Tipping point or pendulum swing?

An explosion of poll numbers in the last 48 hours show Barack Obama surging across the battleground states.

From Florida to Ohio, the Democrat has made what appear to be sizable gains.

John McCain’s team issued a statement calling the polls laughable, but conceded that most polls “have us down 2 percent, some 4, some as high as 6.”

They’re right that poll numbers can be ephemeral and misleading. Only a couple of weeks ago, Obama’s team looked fragile.

But McCain has a real problem here — really two problems.

1. The clock is running down. McCain needs a game-changer quick. Unfortunately, he’s already whipped out so many game-changers (Palin and suspending his campaign being the biggies) that he needs something really monumental to shake things up.

2. The battleground map has always been ugly for McCain and now it’s worse. Various reputable pundits and poll-aggregators give Obama a pretty firm grip on between 220 and 250 Electoral College votes.

Put bluntly, Obama is almost at the 270 EC Vote finish line and just needs to pick up one or two battle ground victories to seal the deal.

McCain, meanwhile, has to score some serious upsets to pull it out.

So. Expect the pendulum to swing a couple more times before election day, but the burden is on McCain to find a way to swing it fast and far enough.

One final thought: If Obama does begin to break away, Republicans will have to work doubly hard to keep their Senate and House races competitive.

The GOP is already seeing surprising weakness in the US Senate, with an astonishing ten Republican-held seats now seen as seriously vulnerable.

Pundit Stuart Rothenberg predicts that Democrats will gain between 5 and 8 seats, putting them within spitting distance of a filibuster proof super-majority.

Anything resembling a collapse at the top of the ticket would make the GOP fight that much harder.

A lot of illustrious careers rest on Governor Sarah Palin’s performance Thursday night.