E-Minus 17 Days

A slight uptick for Maverick, but not where he needs it....

POPULAR VOTE PROJECTION: Obama 50.5%, McCain 47.6% (McCain +0.3%)

ELECTORAL COLLEGE PROJECTION: Obama 357, McCain 181

“McCAIN MAXIMUM” (Total Electoral Votes including states in which he is within five points): 265

The Rasmussen daily tracking poll is unchanged at 50-46 Obama.

Just to augment the context of the above, here's where the numbers stood on September 15th, the day Wall Street collapsed:

POPULAR VOTE PROJECTION: McCain 50.2%, Obama 48.1%

ELECTORAL COLLEGE PROJECTION: McCain 274, Obama 264

“McCAIN MAXIMUM” (Total Electoral Votes including states in which he is within five points): 348

This whole Democrat Financial Logic Bomb disaster has cost John McCain five points. Not ten or fifteen, as the new conventional wisdom has tried to put over ("Remember when the conventional wisdom was that we were a '50/50 nation'? Whatever happened to that," he asked rhetorically....) and doubtless would have been the case once upon a time, but five. That would appear to be good news.

Until you arrive at the other side of that coin and realize that five points in such an inflexibly even balance is a lot bigger shift than it looks - or, rather, the equivalent of the double-digit shifts of old. And given that much of that shift has come in the very battleground states both candidates need to win an Electoral College majority, heck, it might as well be twice or thrice that big for the daunting difficulty that any Republican would have had overcoming it, much less a RINO like Darth Queeg.

Oh, I give him his props. He did the best he could on Wednesday. He's (finally) put out a pro-growth economic agenda. He's proven himself superior on foreign policy. He (finally) defined his opponent as a Hooveresque Marxist who is planning a depression in order to cement his party's power for decades to come. If this election is decided on substance and rationality, John McCain will win. If it is decided on hype, emotion, and lunacy, Barack Hoover Obama will win.

Not very reassuring, I freely admit, but it's the best I can do.

UPDATE: How about this for an analogy....?