Trouble On the Horizon for McCain

If you've seen the recent polling, McCain has a very small lead over Barack Obama in the general election matchup.  Currently, anywhere from a 5 point lead in Rasmussen to a 6 point deficit from Pew Research.

Some pundits have taken this to mean that Barack is in trouble.  After all, he was leading McCain by an average of 4% just a month ago, and now he is down 0.2%!  But these are actually terrible numbers for John McCain, given the landscape of the campaign recently.

Let's face it, old man McCain hasn't been criticized from the right since Mitt Romney dropped out, and the Dems have been too busy slugging it out to go after him.  McCain received bad press for his Bush-like idiocy about Sunnis and Shiites, but for the most part he's had a free ride these past six weeks.

Meanwhile his opponent, Barack Obama, has had the worst month of his 15-month campaign. Starting shortly after his Wisconsin victory, he's had to deal with Clinton's vicious attacks on his leadership, including her statements that geezer McCain (!) would be a better commander-in-chief. Obama has had to deal with the Rev. Wright scandal -- probably the most damaging attack he'll face this campaign.  The Rezko trial plods forward. Right wing smear emails about Barack and his supporters are spreading like wildfire. Obama lost Ohio, lost the Texas primary, and has had to deal with a lot of angry Clinton supporters who won't accept that the fresh face from Illinois is gonna take this thing.

In other words, Obama leads a divided party in the midst of a messy primary campaign, and he has been subjected to 24-hour-a-day media attacks and viral smear campaigns questioning his patriotism, race, religion, judgement, and honesty. He is a relative newcomer to the world of politics, whereas McCain has almost 100% name recognition and an adoring press at his beck and call.

You'd think, therefore, that McCain would be up by double digits at a minimum. We should be seeing polls with McCain 55% - Obama 40%.  The race wouldn't be over for Obama if this were the case, but it would be the kind of deficit you'd expect given the circumstances.

But instead, we're still seeing polls with Obama up or trailing closely, and McCain hasn't polled higher than 48% in three months (Obama, meanwhile, has polled as high as 53% in the same time period).  I can't see how this can be anything but terrible news for McCain, considering that his party is saddled with the weight of a Bush war, a Bush recession, and Bush himself. Things aren't gonna get much better for him down the road.

As for Obama, he has a lot of good news coming up. He'll beat Hillary at some point, maybe not in PA, but almost assuredly in NC. He'll get a major bump when Hillary when concedes/endorses, he'll get another bump from the Al Gore/John Edwards endorsements, he'll get another bump from picking a good VP, another bump from the Democratic convention, and a bump-by-proxy when McCain delivers a dull deer-in-the-headlights speech at the RNC convention in Minnesota.

Rachel Maddow recently pointed out that McCain needs to be up by ten percent right now.  The fact that he is basically tied is a portent of his serious weaknesses as a candidate.