While troubled to see McCain ahead in the latest Reuters/Zogby poll, I was even more surprised at the media's reaction. First of all, this is not the latest nationwide poll. It was conducted August 14-16. The latest nationwide poll is LA Times/Bloomberg, conducted August 16-18 (with a larger sample size), which has Obama leading by 2.
Second, Reuters/Zogby is most likely an outlier. Unless, of course, you're willing to believe that he's lost the support of 12 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 in the last week.
But far more worrisome than Obama's performance in recent national polls are the numbers coming out of battleground states, particularly Ohio.
(crossposted from Our Republic)
According to Rasmussen, Obama is as many as 10 points down in Missouri and 5 points down in Ohio. Yes, Ohio, the state where McCain and his campaign manager Rick Davis personally orchestrated a controversial DHL deal at the expense of at least 10,000 jobs. When all is said and done, McCain's deal is expected to yield a crippled regional economy and job losses in the 30,000 range.
When the story broke, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe called it "the most important development of the entire campaign this week." Wrong. It is thus far the most important development of the campaign, period. Each and every time Obama lands in Ohio, his first words ought to be, "McCain outsourced a quarter of your state to Germany. Oh, and hello." If Obama is ever 5 points behind in Ohio, it's because he and his campaign have stopped talking about the DHL deal and how representative it is of McCain's flawed approach to trade and utter incompetence on economic issues.
So yes, Obama needs to go on the offense. But he also needs to improve his aim.