It doesn't look good for Hussein

From Rasmussen Reports:

The race for the White House is tied. The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows Barack Obama and John McCain each attract 43% of the vote. When "leaners" are included, Obama holds a statistically insignificant 47% to 46% advantage. Today is the first time that McCain’s support has moved above 45% since Obama clinched the nomination on June 3. It’s also the first time the candidates have been tied since Obama clinched the Democratic nomination (see recent daily results). Tracking Polls are released at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time each day (see recent demographic highlights).

For most of the past month-and-a-half, Obama has led McCain by approximately five percentage points. It remains to be seen whether this recent tightening of the race reflects real change or is merely statistical noise. Check out our weekly review—What They Told Us—to see what was on voters’ minds this past week.

The reason that this news is bad for Obama is that we are still more than three and a half months out from the election and at this point in every race in post WWII history the Democrat has been far ahead of the Republican.

When Ronald Reagan was running for reelection against Walter Mondale at this point in the election Mondale was something like 18 points ahead of Reagan and Reagan went on to win a 59% to 41%, 49 state landslide.

Even in those races where the Democrat went on to win as with Carter/Ford and Clinton/Bush and Clinton/Dole the race tightened considerably from the early big lead the Democrat originally held.

Obama simply can't afford to give up any voters. If the race "tightens" on him he will be behind.

What is causing this?

In my opinion it is simply a function of the public getting to know Obama. Obama started his presidential campaign after serving a grand total of 143 days in the Senate. Before that he had been an obscure state Senator in Illinois whose only claim to fame was a DNC convention speech.

As the people of the United States have been introduced to Obama they have learned about the insane hate-filled pulpit ravings of the racist preacher of nearly 20 years who Obama called his "mentor". They saw Obama declare that he could no more disown Wright than he could disown the black community or his white grandmother - then they saw him disown Wright - not because Wright shrieked "God damn America" from the pulpit, but because Wright said that Obama was "a politician who was doing what politicians have to do".

We heard Obama say that he would have left his church if Wright hadn't retired, then we saw Obama leave his church even though Wright has retired.

We learned about Anthony Rezko, the corrupt land developer who Obama has called a friend and supporter - and major donor to Obama campaigns. We learned about the highly questionable land deals which the Obamas have entered into with Rezko and we have seen Obama run away from his connection with Rezko.

We learned about Obama's friendship with William Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn, the domestic terrorists who bombed the Pentagon, among other places.

We have seen Obama abandon position after position in the name of political expediency. From his decision not to accept public financing to his flip-flops on abortion and gun control to his hedging on Iraq troop withdrawals we see a man willing to sell out literally anyone or anything to obtain his ambition.

Oh, and let's not forget that we also got to meet Obama's angry and bitter wife, Michelle.

Speaking of Michelle, she had better watch what she says from now on. Obama's pattern in dealing with liabilities is clear.

That wasn't the Anthony Rezko he had known for all these years.

That wasn't the Jeremiah Wright he had known for all these years.

That wasn't the Trinity United Church of Christ he had known for all these years.

Unless she wants to turn on CNN one day and hear her husband talking about how that wasn't the wife he has known for all these years. . .