Worrisome Trend

It's almost two months until election day, so the fact that polls show Obama up in the last couple of days don't mean much. At least in terms of the final vote. Sure if the election were held tomorrow, it's likely that Obama would win the electoral vote 284.8 to 253.2. But by November, people may have forgotten how McCain seemed blissfully unaware that there was any problem with the economy, much like Bush was unaware that there was storm damage in New Orleans. Or maybe McCain will be passing out free loaves of bread and soup around the voting booths, and that will endear him to swing voters at the last minute.

The sudden 4 point jump in the polls seems to coincide with some savvy advertising on Obama's part, which wasn't a character hit piece or scare tactic. The worrisome thing is Republicans will step up their ad efforts. And since Obama didn't do town hall debates, the new ads will probably be ugly smear campaigns, filled with obvious lies and subtle allusions to Hitler, miscegenation, terrorism and the book of Revelations. They have to. They ain't got anything else.

So the next month and a half is going to be a race to the bottom of the muck pit, probably on both sides. Which means that it's not going to be appreciably different than normal. Hmmm... why even bother to write this? Oh yeah, to cite the poll results.