Don’t count your chickens…

DemfromCT at DailyKos has a post up gloating about Obama’s current poll numbers. Since this is my first post on this new blog, I should state that I am an Obama supporter, but not one of those wide-eyed ‘messiah’ supporters. I realize that he’s a politician. I happen to think he’s a damn fine one, and an example of the kind of politician that will move this country forward, protect our constitutional rights (or at least acknowledge them) , and bring about peace, and protect and encourage the middle class. I expect to be disappointed by him, but only because I hope for a lot. And because he must compromise.

Anyway, I’ve been paying extremely close attention throughout the race and I’m not much for the kind of post that appeared on DailyKos today. The idea is that the media isn’t acknowledging Obama’s recent success in the polls, and didn’t (in a timely fashion anyway) acknowledge Obama and Biden’s wins in last week’s debates. I don’t feel like Obama’s got anything locked up just yet. We’ve seen polls make 10-point swings in either direction in a matter of weeks several times during this race. And as of today, we’ve still got a month to go.

With McCain down considerably in almost every poll, and battleground states looking more and more like easy Obama wins, what is McCain to do? Go negative. That’s the headline on HuffPo anyway. Turn the focus to Obama’s biography:

“We’re going to get a little tougher,” a senior Republican operative said, indicating that a fresh batch of television ads is coming. “We’ve got to question this guy’s associations. Very soon. There’s no question that we have to change the subject here,” said the operative, who was not authorized to discuss strategy and spoke on the condition of anonymity. [...]

So to get off the economy, the “honorable” McCain campaign is going to focus on Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright. Take the focus off Palin, who seems to work well only with the entrenched Republican base, and the economy. I don’t know how it will work, really. There’s already been a pretty strong “McCain is nasty, has a bad temperament, is vicious” meme in the media. And I think people are tired of swiftboat politics. What if McCain goes dirty dirty dirty, and all the media talks about is how dirty he is? Obama and his campaign have already answered all the questions there are about Wright and Ayers.

But there’s a chance that kind of thing could work. The target of those types of ads is the 10% of folks in the middle, the undecideds and independents. They are notoriously fickle. If it starts working, does Obama get dirty too? Does he start talking about the Keating Five, Carol McCain, McCain’s five crashed planes and his terrible class position at the Naval Academy? Does Obama start talking about Sarah Palin’s crazy witch-hunting preacher, and the ties she and her husband have to an Alaska secessionist group? I don’t know. That’s not the kind of politics Obama says he stands for. I hope it doesn’t come to that.

There’s also questions about what happens if McCain goes dirty, and then loses. His career is over (granted it’s almost over anyway), his legacy is smashed. He won’t be looked at like Bob Dole. He’ll be done.

It’s going to be an exciting month.

What if Obama wins AND Alabama wins the SEC championship? It’ll be a strange year for me…