McCain momentum growing
For several days in a row, various national polls consistently show McCain tied with Obama or even ahead with a slight lead. Today, the Rasmussen national tracker has McCain ahead 47-46. A new telephone survey from Zogby has McCain up 42-41. The Gallup poll has McCain behind Obama by 1 point, 44-45.
Taking all the polls together, Obama’s previous national lead has all disappeared, reducing to about 2 points, well within the margin of error.
Team McCain’s decision to aggressively confront Obama on his “substantiveness” worked. With his powerful rhetorical skills, Obama has commanded an energized base of followers by simply selling “hope” and “change”. But he could only get so far (indeed, defeating the Clinton machine was no small task). And he should have realized it by now. Which explains his policy reversal on Iraq war, off-shore oil drilling, etc.
So far, the only change Obama is capable of showing is his continuous change on policies.
After clinching the Democratic nomination, Obama received a phone call from McCain. “He called me to congratulate me,” Obama said the next day. “I had called him after he had won the nomination. We joked about the fact that, if you’d asked the pundits a year ago who were going to be the two nominees, it wouldn’t have been me and John McCain.
“And we pledged to have a substantive debate, a debate that’s not personal but is about our respective visions for the country,” Obama said.
It’s time for Senator Obama to uphold his pledge, cut the empty rhetoric and have a serious debate and discussion on the issues with Senator McCain.
Obama recently agreed to have three debates with McCain. That is not enough. That is not different from previous election years.
How about living up to his mantra of “change” and of “listening to and restoring power to the people” by taking up McCain’s challenge to hold serious and straightforward discussions on the issues with the American people in town hall meetings across the country?