Obama Bounce Watch

UPDATED & BUMPED: Holy freaking kamoley! USA Today poll now has McCain ahead by 4 points among likely voters:

The Friday-Sunday poll, mostly conducted as Obama was returning from his much-publicized overseas trip and released just this hour, shows McCain now ahead 49%-45% among voters that Gallup believes are most likely to go to the polls in November. In late June, he was behind among likely voters, 50%-44%.

I'll be back to comment, but first I have to go do my shift as a volunteer at the Progressive Suicide Prevention Hotline. Advice to parents with Obama supporters living in your basement: Hide the whiskey and sleeping pills.

UPDATE: I'm back. Busy night at the hotline. Ace notes that the unknown factor in this election is "the wild-eyed zealotry of Obama's cultists." Indeed. I haven't seen anything this kind of fanaticism since Heaven's Gate or Jonestown. If Squeaky Fromme weren't in federal prison, she'd be walking precincts for Obama.

PREVIOUSLY:

Slight shrinkage for Obama in the latest Gallup daily tracking poll, as he lead is now 8 points (48%-40%), a decline from yesterday's 9-point lead.

This is minor good news for Crazy Cousin John. Obama's lead had grown from 2 points to 9 points in the span of three days, and if that trend had continued, Maverick would have been looking at a double-digit deficit today.

Remember that these tracking numbers are an average of a three-day rolling sample, so today's slight decline likely represents a fairly major dropoff from Saturday to Sunday. This could mean that Obama's starting to pay a price for skipping the visit to Landstuhl.

Or it could mean nothing at all. A single day's poll results really don't tell us much and, as I've said repeatedly, we won't have a clear snapshot of the state of the campaign until Thursday.

UPDATE: Thomas Edsall examines the dispute over whether polls indicate an inevitable blowout victory for Obama. As for supposedly "inevitable" outcomes, let me share a favorite quote with you:

I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.

The date was January 20, 1981.