An explosion of poll numbers in the last 48 hours show Barack Obama surging across the battleground states.<\/p>\n
From Florida to Ohio, the Democrat has made what appear to be sizable gains.<\/p>\n
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.”<\/p>\n
They’re right that poll numbers can be ephemeral and misleading. Only a couple of weeks ago, Obama’s team looked fragile.<\/p>\n
But McCain has a real problem here — really two problems.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
McCain, meanwhile, has to score some serious upsets to pull it out.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The GOP is already seeing surprising weakness in the US Senate, with an astonishing ten Republican-held seats now seen as seriously vulnerable.<\/p>\n
Pundit Stuart Rothenberg predicts that Democrats will gain between 5 and 8 seats, putting them within spitting distance of a filibuster proof super-majority.<\/p>\n
Anything resembling a collapse at the top of the ticket would make the GOP fight that much harder.<\/p>\n
A lot of illustrious careers rest on Governor Sarah Palin’s performance Thursday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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