DENVER -- Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg and his partner, James Carville, say this election is Barack Obama's to lose, but voters are indicating it's a tossup.
If the country really is in the shape that Democrats said it was during the convention, a tossup is bad news for the former social-welfare activist and now freshman senator from Chicago. One week before the Democrats gathered in Denver to declare him their candidate, Greenberg was polling 1,348 likely voters in 18 battleground states -- places like Michigan, Ohio, Florida, Colorado, New Mexico and Virginia that are probably going to decide the 2008 presidential race. The results were tighter than Greenberg and Carville expected: When leaners were factored in, Obama drew 46 percent and John McCain 44 percent -- a statistical dead heat -- which suggests a doubting electorate that's still not comfortable with the rookie senator who has spent little time in the Senate during the past three and a half years.
"I can see a way we can lose this election," Carville cautiously told reporters at a luncheon hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. "It's more likely he wins than loses, but that's not certain," the veteran
Clinton strategist quickly added.
Democrats and Obama's high command were looking to accomplish three things at their convention. They wanted Hillary Clinton to unite a still-fractured party. She did what was needed, but a week of interviews in various delegations showed that the party's open primary wounds had still not fully healed. Many die-hard Hillary supporters and fundraisers left embittered, feeling they had been treated badly.
Party officials wanted the country to get to know Barack Obama better, too. Astonishingly, many Democratic leaders came here saying that Obama was still not well-known in their state. A parade of speakers, from Michelle Obama to running mate Joe Biden, told his personal story. But we'll have to wait for this week's Republican convention to tell the rest of Obama's story -- specifically, that Obama has one of the most liberal voting records in the U.S. Senate and Illinois legislature. Some huge exaggerations about Obama's record also need correcting -- like Biden's claim that Obama was responsible for the successful welfare-to-work reforms, when that landmark program was passed by the Republican Congress in the late 1990s.
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