All Tied Up

The latest round of polls from Rasmussen has the race between John McCain and Barack Obama in a virtual dead heat. Naturally, this has lead to rounds and rounds of speculation about what it all means and is Obama in trouble? Is McCain just a terrible candidate? Is down up and up down? The usual stuff.

I think the past couple of weeks have been somewhat unkind to Obama and this past week was a just plain craptacular week for McCain. Given that instead of the pendulum of press coverage swinging back and forth between one candidate and the other that we've had throughout the primaries and the beginning of the race, it's weird to see the press piling on both of them to some degree. For Obama: he's kind of on the back foot right now... he's moving a bit to the center and a lot of the Democratic (or far left) isn't happy about it at all. His decision to vote FOR the FISA bill in Congress sent many people on DailyKos into complete apoplexy. His decision to not take public financing drew a lot of flack from the right (the tired old chestnut of him being a flip-flopper.) A lot of people saw confusion with his Iraq position (there really wasn't that much) and there was that flap over the Access Hollywood interview with his kids. There have been a lot of perceived flaps, some real, some not. But still, on balance: not a good few weeks.

For McCain: Well, where to start. This past week, there have been so many stumbles, it's easier for people to probably just go read this instead of having me list them all. I will say that McCain's diss of Social Security that the Left was up in arms about was not at all a big deal and it kind of annoyed me. What McCain was saying with the 'social security is a disgrace' thing (and he didn't say that) was that today, there aren't enough younger workers behind our (my) generation to pay for our retirement. So essentially, I'm paying for my parents' retirement and I'm probably gonna get hosed for it. That IS a disgrace. What's more disgraceful is the complete lack of reform efforts by the Democratic Party and their lack of concern about such brilliant ideas as portable health care. (Fred Thompson may have been a boring candidate, but he had brilliant ideas about social security reform and wanted to end employee based health care so that people don't lose benefits when they switch jobs. Make Health Care portable! Where was the Left on that?)

But McCain did have a horrible week.

In the end, I think both candidates are flailing a bit. A race tied in July doesn't worry me as much as one tied in October, but both campaigns should retrench and settle themselves down and go into the conventions with all their gears working. That is, if they're interested in winning.