The Occasional Observer

So a new CNN poll indicates that "67 percent [of Obama supporters] say they're extremely or very enthusiastic about voting for president this year. But only about one-third, or 34 percent, of McCain supporters feel fired up."

They then state: Four years ago, there was almost no difference in enthusiasm between George W. Bush supporters and John Kerry supporters. According to the poll, 66 percent of Bush supporters say they were fired up, compared with 65 percent of Kerry supporters.

CNN goes on to suggest that weariness of Bush is posing a real problem for McCain and could spell trouble in November. While I agree that McCain needs to energize the base, and selecting a conservative VP could do so, I find a different story in these numbers than CNN (shocking, I know). Specifically, I think these poll results are potentially bad news for Obama, not McCain, in that there is no apparent uptick in enthusiasm among Dems over '04, despite the fact that Obama is 'the chosen one' and they have the perfect storm in '08 (unpopular president, unpopular war, and sagging economy). If enthusiasm for Kerry was running at 65% in '04, I would've expected Obama to be upwards of 80% the way the MSM writes about it. The fact that he is engendering no more enthusiasm among Dems than Kerry did suggests his support may not be as broad and deep as we are led to believe. It also leads me to believe that a swift-boat like attack may be capable of sinking Obama.