The left's massive scapegoating is the result of the latest polling numbers showing McCain/Palin generating a decent bounce from the Republican National Convention last week. Gallup's latest numbers show McCain leading Barack Obama in the presidential horse race by 5 points, 49 to 44 percent - a lead that represents a 13 percentage-point shift in Gallup's tracking data since last Tuesday (McCain is up 7, Obama is down 6).
The response on the left is approaching meltdown territory, as we're seing a growing number of angry and confused posts across the Democratic leftosphere. Here's a few:
* Sam Stein at the Huffington Post is claiming that Governor Palin mader her "first gaffe" while speaking at a rally in Colorado Springs, but Michelle Malkin indicates that Palin's suggestion that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have "gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers" is accurate, noting that "these public-private hybrids are two dangerous pigs feeding at the federal trough."What's interesting about the left's desperation is that Barack Obama's nowhere near finished. We have two full months of campaigning to go, and much could happen.
* Also at Huffington Post, Adam McKay is pulling his hair out, yelling "we're gonna frickin' lose this thing." McKay's explanation? It's the right-wing media: "There is no more fourth estate ... I mean it: there is no more functioning press in this country."
* Picking up with the media scapegoating is Glenn Greenwald, who argues that "The Right Dictates MSNBC's Programming Decisions," an obvious reference to Keith Olbermann's sacking by NBC executives.
* Topping it all off is Michelle Cottle at the New Republic, who is despondent that the historic legacy of Hillary Clinton's pathbreaking feminist campaign for the presidency has been "hijacked" by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, whose candidacy is "a slap in the face to all women."
That said, it's hard to resist the temptation that what we're witnessing is the beginning of the end for the Democratic electoral juggernaut of 2008.
Throughout 2007 commentators were speaking of the "GOP crack-up," with some Republicans writing off 2008 and refocusing their energies on 2012 or 2016. The Bush brand was disastrous, for example, to small-g conservatism, and the right had to get right with its roots as the party of limited government. Once John McCain wrapped-up his nomination in February, all eyes shifted to the Democrats and their epochal contest between a black and a woman candidate, with the victor emerging as the new face of the post-civil rights diversity agenda. From there it would be mostly downhill to the November election. The conflict in Iraq and the "weak" economy would lift the Democrats to victories in both the presidential and congressional elections.
That scenario, always ahistoric and epiphenomenal, is in shambles now.
In addtion to Gallup's numbers (which has McCain/Palin up 10 percentage-points among "likely" voters), the new CBS poll has McCain/Palin up 46 to 44 percent over Obama/Biden. Plus, the Washington Post's new survey has McCain/Palin leading the Democratic ticket 49 to 47 percent "among those who say they are most likely vote."
The Republicans have the momentum.
While current trends could be ephemeral, it's not often discussed that the selection of Sarah Palin as running mate comes in tandum with a number of other strategic campaign decisions - a series of savvy McCain ad buys, and the shrewed timing of the veep rollout - that provide substantial evidence for John McCain's superior judgement.
Perhaps, underneath the left's fears and scapegoating is the dreadful realization that this "old man" still got game.
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