Obama leads all year. McCain leads for 1 day and we all panic?

[liberalpragmatist]

Obama has been leading McCain pretty continuously all year. McCain is now up right after the end of the Republican convention, after never having lead all year and at the height of his convention bounce.

And we're all panicking?

Firstly, go volunteer or donate if you're so worked up. Wait and see how the polling shakes out after a week or even two. Then we'll have a better idea of the race's equilibrium, and we can tell then whether there's a new equilibrium or whether the old one (narrow Obama lead) reasserts itself.

If McCain is still leading by 3-4 points in two weeks, THEN some hand-wringing will be justified (though not inaction). But for now, please, everybody, calm down.

[BlooInBloo]

1. It does point out a genuine weak point: those who mouth the words of support...

But then run for the hills at the slightest whiff of trouble.

[Cha]

5. Fortunately they are in the minority

and who knows what their agenda is? DU has been suckered before by anonymous posters.

[JI7]

10. bunch of fucking assholes, just go along with whatever is popular

these assholes most likely don't do anything in ways of real support. if they did they would know their pissing and moaning does nothing but drag everything down.

these assholes react to any little thing that pops up and now are demanding our candidates change who they are.

fucking chicken little cowards.

[BlooInBloo]

11. What you said.

[flamingdem]

2. The one good thing is that we're finally off the Palin obsession here! (mostly) nt

[NotThisTime]

3. Tell 'em to calm the HELL down... Geez, I think I've seen it all this weekend....

[angee_is_mad]

4. Thank you

there seems to be a concerted effort in posting as many defeatist posts as possible tonight. Things that make you go, ummmm.

There are some funky shenanigans going on.

[TXDemGal]

6. Damn straight!

Thank you for that. People need to calm the hell down. OF COURSE the McSame campaign was gonna get a bounce from their little soirée. It's totally expected. But, it's not gonna last. So just keep supporting our guys.

[pyro858]

7. McCain couldn't lead a thirsty horse to water

It's all corporate media bs.

[TwilightGardener]

8. Yes--not time to panic. It IS time, however, for Obama to swing the

news cycle his way--a big endorsement, a new ad campaign, some sharp attacks, that sort of thing.

[Chasing Dreams]

18. If Team Obama is waiting for the best day to bring out Colin Powell,

that would be tomorrow. By the way, Nate over at fivethirtyeight.com uses the potential Powell endorsement in a post today:

What I am saying, then, is that we should evaluate the robustness of the Republican bounce by how well it holds up to the currents of political time, rather than any specific date on the calendar. Specifically, I would want to see how the bounce holds up to the next major development of the campaign, particularly if it is a pro-Obama development. For example, let's say that Colin Powell endorses Obama tomorrow morning. I might expect a fairly strong reaction to this in the polls, not because the endorsement is all that important unto itself (most endorsements aren't), but because it displaces the GOP Convention as the most recent event of the campaign -- it pushes political time forward. And if the polls didn't move in reaction to such an endorsement, I'd think Democrats would have reason to worry.

I hope that Nate was prophetic!

[Sodan]

9. Can't blame them/us

2000/2004 are traumas.

[Sodan]

12. But hysterical to panick now - come on!

[renate]

14. welcome to DU!

And yes, those elections bring back traumatic memories. Especially because both of them had moments of exhilaration (when Florida was called for Gore and when ALL the exit polls had Kerry winning handily) followed by the unbelievable, previously inconceivable injustice of having American citizens' votes not counted or made to disappear.

This is what I worry about most of all: not that Obama won't get more votes but that the race will be close enough that the election can be stolen AGAIN. I know I'm far from the only one... anyway, that's why I'm plotzing a little bit about the polls now. It should be 29% McCain, 71% Obama. That it's too close to call scares the hell out of me... but I also know that the next two months are going to be hella intense, and our guys kick ass under intense pressure and their candidates when stressed either shove ladies who are in wheelchairs or hide from the media.

[Sodan]

19. Thanks.

Agree it should 71-29 ;)

And yeah, his temper should be an issue.
Giving him the power over the largest nuclear arsenal on Earth is scary.

[AndyTiedye]

22. That's WHY Some of Us are Panicking

[MUAD_DIB]

13. I'm not panicing.

[cliffordu]

15. I wish the hand wringers would get involved and organize, donate, plot

the overthrow of the Palin/Gramps ticket OR get the hell off the board, maybe have a nice sandwich and a glass of milk.

In any event I wish they'd stop peeing on the floor like so many scared puppies. It stinks.

[TheKentuckian]

16. Panic=the coward's way out

Panicking is by far the easiest response to adversity.

At least get mad.

[krawhitham]

17. Everybody likes a new shinny toy

Palin is a new shinny toy and the people polled like a shinny thing

We scuff her up a little and they will not like her any more

[regnaD kciN]

20. Exactly!

I've never been as nauseated by my fellow progressives as I have been this weekend.

We all knew a McCain convention bounce was coming. I predicted over a week ago that he'd be in the lead by now. (I thought it might even be by 5-10 points in the tracking polls.) So did many others. All of us counseled that people not panic when that happened, for the results would likely start to track back in our direction shortly.

So, what occurs when the G.O.P. gets their predicted bounce? OH MY GOD IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD!!!!! If people aren't in full panic mode, they're gaining 20/20 hindsight and listing all the "obvious" failings of the Obama campaign (that somehow weren't so "obvious" a week ago). Or demanding that Obama replace the campaign staff that was the envy of all at the start of this past week. Or, of course, screaming that "this wouldn't have happened if Hiiiiiiiiillary had been the nominee!!!" :eyes:

GET A GRIP, PEOPLE!

If we let one day of being down in one tracking poll (the other one, remember, is tied) reduce us to such a state, how are we going to handle it when we have to rely on our organizing and GOTV efforts if we enter the last weekend down by a handful of points, but still within the margin of error? Remember, both of the last two elections were close enough that they were decided by the GOTV effort (in other words, if ours had been better, the results wouldn't have been close enough for the Republicans to steal).

In my mind, there is no reason to panic unless Obama is behind by double-digits after the final debate (and maybe not even then...all sorts of things can happen in the closing weeks of a campaign). One three-day stretch of bad polling right in the middle of the RNC bounce is not enough to cause a reasonable person to do anything but shrug it off and get back to your job of helping Obama, and our side, win.

[liberalpragmatist]

21. To be fair...

... the handwringing is partly because this poll is a second one to show Obama behind McCain.

Gallup's tracking poll has it McCain +3 (and that'll likely increase through at least the middle of the week), and this separate USA Today/Gallup poll has it McCain +4 (50-46) among registered voters and McCain +10 (54-44) among likely voters.

It's that LV number that has a lot of people spooked. But (a) it's probably an outlier and (b) LV screens don't mean much this far out.

Clearly these are not fun numbers. But like I said we need to wait at least a couple of weeks to really figure out if the race has fundamentally changed or if this is just a convention bounce.

[regnaD kciN]

23. No, they were panicking before the second poll...

As a matter of fact, we saw the same hand-wringing yesterday, when Obama was still leading (but by a smaller margin than before).

As to the "second" poll: 1) USAToday/Gallup's "likely voter" model is widely recognized as totally FUBAR (an analyst at Pollster.com has characterized it as "professional malpractice"), and has produced results way outside -- by ten points or so -- the consensus of other major polls already this election cycle, so I'd say the LV part of their results can be ignored. 2) If we take the RV part of their poll at face value, it's almost exactly the same as their tracking results. A poll that comprises two of the three theoretical "big days" for any convention bounce gives the candidate a three-point advantage, while one taken by the same outfit that includes all three "big days" results in a four-point lead? Please. Tell me something I'm not expecting.

Personally, I'd be delighted if Gallup's Daily Tracking Poll released tomorrow (taken over the same days as the USAToday/Gallup poll) only shows McCain up by 4...because that would mean, based on every "breakout" analysis I've seen on the average numbers, that McCain's margin probably decreased Sunday as compared to Friday and Saturday. Personally, though, I expect McCain's lead in the GDTP tomorrow will be more than that, and possibly more than 5 points. That would still be no reason to panic until we see how that plays out over the next week or two at least. (Those who doubt this should check out Nate's article from today on convention bounces at FiveThirtyEight.com.)

[azmouse]

24. kick

[Courtesy Flush]

25. K&R

[lady raven]

26. Yes, we should chill. This could be (and likely IS) temporary.

Just keep fighting the good fight.

[shaniqua6392]

27. It is the media love-fest for McCain/Palin that has me concerned.

So many voters are like little sheep and the media is really pushing McCain. I even see it in my local Detroit area media market. I am not in any way going to criticize Obama though. It is almost impossible to overcome the propaganda that the media pushes down our throats.

[demokatgurrl]

28. What I'm waiting for

are the headlines, such as we saw after the Dem convention, saying "Post-convention bounce for Repugs much smaller than expected and short-lived".

But I'm not holding my breath.

[stevietheman]

29. Let's let McCain enjoy his "break-out" 1984-style Mondale convention bounce. He deserves this...

only high point. :)