Gadfly Intrade wrap for Sept. 7-13

A bad week for Obama — slide must be arrested before first debate

I wouldn’t narrow my analysis of “why” to Obama’s not nominating Clinton as Veep, contrary to this blogger (while not denying there may be a woman’s issues angle) but, on my Intrade for this week, I’ll put McCain over Obama at 55/45 odds. That’s a big shift from the 55-45 Obama I had a week ago, but well warranted.

Why?

E.J. Dionne says Obama “has lost control of this campaign.”

Tom Friedman says Obama needs toget off the Valium.

Rich Cohen says he’s being Swift-boated.

In a wrap earlier this week, I ask if his campaign is “floundering or directionless.”

And, both there and floundering or directionless, I noted the Missing Joe Biden.

This all said, not all of Obama’s problems are of his own making. He’s got a lot of “Bradley effect” to overcome in Appalachia and nearby areas.

Now, more on my analysis of how Obama was, to put it bluntly, blown his campaign ever since Denver.

First, the Obama camp should have anticipated SOME woman being considered for Veep, and even if it was not ready for Palin, it should have had more woman surrogates ready to roll. Sens. Feinstein, Murray, Klobuchar and Stabenow all spring to mind. Apparently, they didn’t spring to mind for Obama.

Second, once Palin was rolled out, even better than the woman senators, Govs. Sebelius, Napolitano and Granholm should have topped the surrogate list. Again, these surrogates were missing from the mind of Obama.

Third, where is Biden, per above links?

Fourth, If Obama’s “can’t send an e-mail” ad is a “harder edge,” let’s go ahead and write a loss down in the D column now and beat the rush.

That all said, since I’m not a Democrat, and I’ve never drunk the Obama Kool-Aid, I’ll have plenty of schadenfreude for the postmortem after Nov. 4, should this continue to play out this way.

As for election related sites, Electoral-Vote agrees, now listing the breakdown at 270-268 McCain, including moving Virginia from “toss-up” to “barely GOP.” Also, North Carolina is now running “strong GOP.”

FiveThirtyEight.com is also in agreement, with an electoral vote split of 277-261, with Colorado now in its “lean McCain” campaign and giving him an absolute majority in the popular vote.

On the Senate, a cloture-proof Democratic Senate? Still at 10-90, and contrary to last week, I don’t think I’m putting that too low. (Electoral-Vote’s latest breakout is that the next Senate will be 56-44.) I think that, if Obama remains in this campaign mode, he’s going to start being a lead anchor in some races. FiveThirtyEight has 56-43 with one tossup.

In short, this has definitely been the worst week for Democrats since Obama put a wrap on the Democratic nomination.

In Texas, Cornyn’s popularity/approval numbers at Electoral-Vote are actually up a tick, and the Noriega education plan PR campaign this week didn’t gain much MSM traction.

In Dallas County, I’m still arbitrarily leaving the sheriff’s race at 50-50.