice bit of news, that Obama has opened up a sizable lead over McCain in the latest CBS poll. Obama’s favorables are up to the highest they’ve ever been, McCain’s are down to the lowest they’ve ever been.
I’m not foolish enough to believe that this is the end of the campaign or even the beginning of the end. There is a long way to go till November 4th and five weeks is a lifetime in presidential politics. After all, the bailout fiasco which apparently did so much damage to McCain’s image, was a very unusual development. One doesn’t know how the fallout will play out from this. Does the bailout have “legs” as a political issue (as I suspect it does)? Or will it recede into the political woodwork as Katrina did for Bush, in a few days or weeks? As long as it continues to occupy the public’s attention, McCain remains wounded.
And this is not a helpless candidate by any means. He can still land serious blows on Obama and potentially derail his campaign in any number of ways.
Bush’s favorability rating is down to 22%! The lowest since Harry Truman in the Korean War. Who’d a thunk it only five years ago when he rode high in the saddle into the Iraq War?
One of the most delicious pieces of news from this story concerns Sarah Palin’s receding prospects:
The Pew poll found that 51 percent of respondents said she was not qualified to be president, compared with 37 percent who said she was. That is a reversal from early last month, when 52 percent of respondents said Ms. Palin was qualified to be president.
She’s lost 15 percentage points in less than a month. That’s a candidate in free fall, perhaps without a parachute given her recent performance in Katie Couric’s CBS interview. When I first started writing about her after McCain chose her I wondered why the American public wasn’t seeing what I was seeing. My hope and conviction was that this would be a process that wouldn’t happen instantaneously. But that a campaign of a thousand paper cuts, perhaps inflicted by liberal bloggers and her own hubris, would eventually bring her to her knees, which is more or less what has happened. Now, let’s see if this impression is reinforced in tomorrow’s V.P. debate.
I only hope that tonight’s debate goes well for Biden. His often ill-timed inappropriateness combined with her TV likeability (when she knows what to say) could be a real positive for her.
Great Headline for “The New York Times”
“McCain/Palin poll ratings tanking like The New York Times market share”
Not to worry, the Times will have the final laugh since they can try to give the paper away with adult chat lines advertised on the back pages a la The Village Voice since by now they have the same readership.
As for the election, this time last year the McCain campaign was all but abandoned and that was before the advent of “Sarah-cuda” who has the ability to make “progressives” froth more than an esspresso machine on the fritz at Starbucks so you are correct not to count them out just yet.
Remember, last time the politically astute of the world would have had John Kerry on his second term by now with the emergency airlift and fall of Baghdad and not the success of the surge being the prime election issues.
In the 2012 debates I hope we avoid ever having President Obama being challenged about kicking the Israeli Government in exile out of their compound near Camp David (final irony) and sending Jimmy Carter to inspect the radioactive ashes while starting the next “peace process”.
@Rob: I think the N.Y. Times will probably be around a lot longer than either you or I regardless of whatever crisis is besetting the newspaper business. You also neglect that all of yr beloved right wing newspapers are faring just as poorly as the “spawn of the devil” N.Y. Times.
You’re really just shootin’ yer mouth off now aren’t ya?? You come across as a blowhard. But that prob. doesn’t concern you, now does it?
The McCain campaign WAS abandoned last yr. He ran amidst an incredibly weak primary cohort and managed to stand out just enough to win. He’s run a lackluster campaign so far because he frankly doesn’t have much to offer the American people. It’s possible he’ll run a more competitive race as we get closer to the election. Hell, it’s even possible he’ll win. But unlike you, I don’t go spouting off like a moron as if the thing’s in the bag for either candidate.
BTW, you’re babbling…