
 |
|
May 20, 2013
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
July 29, 2008
/ 26 Tamuz 5768
The messiah who can't break away
By
Wesley Pruden
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
"
Barack Obama leads in the polls, but every pollster understands the butterflies in the bellies of sober Democrats. With everything going for him, why hasn't Barack Obama put a little daylight between himself and John McCain? Querulous minds want to know.
Where, asks Kellyanne Conway of the Polling Company, is "the Barack bump?" Where, indeed.
Many of the reporters traveling with Mr. Obama on his Magical Mystery Tour of the Middle East (and certain European beachheads of Islam) and the giddy pundits have been treating him as if he were, in Mzz Conway's description, "the fifth Beatle."
Gallup found a tiny weekend bump perhaps a pimple or a zit over the weekend, and on Sunday put his advantage at 9 points. This is getting close to something significant, but Gallup cautions that "the key question remains as to whether this 'bounce' is short-term (as happens to bounces ... following intense publicity surrounding a convention) or if his lead will persist the answer to which will become evident in the next several days."
We didn't have to wait that long. Rasmussen Reports, which has been the hottest polling firm over the eternity that politics makes of a year or two, reported yesterday that its daily tracking poll shows that "Barack Obama's Berlin bounce is fading." Rasmussen said its weekend polling showed Mr. Obama with a 3-point lead, well within the margin of error (and deep within the so-called "Bradley effect," the phenomenon of black candidates to register significantly better in public-opinion polls than on Election Day).
"Unless and until Obama breaks 50 percent and remains there for a few weeks, or he leads McCain by double digits for the same number of days," says Mzz Conway, "the race is a fight to the finish."
Poll numbers at this early stage of a race are always the stuff of wishes and dreams; every pol will tell you that. Michael Dukakis came out of the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta in 1988 leading George H.W. Bush by 16 to 20 points, and three months later he could take consolation only in the fact that he wouldn't have to beg money from exhausted friends to build a presidential library. Al Gore and John Kerry led George W. through much of the '00 and '04 campaigns. Thomas E. Dewey was so far ahead of Harry Truman that by mid-October the pollsters sent their agents home and closed the books.
Nevertheless, early polls are fun, almost as much fun as deriding and mocking them. They're useful, too, but more as ammunition for barroom argument and dinner-party speculation than for what they tell about what to expect in November. The candidates and their handlers know this better than anyone.
But the questions about the Obama phenomenon persist. Why hasn't he pulled away? With adoring press coverage that Elvis would envy, with an opponent derided as an old man well beyond his sell-by date, with Republicans fractured and fractious in a way few living men can recall as precedent, and with a media obsessed with airhead celebrity having crowned him as the permanent American Idol, Barack Obama looks vulnerable, vincible and almost as inevitable as Hillary Clinton.
A look beyond the pollsters' exciting horse-race number yields clues. The Conway polling finds Mr. Obama with higher negatives than John McCain, and Mr. McCain is regarded as superior in "strong leadership qualities" (by 11 points), "more consistent in standing up for his beliefs" (by 8 points) and "more experienced" (by a remarkable 34 points). These are just the measures that voters, particularly the independent voters on whom this election turns, will employ in the final days and hours before Nov. 4.
One Rasmussen finding to make Democrats fretful is that more than half of the voters now think we're winning the war against the Islamist terrorists. This is the most optimistic poll finding on terror in more than four years. His handlers and his acolytes in the media insist that Mr. Obama will break decisively ahead once voters learn more about the freshman senator with the unfortunate and misleading Muslim name who sprang 99 and 44/100 percent pure from the cesspool of Chicago's racist politics. But others, some of them fervent Obama men, concede that the more voters learn, the more uneasy they seem to be. He has yet to break 50 percent in the polls in what the media is telling us is a slam-dunk year for the Democrat. He's still the odds-on favorite, but this looks like a very odd year.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.
Wesley Pruden Archives
© 2007 Wesley Pruden
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|