It's called playing not to lose.  

The Democrats have been playing not to lose for at least 2 years.  They have turned a blowout into a nail biter.  They chose this path.  They chose this strategy of "hope" over fighting the Republicans.  

This is pure centrist politics at work.  Obama moving to the right.  Democrats always move to the right and always lose.

They're losers.  That's what Democrats do.  They cut and run from the fight and then cry about how it's not fair.  

Someone call the fucking waaaaaaaaambulance because we got a critical case of loseritis.  Someone needs to drag the lifeless body of the latest Democratic nominee off the stage.  He's the same as the rest--a "liberal elitist" that doesn't have the courage of his convictions and is incapable of making the liberal argument.  He's a cut and runner and it's too late.  The Democratic party hasn't learned it's lesson.  It once again chose to cut and run instead of fighting the conservative bullies.  

And it always ends the same way.  Losers wimps (Democrats) getting gunned down by the side with much more firepower and a better offense.  

i think polling has a problem, because when I had a land line i would get polling calls. Know that I have a cell, i get no polling calls, even those fake ones put out by Repugs.

Maybe, just maybe, it's the War Hero vs. Snake Oil Salesmen debate?

Declaring the bottom is the only way back up..

A lot of people feel that way, but a lot of people also know that it's wrong.
Also - polls lie or mis-speak, as do a lot of reporters.

Siena has a horrible record, they got the NY primaries wrong, I wouldn't put any stock in this outlier.  If Obama only won NY by 5 points, he'd lose the country by 15 points.

The radical left has not been happy with Obama's stands on Iran, Iraq and the telephone company immunity issue.  When, however, it comes down to Obama vs McCain, the activists will come out roaring for the Senator from Illinois.  We are well aware of the dangers posed by the toxic military-corporate-religious complex.

I don't trust polls at all.  Thank god Harry Truman didn't either.

Hillary and Bill, surprise us all.  Do something for someone else for a change.

Suppose you scrub your ethical skin until it shines, but inside there is no music, then what? Kabir

Here's a good piece that gets at the problem:

The Democrats Do Poland

What's up with nominating one wholly cerebral, completely unflappable, painfully careful, mind-numbingly deliberative, thermostatically-controlled, cool-customer candidate after another, eh?  Yo!  Hey!  Memo to the DNC:  We've done the Mondale/Dukakis/Gore/Kerry thing, okay?  We've covered that particular motif.  We've seen that movie and all the cash cow sequels too.  We know what it looks like, and we know how it turns out.  Enough with the stiffies, okay?  Could you possibly send something else out of central casting, just once per half century?  Even just for the novelty of it? [...]

Could somebody please show him the gut-wrenching tape of Dukakis responding to the horrifying rape question he was asked in one of the 1988 debates?!?!  Memo to Barack:  robots don't win!  Even in 2008.  Nor should they.  You know, if you can't even muster a little indignation when someone is out there lying about you and kicking you around with condescending smugness, I wouldn't even want you for my dad, let alone my president.  (And don't ever forget, by the way, it doesn't take a PhD in political psychology to know how much voters see presidents as daddy figures.)

Here's Obama the other day, um and ahs deleted, reacting in deadpan monotone to the freak show of the GOP convention:  "They spent a lot of time trying to run me down and not necessarily telling the truth, but what they didn't talk about is you - what you're going through in your lives, what your friends and neighbors are going through."

Excuse me??  "Trying to run me down"??  "Trying to"??  "Not necessarily telling the truth"??  "Not necessarily"??  Are you freakin' kidding me, Jack?  What, are you trying to carefully avoid a slander lawsuit here, or something?  What would happen if they called you a pedophile or a genocidal maniac?  Would they graduate to being "arguably conceivably disengenuous" in your estimation?  Or would that be a little too emotionally uncontrolled? [...]

Dukakis at least had the excuse of the true patriot, believing that in the America he loved a good and competent person like himself could never be defeated by a sick bastard like Lee Atwater, let alone based on lies about the pledge of allegiance and the ACLU, or by using overt symbols of racism.  But Mr. Obama - Senator Barackis Dukakis - that was FIVE elections ago, okay?

This is looking to be a repeat of Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry. I don't think race is the decisive factor. Obama just comes across as too phlegmatic for enough voters to be able to see him as president. It just doesn't seem that he has the spirit to fight in him.

It's racism.

I think there is plenty of closet racism, but the polls don't capture the intensity of commitment among Obama's base and the likelihood of huge turnout for him in November, especially among youth and minority voters.  I'm guessing that the two opposing forces more or less cancel each other out, and that our main mission is simply to get out the vote big-time.

it's not just this poll...have a look at 538's compilations...they've been pretty damn reliable this election season, btw.

even with the barracuda's bounce eroding, there's plenty to be worried about:

this election coulda, shoulda, woulda been a slam dunk for the d's...and due to whatever your favorite reason why it isn't, it's about as far from it as you can get.

the revolution will not be televised...

FWIW....this poll was from September 10, and the events of the past week have not been kind to McCain.

I looked at a "this day in 2004" map, and Bush was ahead in NJ by a few points too.

My guess is this is an outlier poll.

My Three Cents - 50% more opinion for free

Interestingly enough, the poll at the Newsday link is currently at 60.3% Obama, 39.7% McCain.

Oh, there you are, Perry. -Phineas -SLB-

I suppose it could be racism, but I would have honestly thought that would have played out earlier in the polls.  People do not become racist overnight.  It's inconceivable to me that people will actually vote against their paychecks, but we have seen it time and time again among the evangelical base.  I still say timing is everything.  The debates haven't happened yet and the financial crisis narrative is starting to take hold. Just wait until they roll out their health care ads against McCain.  That will really make people sit and take notice.  For those that are lucky enough to have employer-sponsored group health, this will shake up the status quo like nothing else.  The markets seem kind of foreign to most people and they tend to tune them out, but health insurance is another story altogether.  Everyone understands what it means to be under or non insured.   It may be a few more polling cycles before we really start seeing how this is going to play out.

In Reagan's shadow

Obama has explicitly modeled himself on the popular backwards-looking image of Reagan - the positive, constructive, above-party guy who did spectacle well and inspired people to support him with a flash of his smile and the thrill of his oratory. He cites Reagan as an exemplar of the mode of politics he wants to engage in - telegenic, above the fray, sweeping political change and ignoring the critics. Even if he had not been trying so hard to dismiss Bill Clinton in order to minimize Hillary, Obama would still have been engaged in Reagan worship. Thus, the entire packaging of himself as a movement, swallowing hook line and sinker the hagiography of Saint Ronnie.

Charles Krauthammer is a hack and writes some of the most despicable commentary in American politics, but he wrote something truthful on Friday. He talked about the packaging of Obama (my emphasis throughout):

But Palin is not just a problem for Obama. She is also a symptom of what ails him. Before Palin, Obama was the ultimate celebrity candidate. For no presidential nominee in living memory had the gap between adulation and achievement been so great. Which is why McCain's Paris Hilton ads struck such a nerve. Obama's meteoric rise was based not on issues ... but on narrative, on eloquence, on charisma.

The unease at the Denver convention, the feeling of buyer's remorse, was the Democrats' realization that the arc of Obama's celebrity had peaked -- and had now entered a period of its steepest decline. That Palin could so instantly steal the celebrity spotlight is a reflection of that decline.

    [Krauthammer discusses key speeches by Obama, then says] The problem is that Obama began believing in his own magical powers -- the chants, the swoons, the "we are the ones" self-infatuation. Like Ronald Reagan, he was leading a movement, but one entirely driven by personality. Reagan's revolution was rooted in concrete political ideas (supply-side economics, welfare-state deregulation, national strength) that transcended one man. For Obama's movement, the man is the transcendence.

    Which gave the Obama campaign a cult-like tinge. With every primary and every repetition of the high-flown, self-referential rhetoric, the campaign's insubstantiality became clear. By the time it was repeated yet again on the night of the last primary (#3), the tropes were tired and flat. To top himself, Obama had to reach. Hence his triumphal declaration that history would note that night, his victory, his ascension, as "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

    Clang. But Obama heard only the cheers of the invited crowd. Not yet seeing how the pseudo-messianism was wearing thin, he did Berlin (#4) and finally jumped the shark. That grandiloquent proclamation of universalist puffery popped the bubble. The grandiosity had become bizarre.

[...]

When I look at the collapse of Obama, the Movie! (a fall well under way during the primaries), what I see is the level of support an ordinary Democrat might garner in a ho-hum year. The One, The Precious, is gone. Palin robbed him of the celebrity, the quality of being shiny and new, and what we see is Obama as an unadorned Democrat. His high points now are when the actual heroes of the party, Bill & Hillary, come out and offer reasons for us to vote as Democrats for the ticket. [...]

Oddly enough, with the loss of celebrity, Obama ends up being the generic Democrat from central casting, promoted by a party actively jettisoning everything that makes it distinct. We have no signature issues for the campaign, only hopey-changey, we're not Bush (which worked so well for Kerry, as I remember...), don't vote for the guy who's stupid and out of touch (which worked so well for Carter, Mondale, Dukakis and Gore, as I remember...), we're all to blame for this Washington gridlock because Washington is the problem, etc., etc. There is nothing that looks, sounds or feels uniquely Democratic.

They are still running against the shadow of Reagan.

When will the Democrats realize that if they continue do disassociate themselves from the liberal tradition of FDR, Kennedy, and Johnson, they will have nothing of  substance to offer voters as an alternative to the Republicans, who most definitely do have substantive ideologies: (neoconservative) nationalism, Christianism, and neoliberalism. All of those ideologies have now become discredited. So why are Democrats still scared to death of returning to the ideology that made them the majority party for most of the twentieth century?

Siena also put out a poll back during the primaries that said Hillary would only beat McCain by 3 or 4 points.  It's worthless.

Also, I notice they don't even say how many people were polled.  They contacted ~600 registered voters, but only report results for "likely" voters.