Poll dancing

The Obama camp must be reeling. Polls are showing the Illinois senator trailing.

A reference to the latest polls showing McCain ahead of Obama by 10 points (says USA Today)? No, that first sentence is a throwback to polling data between April 28 and May 4, which showed Hillary Clinton ahead of Barack Obama (depending on which poll you followed).

Three polls had Clinton's lead nationally between 3 and 7 percent. It should also be noted five polls that overlapped the same period showed Obama with leads of 1 to 12 percent. Also,

Now if you're looking at Sept. 8 polls, (and Real Clear Politics keeps track of current and past polling data) McCain leads by 1 percent (Rasmussen) or 10 percent (USA Today/Gallup). One only needs to go back to Friday, Sept. 5, to see Obama with a 6 percent lead (Hotline/FD).

With all these numbers jumping back and forth, what to they mean? Nothing - and everything.

If the McCain/Palin bump is because voters are supportive of a woman on the VP slot or sympathetic to "negative" Palin stories, that's likely a temporary cycle. What can Obama do about that? Send Biden to Switzerland for sex-change operation? Dump old Joe for Hillary?

If polls favor one candidate over another on the issues, then a candidate might address those perceptions to win over those potential voters. That's a potential risky proposal, depending on the issue. If surveys showed people heavily in favor of the war in Iraq, it would be unrealistic for Obama to suddenly change course and say he now supports the war. But if it's an economic issue and the landscape has changed (i.e. - the government control of the mortgage crisis) that action can change what a candidate had previously said on the issue.

There's only one true "poll" that matters. That will occur on Nov. 4, and the answer made in ballot boxes across the country will be binding.

What the 40s think

What are those in the forties (and some in the 30s) about the upcoming presidential race?

A Florida Chamber of Commerce poll taken in August shows McCain with a 42 to 41 percent edge over Obama in the 40- to 49-age group in the state (42 to 39 percent overall). A national poll in August by the Pew Research Center shows Obama leading McCain 47 to 43 percent in the 30- to 49-age group. The most recent Gallop Poll (conducted Aug. 25 to 31) shows Obama leading 30 to 49 year olds by 3 percentage points (48 to 45).

Of course, we have this crazy democracy that says an Electoral College - not the popular vote - wins the election. In that regard, Real Clear Politics is tracking the Electoral College map. As of Sept. 5, it shows Obama with 238 electoral votes in states solidly backing him or leaning in that direction, while McCain has 185 electoral vote by the same tally. RCP lists 115 electoral votes as toss ups. But those include two biggies - Florida (27) and Ohio (20) - and McCain is currently leading the polls right now.

Rally cry or bedtime story

Republicans (and for a while, Hillary Clinton) say Obama is nothing but a speech.

But if you heard his address at the Democratic National Convention, it's easy to see how Obama uses his words to stir up crowds into a frenzy.

McCain's speech to Republicans came across (on TV anyway) like a bedtime story. "Once there was a man who went to war ..."

Granted, we need to look beyond rhetoric and negatives ads and find out what the candidates really stand for. And I'll give credit to both Obama and McCain for spelling out some of that vision in their respective speeches.

The debates should be interesting. The key will be to really listen to what their saying, not how their saying it. Obama, tested by debate queen Hillary Clinton in 20-some debates and town hall meetings, should blow McCain out of the water in terms of appearance. But Obama needs to be careful: People are listening closely and paying attention in greater detail this time. Both candidates need to provide details while NOT sounding like a rote presentation on policy (kind of like Hillary).

Palin brings energy to the campaign

Maybe John McCain knew what he was doing after all.

Sarah Palin's speech to Republican delegates obviously delighted the partisan audience. And although she said John McCain's POW tenure is why we should elect him president - as a prisoner of war, he knows how to get the country through the torture of his presidency - Palin hit upon what may end up being the key issue in the election: Gas prices.

Here's what I'm talking about:

"When a hurricane strikes in the Gulf of Mexico, this country should not be so dependent on imported oil that we are forced to draw from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And families cannot throw away more and more of their paychecks on gas and heating oil. With Russia wanting to control a vital pipeline in the Caucasus, and to divide and intimidate our European allies by using energy as a weapon, we cannot leave ourselves at the mercy of foreign suppliers. To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of world energy supplies ... or that terrorists might strike again at the Abqaiq facility in Saudi Arabia ... or that Venezuela might shut off its oil deliveries ... we Americans need to produce more of our own oil and gas. And take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska: we've got lots of both."

Palin may be person best suited to address the oil issue. She knows what Alaskan oil and gas production can do for this country.

With oil prices stabilizing, the issue is pushed further back in our minds. (Actually, with both sides launching attack ads, you wonder if either said cares about issues.) But if the price of oil starts rising and Americans are clamoring for relief at the pumps, the gal who looks good in pumps or heels has a ready answer to heal our pocketbooks.

Now if someone can just give us a good reason to election McCain, the Republicans might just win the whole darn thing.

Stunning? Or just stunned?

John McCain will have two good looking women up there now that's he chosen Sarah Palin, 44, to be his vice presidential choice. She certainly is something to look at, but she brings some real non-Washington politics to the table.

We’ll know in about a month if this was brilliant strategy to win the race or if he gambled big and lost. He’s certainly trying to appeal to a lot of people here.

This certainly takes the news-cycle winds out of a strong Obama acceptance speech on Thursday night.

Now we've got two 40-somethings on national tickets.

War and economic impact

So who is right between McCain and Obama when it comes to the war in Iraq?

It’s impossible today to predict the political landscape on Nov. 4. But Americans in general vote their pocketbook.

A recent Gallup poll shows 61 percent of Americans saying the economy – not the war in Iraq – is the No. 1 issue.

While the Iraq/Afghanistan conflict may not be on people’s minds as much, the question is what is overall economic impact of its cost? (FYI: The Congressional Budget Office put war’s outlay at $170 billion in 2007– that’s $465,753,424 per day, $19,406,392 per hour, $323,439 per minute, or $5,390 per second.)

A story earlier this year in MarketWatch.com offered pros and cons to the war’s impact on the U.S. economy.

On the plus side, the money spent is a “just a drop in the bucket” compared to overall government spending, while citing that the economy is stimulated due to the extra expenses for the way.

(C)old war strategies switch parties

With war waging in a far-away land, one political party opts to escalate the conflict with higher troop numbers and extend the time commitment to fight. The opposing political party leader decides a better tactic is meeting with the enemy and withdrawing soldiers from the conflict.

John McCain and Barack Obama? No. The above is a simplified version of the Kennedy/Johnson and Nixon administrations during the Vietnam War.

During Vietnam, the Democratic leadership of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson escalated soldiers – which carried the euphemistic title of “military advisers” – from the Eisenhower-era number of less than 1,000 to more than 500,000 by the time Johnson left office in 1969.

Republican President Richard Nixon halved the fighting force by the end of his second year in office and had his foreign policy expert Henry Kissinger begin secret peace negotiations with the North Vietnamese.

Fast-forward to 2008, and it’s the Republican McCain who had made statements about staying in Iraq “100 years” if necessary and the Democrat Obama who wants begin troop withdrawals and meet with foreign governments that pose a threat to U.S. interests.

The problem in affixing general labels to elected officials is that the “party line” doesn’t always fit.

By definition – if not by his actions as a congressman and vice president – Nixon should have been a staunch anti-communist for life. Instead, one can connect the dots on America’s foreign policy achievements back to Nixon, whose mastery of world politics thawed relations and opened doors from China to the Soviet Union to the Middle East.

Until the 1930s, black voters traditionally voted Republican, thanks in large part to President Lincoln’s push to abolish slavery. When Democratic administrations introduced the New Deal and subsequent Civil Rights legislation, blacks switched parties.

That doesn’t mean Democrats always work for the betterment of blacks. “American Pharaoh,” a book by Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor about late Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, cites references to official and unofficial policies under the city’s Democratic mayors that gave Chicago the most segregated public housing projects in the nation.

Rules are rules (unless they are not)

Let me see if I've got this straight:

- All the major candidates running for the Democratic contest agree to the rules that Michigan and Florida will not be counted.

- One of the major candidates - after a disorganized campaign blew its built-in advantage of name recognition and a huge lead in the polls - decided that the voters (and, though not said out loud, the delegates) must be counted in those two states.

- Supporters of that major candidate cry foul when the DNC Rules Committee awards half delegates in the disputed states (as opposed to zero, which would have been the case).
According to the Clinton math, Hillary is leading in the popular vote, if you include the disputed states. She's also leading the delegate count in states that begin with letters in the second half of the alphabet and have even numbers of vowels, not to mention her overwhelming lead in the "important" states. If you're keeping track, the important states are those won by Hillary.

It's 3 a.m. The phone rings in the White House. Who's going to answer it? Hillary - because the only time Obama is going to let her within granade-throwing distance of the Oval Office is when he's not in there.

Hillary's not upset that Obama came in and "stole" the nomination. The Illinois senator likely swiped the big prize: The presidency. In her mind, the weak GOP choice - McCain - is very beatable, and an Obama win means she's out of the running for the presidency until 2016.

All of this is moot if Hillary takes her ball and goes home, sabotages the election for Obama, and re-emerges as the person to beat in 2012. Stranger things have happened...