The FISA vote is my new bottom line. Thankfully, I can still vote for my senators (Schumer and Clinton) because they did the right thing.

So, what strategy do you suggest for Obama to regain his strength?

and change his name to sen. clinton. that would be about the only thing that will do it.

Is it a fluke? Or, if it's accurate, what's the reason for the drop and is it temporary or permanent?

it's not a fluke, it's permanent, and will only get worse. why you ask? simply put, absent all the frenetic, media-driven hoopla, the public is very quickly beginning to see sen. obama for what he actually is: smoke and mirrors.

turns out, the public doesn't care for smoke and mirrors in their politicians. go figure.

So, what strategy do you suggest for Obama to regain his strength?

Sit ups would be a good strengthening strategy. Not only would his abs get a workout, but he might also develop a "backbone".

Surprised Pelosi is not being vetted!

This poll includes just over 200 Clinton supporters.  The MOR is +/-8.  And has 13% of Clinton supporters in undecided/other.

Newsweek's last poll was an outlier compared to almost all the other polls at the time, excepting only the LA Times poll.  So which is the right one?  

Rasmussen and Gallup both do daily polling and both show much more stable trendlines since the beginning of June.  Gallup has generally shown a closer race (tied for a few days about a week ago) until suddenly today Obama's up by 6.  Rasmussen was the reverse -- steady at a 5-6 point lead until today, when he's up by 1.  So it seems likely that they are veering between tied and 6-point spread.

Now, McCain has some major challenges.  He needs to find a way to do two things.  

1.  He has to project himself as a competent leader who will get us out of Iraq and restore our economy.  He needs to present himself as the steady old hand who can right the offcourse ship.  

2.  He needs to find a way to provide people with hope.  Normally the GOP is into fear and not hope but McCain has to be different this year.  Right now, he's close against Obama because a lot of people strongly dislike and or fear Obama.  That won't be enough for him.  People need to feel, even if they're not crazy about him, that he gives them hope.  

The handlers seem to have no sense that tossing Groups A and B for the purpose of sucking up to C won't neatly be forgiven as (a) "just" politics and if not, (b) those who were so unceremoniously humped and dumped have "nowhere else to go" anyway so who cares.

His supporters should be feeling like they accomplished something and looking forward to the next leg, instead of sour and used.

The campaign has the arrogance to pretend they could play this crap as a big joke that their true believers would enjoy.

Even if Clinton hadn't picked him as VP, he'd have had 8 more years in the Senate to build up a real political resume and back up Hopey-Changey with some solid rhetoric.  He'd still be in his mid-fifties, plenty young.  He might have had to curb the pandering during the primary with a real record but then he'd also have the experience to offset that.

And all the nastier aspects of his campaign would have still worked 8 years from now, I'm sure.

It's early July.  So far the candidates haven't even done a photo op together much less created contrasts between each other.

Obama pretty much got beaten everywhere Clinton had paid staff on the ground.  There were some exceptions but most of those states overwhelmingly favored him: North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Vermont, Montana, and most famously Iowa.  Keep in mind, that when Montana and Oregon voted, the election was pretty much over so it wasn't that hard for Obama to win.  

Not to mention that you don't have to win a majority of votes to be president - you know, the electoral college thing.

Yes, take your shots at him, but that's all it is right now.

Besides, any thought that the last poll was a bit out of whack considering that it was so different than previous polls and now this one?

In my view, the winner in November will be the candidate that will attract more blue collar workers. Independent will split. Democrats will mostly vote Obama and Republicans will mostly vote McCain. Since both Obama and the DNC have decided to ignore the blue collar workers, the one to attract them will win.

If something has indeed changed, my guess is that his sprint towards/past the center has undermined the perception that he's a "new kind of politician." The notion that he's abandoning previous positions for new ones has grown quickly and with surprising strength. A month ago, people weren't calling him a flip-flopper. Now, it's a significant concern.

I hate facts as they tend to ruin so many good arguments.

if sen. obama backpedals any faster, he's going to meet himself coming and going, if he hasn't tripped over his entwined legs first.

mccain is mccain, he's not going to change, you either like him or don't. yes, he's batsh*t crazy, with the resume' of an alleycat (with apologies to alleycats everywhere), but he's a known quantity. people feel comfy with known quantities, even if they're nuts.

obama was an unknown quantity, who's now getting known. his tongue literally twirls itself into a corkscrew, as he constantly tells us what he actually meant, vs what he actually said or did.

the first word that came to mind, to describe sen. obama was mendacious. after additional consideration, i realize that's giving him credit where it's not due, he's not seasoned enough to qualify for mendacious, merely inept.

the media will (and has already started to) turn on him, as it has the past two democratic nominees. unfortunately, unlike gore and kerry, they don't need to create fiction (read: lies) about sen. obama, just quote him.

This cat is out of the bag. No way to hide the truth.