I said last week if McCain and Palin didn't get a huge boost early, they'd be in trouble.

I stand by that and it appears Obama-Biden is still beating McCain-Palin.

It's obvious McCain's choice was to get a big boost early and then hope it's enough to keep Obama from blowing this thing wide open. It doesn't appear McCain will get a boost from Palin, though he could get one from the Republican Convention.

The thing with this type of pick, as it was with Ferraro in 1984, is to bring an instant buzz to the campaign. After Obama's speech, McCain clearly panicked and knew things could get out of control. So he picked the candidate with the most buzz, but the least lasting potential. And that lacking potential is what I said would do McCain in IF he didn't get a quick bounce in the polls (within the first 72). He didn't. Even Rasmussen shows little movement over the past three days since Palin's announcement. That's got to be troubling news, as I expect more and more people to question the choice of Palin once they get to know her.

We'll see what type of bounce McCain gets from the shortened Republican convention, but I'm not sure it'll be enough to get back into this thing.

If the media had not fallen for the obvious political stunt by the McCain campaign.
If the only reason they selected a no-name il-qualified remote candidate was to shock the spotlight away from Obama/Biden, then may the pay a heavy price for that later in the campaign and on Election Day.

LANDSLIDE!

McCain can't just have a bump that ties this thing, McCain needs to get a healthy lead because he has yet to sustain any type of lead for longer than a week since this campaign began. I fully expect once this campaign restarts after the GOP Convention that Obama again moves ahead. If McCain is down 4 points by next Monday, expect Obama to push the lead back to 8 by the Monday after that. If McCain is up by 4 next Monday, expect Obama and McCain to be tied the Monday after that.

The only thing that will concern me is if McCain goes up 10+ points after the Republican Convention and I don't think that is very likely. If he sees a bump, it'll be 4-8 points and even that just gets him a tie in most polls.