99 Days

Talk about a short-lived bounce!

As I predicted yesterday, the “snubbing the wounded troops” decision may be a bigger deal as time goes on. Within 24 hours, Obama dropped 0.7 points and the RCP average for today stands at 46.2 – 43.7 in favor of Senator Obama. The Gallup/USA Today still shows McCain with a 4 point lead.

A small bounce after totally saturating all media during his overseas tour was not great news; the fact that it dissipated in 24 hours has to be of concern to the Obama camp.

The Republicans have seized the opportunity to come out with political guns blazing. Senior Republicans are using the same tactic that the Obama camp has been using, you know the “third Bush term” talking point?

The idea was to tie McCain to a president with a dismal 29% approval rating. The Republicans plan to tie Obama to a congress with an even lower 17% approval.

Barack Obama returns to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to speak with House Democrats, and Republicans will try to spoil the party by linking the Democrats’ presidential nominee to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and their reluctance to allow votes on offshore oil drilling.

Rep. Adam Putnam (R-Fla.) and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) will greet Obama’s arrival with a news conference in which they’ll assert that Reid (D-Nev.) and Pelosi (D-Calif.) are holding up votes on offshore drilling in order to protect Obama.

Obama has so far nor responded but spent the afternoon meeting with Fed Chair Ben Bernanke discussing the economy.

The Obama campaign did make a bit of a surprise announcement today.

Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign launched a massive $20 million effort to attract Latino voters on Tuesday, hoping to erase the inroads the Republican Party has made with the key demographic group in the last two presidential elections.

I found this news to be a bit more interesting than most of the punditry. What has the Obama camp turned up in internal polling that makes pushing $20 million toward a demographic that conventional polls have them leading McCain 66% – 23%?

The Obama campaign has established a $42 million per month burn rate which is impressive but hardly sustainable.

Given the outrageous overhead of the campaign (over 2000 paid staffers which is more than five times that of any presidential candidate in history) and the odd distribution of resources; one has to question either Axlerod’s strategy or the MSM’s fawning polls.

Case in point: $20 million toward a supposedly locked voting block and 15 paid staffers and millions launched to Texas? Texas? That’s like a republican spending millions in Washington DC.

Stay tuned sports fans.

Category: Politics