Obi Wan: ‘Believe me, there is someone in the Obama campaign who is deathly afraid of the ‘McCain pulls even or goes ahead’ poll.’

My mentor – who goes by the nickname Obi Wan Kenobi – has reappeared again, and remains generally optimistic about McCain’s chances. He felt the final debate had worked for McCain because he had finally found themes that he kept coming back to in answer after answer.

Obi-Wan particularly noted McCain’s observation that Obama keeps saying he wants to “look at” drilling instead of doing it — implicitly raising the question of whether the most eloquent and melodious talker is better than a guy who actually gets things done.  Even more importantly, the candidates spotlighted the clear and fundamental difference between the two on economics. Obama is clear that he will try to tax and spend his way out of a recession; McCain will cut both. Obama spoke to Joe the Plumber as if he was okay with raising taxes on those making $250,000, as if Obama presumed Joe thought he would never make $250,000.
Obi-Wan expected some sort of bump or goose for McCain after the debate, and thought we were seeing it with the Gallup poll’s traditional model that had McCain only down by 2 percent. Today, that model now has Obama ahead by 5 percent. But just about every other tracking poll has shown a narrow Obama lead, too. (The RCP average has shrunk from 8.2 percent to 5.3 percent.)
Obi Wan is wondering about the timing of the Colin Powell endorsement, too. I had figured that Powell’s nod would have been a bigger help to Obama earlier in the race – recall the rumors of Powell speaking at the Democratic Convention. Obi-Wan figures this was one of the best cards Obama had left to play, and he played it in the next-to-last weekend instead of the final weekend. He wonders if internal polling prompted the Obama camp to roll out Powell a bit earlier than planned.

“McCain had a very good week,” he told me. “He looked presidential at Al Smith dinner and he had everybody talking Joe the Plumber and taxes the next few days. And the debate performance may have been as big as Kennedy in ‘60 — that important, because the undecideds were watching.”

“We have just seen the greatest economic scare since the Great Depression and everybody is looking at polls as if they are business as usual. That’s crazy.”

I wondered aloud whether the media’s day by day coverage could push people off those gut reactions – suspicion of “spreading the wealth around,” relating to Joe the Plumber, etc.

“If so, the American people aren’t the American people anymore,” Obi Wan responded. “Believe me, there is someone in the Obama campaign who is deathly afraid of the ‘McCain pulls even or goes ahead’ poll.” (And in Gallup, it was within 2 percent.) “That Obama strategist knows how much depends on the whole Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emanuel approach –.work with the media to demoralize conservatives, and keep the perception of a juggernaut going. But a day or two of a few bad polls, and that strategy backfires. The conservatives know they’ve still got a shot at this.”