I watched Chris Matthews, ABC Sunday Morning, Meet the Press (alternating, cause they both come on at the same time now), Face the Nation, and I also watched McGlaughlin Group and part of Washington Week in Review on Friday evening.

It was a bit of a different panel on Matthews, thankfully. O'Donnell, Rather, Tucker, and Feinman. Not that these are necessarily new to the show, but at least they different than the ultra conservative panels he's been having lately.

Like usual, all the shows for the most part touched on the same kind of themes. Those included (1) Bush's reported pullout of troops from Iraq and how that would affect the campaign; (2) The candidate "surrogate" gaffs of the last week; (3) The candidates' VP choices.

Also, several of the shows started off by reporting new polls on the presidential race. Those polls were showing Obama ahead by a few percentage points. Wow. That shocked me. The last polls I had heard showed Obama up by double digits. I have no idea how to explain this. I know that the left of the Democratic party has been hurt by Obama's move to the center lately. He can deny it, but it's like denying that he's running for president. The really polarizing event was his vote for immunity for the telecom companies that helped Bush spy on us.

Sure, he can say that he voted for the amendment to strip the immunity from the bill, but that was all a sham. It was a done deal before that ever came up. But what I wonder is what does Obama perceive as any advantage going along with Bush at the end of the worst presidency in history? Why alienate your energized base to support Bush? It makes no sense, and his explanation on his website rings hollow.

He also fudged on the war and supported another Bush initiative that is questionable...the so called "faith based initiatives." That one could be forgiven probably, but in the context of these other things, it really turned off a lot of progressives. And then there is, of course, his rejection of public financing. All of those things bug progressives, who are expecting more. But, of course, the Dems always have felt they could walk on the progressives and still get most of them in the tent because they were the only viable alternative. But now that Cynthia McKinney has gotten the Green party nomination officially (something not one news show announced this morning), Obama had better be careful about who he blows off.

But surely the poll results that were announced this morning, with Obama up like 44 to 41, didn't take into account the reaction to Sen. Phil Gramm's comments that Americans were "whiners" and that our economic troubles were "mental." That's got to hurt McCain.

But, in the context of Obama's fallen fundraising in the last 3 months, and this fall in the polls, he better be looking at what is causing this. If he isn't honest with himself about what he's doing, he could lose. And the main thing that would make him lose is if an image of him actually being just another politician rather than someone young, new, fresh and with big time changes at the top of his agenda, he will lose. And that's what's been happening lately to the average person's thinking, or so I believe.

In regard to the VP picks, most of the pundits are still saying Obama will not Clinton. In fact, NBC was reporting that a major Clinton donor had gone to the press after a supposed conversation with Obama in which he said that he was still considering Clinton, but was concerned about Bill and how he would affect things should Clinton get the VP. But really got me suspicious was that on Meet the Press, Republican pundit Murphy said that the Republicans wanted Obama to pick Clinton but were sure he wouldn't cause it would be the stupidest thing he could do. He went on to say that they feared Kane more than anyone. That's silly. Kane has no name recognition and Clinton got as many votes as Obama in the primaries for the most part. I think the Republicans are very afraid of an Obama/Clinton ticket. We'll just how this all plays out.

I already wrote about some of the surrogate gaffs this week. Everyone agreed that the consequences of the gaffs was strongly in favor of Obama. I agree with that also.

I had already written a couple months ago about how the Iraq war was becoming much less of a prominent issue in the presidential race. Now, if Bush starts a pull out (which of course, Maliki is demanding as part of any long term troop status agreement with the US) that will make the Iraq war even less of an issue. But that seems to me to help Obama. That's because McCain's number one issue is that he supported the surge, and traditionally, larger numbers of the public think the Democrats help them on the economy. McCain already said that he didn't understand economic issues well enough, and recently, his man, Sen. Gramm, said that the recession was mental and that American's were whiners.

That's why I can't really understand these new polls. Something seems wrong, or troubling. The Democrats better take this serious and look at where they are going. We don't need flip flopping, politically manipulative campaign strategies aimed to please everyone. That's old politics. If Obama wants to really convince people that he is different and new, he needs to really be different and stand up for what he believes. If he doesn't, he could lose. If that means a McCain victory, then that means continued downslide for most of the American people.