The most interesting part of recent polls for me is Gallup's breakdown by political ideology.

Obama has a slight, statistically insignificant lead with pure independents.  The closest he's come before that was when he was tied with McCain back in mid-July.  Right now I don't think it neccessarily means anything yet but it could become significant if he builds a decent lead with the independents.  Something to at least watch for in the coming weeks...

It's expected. The Media hasn't gone after Obama since the democratic primaries. With the news media working one side except for the super crazy rightwing news station the election should be fairly well Obamas.

The only thing that can change that is the debates... and Obama is in no big hurry to agree to them. Likely he'll wait out the clock until the last minute to get as many people as possible to make up there minds before he and McCain will actually talk about policies at the debates.

Actually the dates for the 3 debates (and one VP debate) have already been set.

Oh they actually agreed on them?  Only 3 debates.  That's mildly disapointing...

I remember when people were berating Bush for agreeing to "Only 3" debates. (I was one of them.)

Not quite the 10 that could of been.  Oh well.

They have had the dates for awhile now. Since before the conventions.

No kidding.  Last bit of news I saw on it was where they were still trying to come to an agreement.  McCain had wanting 10, but willing to drop down to 5.... and Obama wanting 2 debates, 2 "Lincoln Douglas" style debates (which are just joint speaches) and 1 other debate of some sort.

Kas, I think the actual strategy behind refusing the summer debates was to avoid giving McCain any media coverage with Obama. If you'll remember, the McCain campaign was whining about that lack of coverage pretty much every week over the summer right up until the convention where they unveiled Palin.

Now that McCain is getting media coverage again (coverage that he may regret, given how the negativity of his campaign is starting to backfire), it would definitely be in the Obama campaigns interests to squeeze as many debates in as possible, especially with the newest economic developments.

With only 6 or so weeks left, and 4 debates already planned, it's probably too late to schedule more.

Just like it was in Bush's best interests to only schedule 3 debates because well... he sucks at speaking... and thinking.

However debates are one of those things that should be above campaign strategy.  There should be as many as possible, as soon as possible to get as much info on policy as possible to the masses.

Why are debates the one thing that should be above campaign strategy? Shouldn't telling the truth be the one thing above strategy? (that goes for both sides, but particularly McCain).

And I know you didn't just accuse Obama of sucking at speaking and thinking? Obama's the most educated man in any of these campaigns.

oh great, I misread Kas's post as "the one thing" instead of "one of those things" :P He's going to go nuts in his response