It’s clear now that the McCain campaign has settled on the stretch-run kitchen sink strategy.  This strategy focuses on Obama’s connection to 1960’s “domestic terrorist” William Ayers.  The effort, obviously, is to cast doubt on the authenticity and/or Americanness of Barack Obama, and to play into people’s worst fears about whether Obama is actually some sinnister, shady figure who is duping us all into electing the next Adolf Hitler.

This is a gamble by the McCain campaign, because it obviously risks the possibility of a backlash by the voters.  If voters view these attacks as an attempt to distract them from McCain’s clear disadvantage on critical policy issues, a 5 point deficit could turn into 10 or 15 points by election day.  However, this is a smart gamble from a political standpoint, because the only way McCain has any chance of righting the ship in the last 3.5 weeks before the election is if he can somehow knock Obama off his pedastal.  That is the point of bringing up William Ayers, Obama’s past drug use, Reverend Wright, using Obama’s middle name, etc.  The Republicans are trying to drum up fear and second-guessing among persuadable voters while also making Obama go off-message while trying to defend these personal attacks.  It is an effort to make Obama seem less Presidential and, indeed, unacceptable as President, in the hopes that the voters will elect McCain by default.

So from this point on, look to see how the polls react over the next week.  If they begin to tighten – even modestly – it might reflect that McCain’s attacks are having an impact, and we might be in for a very close election.  If the polls stay where they are or continue to inch in Obama’s favor, I think at that point you could pretty much conclude that voters have rejected these attacks, and that Obama will win on election day by a significant margin.

One thing is clear, though.  John McCain has forever squandered his reputation as an honest and honorable politician and, win or lose on November 4, that is something that he will have to spend the rest of his life justifying to himself.

With less than a month (!!) to go before election day, the political landscape has become inundated with national and state polling, with nearly every reputable (and not so reputable) news organization wanting to join the poll party.  It’s easy to get lost in all this information, especially when two polls released on the same day can have very different results.  So what follows is my advice as to how to interpret the polls you read over the next month, and what it all means for right now.

The first rule of poll watching is never put too much significance on one poll.  For example, eight different national polls have come out since yesterday, and have ranged from showing Obama with a three point lead to an eleven point lead.  Depending on which poll you happen to stumble across online, or, more importantly, which poll a particular online news source decides to post, you could get a very different view of where the race stands today.  The key, then, is to go to a website that aggregates all the recent polls, and decide for yourself what the true state of the race is (ie., www.realclearpolitics.com or www.pollster.com).  Polling is an inexact science to say the least, but if you look at enough different polls on the same subject, you will definitely get a feel for where things truly are.  For instance, if you look at each of the eight national polls released since yesterday, you find that four of them show Obama with a 3 point lead, two of them show a 6 point lead, two show an 8 point lead, and one shows an 11 point lead.  A synthesis of those results tells me that Obama holds a national lead right now of approximately 5-6 points.

Rule number two is to remember that the election is decided by the electoral college, not national popular vote.  You can ask Al Gore to elaborate on this rule.  Of course, everyone knows that we decide general elections based on state voting, but the media seems to be so consumed by national polling numbers (perhaps because they are more easily digestable) that sometimes it might cause us to take our eye off the ball.  While there is a correlation between national polling and state polling, ultimately, electoral positioning is more important than national numbers.  For example, Obama’s strength in this election became most clear to me during the 10 days or so after the GOP convention, during the height of Palin-mania, when McCain (briefly) took the lead in national polls.  Even when the universe was heralding McCain and his brilliant dramatic comeback, I had my eyes on the state numbers.  What I found was that, even at the height of McCain’s convention bounce, Obama retained the lead in every state that George W. Bush won 4 years ago.  That told me that John Kerry’s 252 electoral votes were nearly a lock for Obama, and he only needed to come up with 18 more to reach the 270 necessary to win the Presidency.  I knew if Obama found himself in that favorable of a position during the McCain campaign’s high point, he would be in very good shape when the convention buzz died down.  As we have seen, that buzz not only died, but was brutally slaughtered by the subsequent financial crisis, and the national numbers have reverted back to being at least as favorable to Obama as they were over the summer, if not better.

So where are we now?  Obama is comfortably ahead in every state that Kerry won in 2004.  He also hold a very healthy lead in Iowa and New Mexico, two states that Bush won in 2004.  With these states, Obama would be at 264 electoral votes, needing to secure only 6 more to win the election.  Currently, Obama holds slight (under 5 point) leads in each of the following “Bush ‘04″ states: Ohio; Florida; Colorado; and Virginia.  Additionally, the race is a true “toss-up”, meaning the aggregate of polls don’t show a clear trend in favor of one candidate or the other, in the following other “Bush ‘04″ states: Nevada; Missouri; and North Carolina.

To illustrate the commanding position that Obama is in with less than one month left before the election, John McCain would have to win all seven of those states in order to win the election.  Obama would only have to win one.  (Actually, if Obama won only Nevada, there would be an electoral tie at 269-269.  The race would then be resolved by the House of Respresentatives, which would, in all likelihood, declare Obama the winner.)

Bottom line: a lot can happen in a month in politics, but it is harder to sway voters in October than it is during the summer.  It is not time for the Obama campaign to celebrate prematurely, but McCain faces an extremely uphill battle in his path to 270 electoral votes.