A month after emerging victorious from the bruising Democratic nominating contest, some of Barack Obama’s glow may be fading. In the latest NEWSWEEK Poll, the Illinois senator leads Republican nominee John McCain by just 3 percentage points, 44 percent to 41 percent. The statistical dead heat is a marked change from last month’s NEWSWEEK Poll, where Obama led McCain by 15 points, 51 percent to 36 percent.
Obama’s rapid drop comes at a strategically challenging moment for the Democratic candidate. Having vanquished Hillary Clinton in early June, Obama quickly went about repositioning himself for a general-election audience–an unpleasant task for any nominee emerging from the pander-heavy primary contests and particularly for a candidate who’d slogged through a vigorous primary challenge in most every contest from January until June. Obama’s reversal on FISA legislation, his support of faith-based initiatives and his decision to opt out of the campaign public-financing system left him open to charges he was a flip-flopper. In the new poll, 53 percent of voters (and 50 percent of former Hillary Clinton supporters) believe that Obama has changed his position on key issues in order to gain political advantage.
I could be mistaken, but I believe the wrong word is used in the headline. Shouldn’t it be a dead heet, not heat?
I’ve always seen it as “dead heat”.
Jim
I’m still not going to vote for McCain. For years I stuck with the Republicrat party, even voting against my own economic interests, because they were saying the right things to a social conservative.
McCain has said that folks of the Christian Right were “agents of intolerance” and accused them of wielding “an evil influence” over the Republican Party.
No problem Sen. McCain. You won’t have to worry about my “evil influence” in your party anymore. I won’t be part of the McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy, McCain anti-taxcut, McCain gang of 14 run for the White House. You can try it without me and conservative Christians like me. Good luck.
I am not alone.
I will be voting for Bob Barr. For the first time since Reagan, I will be voting [b][i]for[/b][/i] someone rather than voting for the lesser of two evils.
It feels good.
Join me for an actual change instead of more of the same from both parties. If you really want change, you won’t get it with Obama or McCain.
I understand you’re sick and tired of nuance, but here goes. McCain is not sufficiently socially conservative for you, so you’re going to cast a vote that helps elect Obama. That’ll teach ‘um.
“Heat” is correct. More to the true point, Obama requires careful scrutiny I think. Democrats have a history of nominating presidential candidates who are not well tested (Carter & Clinton previously). He’s been a legislator for only 10 years and only 2 in the Senate. By most objective standards, he’s not ready for the Presidency. Who he selects as his advisors will be vital but he has a track-record of some questionable associations. Caution is advised.
I think the Presidential debates will show Obama’s numbers drop even further. Once he is pressed on actual issues, he will not be able to ‘con’ his way around the answers with his mantra of ‘change and hope’.
Jim Elliott
RE: “That’ll teach ‘um.”
Yeh — it probably will. No matter who you vote for as a conservative, your vote will be noted in the long term so that the Republican Party can determine just what kinds of candidates they wish to nominate for the future.
They’re running an interesting experiment that will have very long-term effects, long after this presidency is over. I intend to give them good data on which to base their future decisions.
Good for you, STN — I’m carefully weighing where I will cast my vote. But I intend that it will go for a conservative.
Experentia docet.
Obama’s appeal is alleged newness and not-in-the-loop-or-beltway.
But those are not features necessarily and they may be bugs. It’s his inexperience that bothers me. And I don’t really think his advisors would be all that different from Hillary’s – aka the Democratic Party stable. Where are the new ideas backed up with plans or program outlines that match the rhetoric?
I’m independent so these questions really matter. I tend to think him too young and too inexperienced, but I could err. So I’m still thinking………
#5 – Are you suggesting that the current Bush’s experience as a Governor is responsible for his stellar performance thus far? He is as much a disaster as Clinton or Carter. There is something more fundamentally wrong than perceived experience as to why — on both the local and national levels — we continue to elect unqualified people.
Hmmm.
Presidential candidate.
Experience includes service in the Illinios legislature.
Two years in the U.S. Congress.
Notable as a speaker and debater.
Whoops. That’s a Republican.
Abraham Lincoln.
No such thing as “being ready to be President of the U.S.” period. All who enter are not ready, but some rise to the occasion (Lincoln, Truman, FDR, Reagan, and even Bush the First. The times make the President…..and Carter, Clinton, and Bush the Second did/have not met the occasion….
The New Yorker’s article is very revealing this week. It demonstrates that Obama is a very shrewd, aggressive politician. Those who call him naive are in for a surprise. Leftists will be disappointed. Those who think he is a starry-eyed idealist will be disappointed. What’s certainly true is that he knows how to wield power. And that, in a president, is useful.
I’m not surprised at these polls, however. It is still remarkable how close it is in states that should have, at one time, been sure for McCain.
Sarah, you have a longer term view of politics then me. What I see is that in the next four years it’s likely that Stevens and Ginsburg will retire. Obama will replace them with at least as activist jurists. McCain will replace them with jurists like Roberts and Alito. Ending the tyrannical reign of the “living constitution”(whether it’s the US Constitution or the California Constitution) is to my mind a top priority of social conservatives. Afterall, if issues like abortion and same-sex marriage are constitutionally protected rights what’s the use of having a conservative electoral strategy. No certainities, but politics is the art of the possible.
#12 I’m astounded that Obama does not have a commanding lead, frankly, given how much is going wrong for the Republican brand. Uncomfortable feelings about race are still powerful.
“McCain will replace them with jurists like Roberts and Alito.”
That doesn’t jibe with the fact that McCain was the leader of the Gang of 14. I have not forgotten that he sabotaged the attempt to end democrats blocking votes on constructionist judges.
Oh yeah, I also haven’t forgotten [the current financial meltdown brings it to mind] that McCain was one of the Keating Five involved in S&L;Bailout/Scandal back in the 1980’s. Yup, he and four other senators, all democrats (Ok, he was a [i]Republicrat[/i]), were investigated for corruption. While not censured by the senate ethics committee, he was “criticized” by them for “questionable conduct”.
This from Wikipedia:
[blockquote]Gray testified that several U.S. senators had approached him and requested that he ease off on the Lincoln investigation. It came out that these senators had been beneficiaries of $300,000 (collective total) in campaign contributions from Keating. McCain received $112,000 by 1987 from Keating and Keating’s relatives and employees to McCain’s Senate campaign, more than any of the other Senators. [1] In September 1987 National Thrift News was the first media outlet to break the story.[2] In October 1989 The Arizona Republic reported that in addition to campaign contributions, McCain’s wife and her father had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators. The paper also reported that the McCains, sometimes accompanied by their daughter and baby-sitter, had made at least nine trips at Keating’s expense, sometimes aboard the American Continental Corporation (parent of Lincoln) jet. Three of the trips were made during vacations to Keating’s opulent Bahamas retreat at Cat Cay. McCain also did not pay Keating for some of the trips until years after they were taken, after he learned that Keating was in trouble over Lincoln. [3] Lincoln Savings and Loan’s collapse is said to have cost taxpayers $3.4 billion [4].[/blockquote]
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_Five
Here is a slogan…
[b]FOR MORE OF THE SAME, VOTE MCCAIN![/b]
No surprises here in the comments. But if you vote for Obama, which one are you voting for? The hard left primary candidate, whose views are supported by decades of radical left associations in Chicago, or the vaguely centrist candidate who has changed his line on almost everything recently?
And there’s the difference, #10. Lincoln once elected was the same man he had been. What would Obama be?
I agree fully w/#13 – voting for Obama (or against McCain) is voting for more liberal activist judges on the Supreme Court – thus, voting to prolong abortion. Voting for McCain may be voting for a centrist or for a strict constructionist jurist – we don’t really know until it happens – but it’s not voting for a liberal activist jurist. The only chance to up-end abortion is the US is to elect McCain. However, God takes the long view of politics; we can only vote as we see in this mirror darkly.
One of my problems with Obama is that he is the child of the Chicago political machine and got were he is by a lot of under the table manuvering, such as sealed records of court cases opened at the last moment, signatures disputed and ruled invalid at the last minuet etc. Not much integrity in any of his elections.