The Obama Bounce

Barack Obama has gotten he inevitable bounce from finally securing the Democratic Party’s nomination. I am surprised it was so low. The latest Gallup poll, Obama is up 48%-42% over John McCain. Generally since it became known Obama was going to defeat Hillary Clinton, Obama had been running an average of 4% higher than McCain, still within the margin of error. A 2% bounce has to be disappointing.

At least for now. I imagine Obama will build up a double digit lead soon as the high emotions of Clinton supporters subside and they rally around him. While some Clinton supporters have said they would switch to McCain, I suspect in the long run, that number will be insignificant. Obama has a charisma that seems to easily win people over. I suspect Clinton will soon be as old a news story as Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, to boot.

McCain will get a convention bounce just like Bob Dole’s in 1996, but will it make much difference? About the only advantage I see McCain having beyond his experience, which voters do not seem to care much about this time around, is he is a known quantity. There cannot be that many skeletons in his closet we do not already know about. Obama is still relatively unknown and probably not ready for big league campaigning. Gaffes might make a bigger difference in 2008 than they have in quite a while.