9/18 Daily Kos R2K Tracking Poll: Obama 49, McCain 43

Today's Daily Kos Research 2000 tracking poll has Obama up by 6, 49-43 over McCain (MoE +/- 3). The trend matches yesterday's Gallup, with moved in Obama's favor yesterday (Obama 47-45 McCain) for the first time since the failed GOP convention. Yesterday's Diageo/Hotline is stable (Obama 45-42) as is yesterday's Rasmussen with McCain 48-47, the outlier of the trackers. look for that to change today, as there's nothing going McCain's way. Our (Moe +/- 5.1) single day sample from yesterday has Obama up by 8.

Failed Republican convention, you say? How can that be? We all know Palin was a brilliant move, and that McCain's bounce was bigger, right? Eh, that was last week. The Palin pick is not wearing well, as we saw from the CBS/NY Times poll:  

But the Times/CBS News poll suggested that Ms. Palin’s selection has, to date, helped Mr. McCain only among Republican base voters; there was no evidence of significantly increased support for him among female voters in general. White women are evenly divided between Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama; before the conventions, Mr. McCain led Mr. Obama among white women by a margin of 44 percent to 37 percent.

   By contrast, at this point in the 2004 campaign, President Bush was leading Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic challenger, by 56 percent to 37 percent among white women.

Our tracker shows the following:

Favorable/Unfavorable
CANDIDATE FAV UNFAV NO OPINION
MCCAIN  46  46  8
OBAMA  56  35  9
BIDEN  50  32  18
PALIN  42  46  12

Palin's -4 and McCain's neutral does not match up with Obama's +21 and Biden's +19. In our tracker, Obama's gone from +9 to +15 with women, from 9/11 to 9/18. Neither Wall Street nor Walmart is saying "Get Palin on the phone."

That means that you can like Palin and not want her anywhere near the WH, especially as McCain looks old and tired and on the wrong side of the regulation argument. In addition, Republican George Bush's lack of leadershipis reflecting on Republican John McCain and Republican Sarah Palin.

It will take a Dem win before people understand that what's good for the Republican base does not translate into what's good for the electorate as a whole. What really happened, as one of our astute commenters noted, is that McCain went for personality (POW and Palin) and missed the opportunity to emphasize mavericky-ness and leadership. And now that consumer confidence is plunging, the lifetime deregulator (McCain) is having trouble re-inventing himself overnight (see McCain: Change You Can Believe I Came Up With Yesterday.)

And remember, McCain and his old boy's network want to put Social Security in the hands of the people managing the Wall Street debacle. Joe Conason:

This populist rhetoric sounds strange, especially when emitted by a politician whose circle of advisers include former Sen. Phil Gramm, vice president of the scandal-tainted Union Bank of Switzerland, and John Thain, chief executive of the firm formerly known as Merrill Lynch. But when facing the angry voters who have watched their savings evaporate, the conservative Republican more hopes to sound more like a liberal Democrat again.

He wants to blur the differences between himself and Barack Obama on fundamental economic philosophy. But there is one critical issue where the Arizonan has established a record that cannot be escaped so easily.

Sen. McCain wants to privatize Social Security. It is a stance he has repeatedly taken over the past 10 years in recorded votes, interviews, speeches and documents. It is also a position that he will deny in this campaign. In fact he tried to deny it at a June town hall meeting in New Hampshire, when he declared, "I'm not for, quote, privatizing Social Security. I never have been. I never will be." But the contrary evidence is overwhelming.

The Obama Wall Street bounce is not over, especially when Social Security is yet to come up to the voters.