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On the Bounce, and a Warning

A Ways to Go Yet

Obama definitely got a bounce, but here's a point his backers should keep in mind.

Well, so much for the conventional wisdom that it's impossible to get a bounce these days. I'm sure you've been reading Nate Silver, who wrote two days ago that Obama is now, post-convention, undeniably the front-runner.

Today, Nate has Obama at an 80.7 percent chance of winning, which is up 6.7 percent in the last week. That puts Romney's chance of winning at--yes, it's called arithmatic!--19.3 percent. He also now figures Obama to snatch close to 320 electoral votes.

I'm not dancing just yet. So Rasmussen says Obama is at 50. I didn't believe Rasmussen before this past weekend, and I'm not going to start believing it now that I happen to like the numbers.

I would offer this warning to my comrades. Under unbelievably intense questioning from yours truly on BeastTV, Obama Super-PAC honcho Bill Burton melted down and acknowledged (or, under normal questioning, Burton said) that the bulk of the undecided vote consists of non-college-educated whites and tilts female. That ain't exactly Hussein's demographic, kids.

It helps him that it's more female than male. And it's worth bearing in mind that Obama's share of the white non-college vote varied widely in 2008 from state to state. He got 10 percent of that vote in Alabama, but he won it outright in some Great Lakes states, like Gault Boy's allegedly in-play home state of Wisconsin.

That demographic overall went 58 to 40 for McCain last time. Given that these people are still undecided, it stands to reason that they're less anti-Obama than that. But one still must assume that these voters tumble 54 to 46 for Romney, or 53 to 47, something like that. So it'll depend on how far ahead Obama is as Election Day nears. And of course we have the debates. A ways to go yet.