Gallup’s 3-day tracking poll for today shows that the R’s have halved the D’s advantage from an 8-point high 3 days ago to 4 points today. The 3-day released September 2 had Obama on top by 50-42% while today’s has it at 48-44. Since the polling for today’s release was conducted Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, the new numbers only reflect roughly 1/3 of any bounce from Palin’s speech on Wednesday night, and not much from McCain’s speech last night. (Some of the polling on each day could have occurred after that same night’s speech, presumably for folks further west.)

Pretty decent numbers for McCain-Palin. We won’t see the full effect of any RNC bounce in this poll until Monday, but that’ll include 2 weekend days which tend to skew results. So in theory we’d need to wait until Thursday, but by then of course there will be new things happening which will likely affect the results.

Rasmussen’s 3-day, with the same 3-day caveats, has a statistical tie with Obama over McCain, 46-45. It’s 48-46 with leaners.

More interesting perhaps is Rasmussen’s attitude survey.

Palin’s favorability is at 58% (Obama and McCain are tied at 57, Biden is at 48). This, I think, is a significant factoid:

Among unaffiliated voters, favorable opinions of McCain have increased by eleven percentage points in a week—from 54% before the Palin announcement to 65% today.

That’s a big jump. And the following graf has a certain bombshell quality about it:

However, following the Wednesday night speech, voters are fairly evenly divided as to whether Palin or Obama has the better experience to be President. Forty-four percent (44%) of voters say Palin has the better experience while 48% say Obama has the edge. Among unaffiliated voters, 45% say Obama has better experience while 42% say Palin.

Obama leads among unaffiliated voters on this question by 3%. That’s comparing the top of one ticket to the bottom of the other!

I’m looking forward to the next Quinnipiac for Ohio. I think Palin’s going to be a big hit here.

OK, the first two-thirds of that speech: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

McCain’s just never going to be anywhere nearly as good an orator as Obama, and everyone knows that. I did actually agree with many of the cultural/political positions he laid out, which was good. It’s a reminder that even if the right disagrees with John McCain on several controversial issues, there’s still a lot of reasons for the right to prefer him to the collectivized Democratic Party candidates. I’ll never completely get over McCain-Feingold though.

His own telling of the Hanoi Hilton years was quite strong- better than Fred Thompson’s telling of it. I do think they need to give that story a rest, however. Then the very end with the whole Country First bit was also very strong. I loved the ending with McCain’s exhortations to “fight, fight!” right through the crowd’s cheers.

I missed Cindy McCain. After watching speeches for two weeks, I’ve become exhausted from listening to them, so I wanted to save myself for John McCain’s speech. I like Lindsay Graham, but he’s no speechifier. He doesn’t seem to have the gravitas to hold a crowd at all.

What was the deal with Keith Olbermann cutting off Tom Brokaw in order to apologize on behalf of MSNBC for showing the RNC’s 9/11 video? Apparently, according to Keith, no television network should ever show any events from that day. He didn’t even say that the problem was the Repub’s politicizing of it- an objection which I would understand, if not agree with- the problem was showing anything at all, assuming he meant what he said.

I know the lefty mindset on the matter is that 9/11 footage makes Americans angry and gets them into a “Let’s roll!” spirit and that everything must be done to avoid that. It’s just weird for a media person to be so blatant about it. Meanwhile, footage of dead bodies floating in Katrina flooding- no problem. The RNC video didn’t have anything nearly that graphic.

That was about as momentous as I thought it would be. As expected, she’s drowned out- for the time being, at least- a lot of the flood-the-zone smears and sexist remarks the blogging left has been engaged in. I distinguish that sort of thing from proper criticism. I don’t want to use the term “red meat”, but Gov. Palin certainly delivered it, as is traditional for the VP candidate. I haven’t heard so many cutting remarks about Sen. Obama in one speech before. And funny ones, too. The best one, in part due to its subtlety: “The American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of personal discovery.” I liked the building reaction from the delegates as the zing! sunk in.

Good reviews from the right blogs. Ben Keeler (surprise!):

Powerful, spectacular speech. Just the right note was hit. Attacked with a scalpel. Went right after Obama’s biggest weakness - what has this guy done exactly to be elected President of the United States?

Buckeye RINO:

If the American people get the opportunity to view the Palin speech without commentary, it’ll resonate. The media, I predict, is going to run interference with the Palin message, and it remains to be seen whether the American people can see through the smoke and mirrors.

Lots of criticism from Democratic bloggers. One trial balloon that’s getting a lot of play in the Ohiosphere is that criticism of community organizers is racist:

The highlight of the evening? The introduction of the newest code phrase for “uppity negro,” Community Organizer! This is the hook to rural voters who don’t understand Midnight Basketball, Block Clubs, and Community Development Organizations.

For a while now I’ve been thinking, “what exactly is a community organizer, anyway?” But now I see that I’m a likely racist.

Here’s a short and simple post from Eric at Plunderbund: “She’s the new kid at school talking shit.” Heh. This from the same blog that was pushing the fake pregnancy smear. Rich.

Giuliani was good too. His is the only speech from the 2004 RNC that I can recall at all. Many pundits here and there have been criticizing his speech for being a bit herky-jerky, but that’s his just style. It works for him.

Huckabee and Romney aren’t for me- their speeches were kind of meh.

From ProgressOhio:

Ohioans for Healthy Families, the state wide coalition that has sought enactment of a paid sick day law in the Buckeye state, announced today that it will ask that the Ohio Healthy Families Act not appear on the November ballot.

You might call this the Thomas Eagleton of ballot initiatives.

The group that filed the ballot request will formally request of the SOS later that the initiative not appear on the ballot. Apparently Gov. Ted Strickland was involved in getting them to retract it.

My question is, since they’ve already submitted the petition, with 240,000 signatures, to Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, by what reasoning should they be able to unilaterally retract it? I mean, nearly a quarter million people signed up to put it on the Ohio ballot. Does the group that submitted the petition have the authority to speak on behalf of all those people when the group changes its mind? Did a quarter million people also change their minds?
It might be legal, but it doesn’t seem ethical. Those folks signed up to get the initiative on the ballot, not to pledge their allegiance to whatever Ohioans for Healthy Families decided to do next.

There have been many angles of attack on Sarah Palin and her daughter coming out of the left over the last few days. Nick D at BSB expresses one that’s now making the rounds to see if anyone salutes:

Okay, so riddle me this, BSB readers: if you knew your 17-year-old daughter was pregnant, why in the hell would you accept your parties’ Vice Presidental slot, knowing that your daughter’s name is about to be dragged through the mud as a symbol of how “abstinence education” has been an utter failure? Don’t you think your priority should be helping your daughter prepare for this child’s entry into the world, knowing full well that a 17 year old won’t be able to handle the responsibility on their own?

I saw the perfect characterization of this in a comment on Althouse yesterday: “How dare Palin accept the nomination and expose her daughter to hateful attacks by assholes like me?”

Just about sums it up, doesn’t it? CNN was the best MSM example of this yesterday. When a reporter was told by an Alaska delegate to the RNC that essentially the issue is a private family matter, she agreed that it was, ideally, but “the reality is” that the media couldn’t pass it up as an issue, and then she proceeded to plow on with the questions about it. In other words, yes it is a family matter, but assholes like me and my colleagues won’t respect that.

Also, I don’t know that many men would be expected to put their careers on hold due to a pregnant teenage daughter- I think there’s a sexist element to this. You see it applied to newborn Trig too- how can a mother with a 4 month-old Down’s syndrome child have a job- she should be at home caring for him. Wow, how far feminism has come! The selective sexism of some on the left is simply breathtaking. Of course, there’s nothing new about Obama supporters spewing sexist remarks.

It’s the end of an era. Tonight is the last game the Clippers will play at Cooper Stadium. They’ll be playing at Huntington Park next year.

Here’s columbusING, and here’s the Dispatch. And from last year, an old post of mine with pics of the stadium.