McCain Not In A Sunshine State

The key insight to this slate of good polls in the battleground states is that McCain cannot win without Florida in his column. It's pretty much impossible. And if he's behind right now and has to spend so much time and energy to defend it, Obama can put asymmetric resources into Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Colorado, Virginia and North Carolina (and he'll have the money to do so).

I wonder if this has anything to do with Obama's early strength among Latino voters, which the conventional wisdom has finally come around to acknowledging.

There was a growing consensus during the Democratic primary season that Obama was going to struggle with Latino voters -- due to the exit polls, his race, and McCain’s immigration stance. In fact, in that now-famous conference call in which Hillary Clinton indicated that she would be open to serving as Obama’s running mate, that response was spurred by concern by New York Rep. Nydia Velasquez (D) that Obama was going to have trouble with Latinos. But it looks like that CW -- at least right now -- was wrong. In addition to our recent NBC/WSJ poll, which showed Hispanics breaking for Obama 62%-28%, a new survey of 800 Latino voters from 21 states finds that 60% of them plan to vote for Obama versus 23% for McCain. That is down considerably from the 40%-plus Bush received in 2004. It’s no longer fair to say that Obama has a problem with Latino voters; McCain does. This was a case of conventional wisdom that was never based on fact, just semi-informed speculation based on primary exit polling and bad stereotypes of Latinos.

Why break such a consistent streak? Media horse race narratives are ALWAYS based on semi-informed speculation and bad stereotypes.

If McCain's tanking in Florida now, then it's only going to get worse after the implications of his call (backed by the entire Republican establishment) for offshore drilling is fully felt. MUCH more on that later.