One of the things that makes Washington a particularly strange and difficult to understand place is how people communicate. Like a dysfunctional family, the political and chattering classes hold plenty of assumptions that are rarely discussed in public. When they do, there can be hell to pay -- as Charlie Black, a veteran GOP operative and top aide to John McCain, just found out.

Interpreting the plethora of polls we see is always difficult, but never more so than this year, when race is added to the potential for misconstruing the real intentions of voters, many of whom resent talking to pollsters in any event. That's why it's worth the effort to try to understand the ABC/Washington Post poll on race released this weekend.

 

Congressional Republicans have a lot more to worry about than simply losing ground. Democrats have a serious shot at ending up with the 60 seats they need to truly control the Senate by having the votes to block GOP filibusters and pass the legislation they want. That would be great news for a President Obama and a grim prospect for a President McCain.

Barack Obama's campaign theme is "Change We Can Believe In." For the rest of the election, it might well be "Millions More to Raise."  That's in dollars, not people. 

Obama's decision to skip an earlier pledge to forgo public financing for the general election if his opponent did so will probably allow the Illinois fundraising phenom to outspend John McCain 3-to-1. But it also raises questions about his keeping commitments, especially when commitments made earnestly and early on turn out to be inconvenient. This sounds like old-style political gamesmanship and calculation, not the message of change Obama had been preaching...

The new statewide polls are filled with bad news for John McCain, and the closer you look the worse it gets.

 

Most of the attention has focused on the Quinnipiac polls that show McCain trailing in the crucial swing states of Florida (47-43), Ohio (48-42) and Pennsylvania (52-40).  No one has won the presidency since 1960 without winning at least two of the three. But there's even more ominous news elsewhere.