Measuring the Curtains?

Contrarian thought for the day:

Could all the recent poll-driven chatter about how Barack Obama is sewing up the election come back to bite him?

Ordinarily, a candidate wants to be like a hot stock. (Eh, maybe not a great analogy in this market.) You want people talking up your value, which gives other people confidence to invest in you, which in turn creates more confidence that you're heading up. But, of course, you don't want your bubble to burst.

It may well be that the soothsayers are right: Obama is moving up in the key battlegrounds, he's playing in red states, Gallup tracking gives him an 11-point lead, the imploding economy helps him and makes it hard for John McCain to play catchup in the remaining 3 1/2 weeks. But here are some potential downsides:

· Obama's supporters assume he's got a lease on the Oval Office and some -- especially those newly registered voters -- don't bother to turn out.

· The polls turn out to be overstating Obama's strength, in part because some respondents aren't honest about being willing to vote for a black candidate.

· Obama comes to be seen as the semi-incumbent, and as things get worse, voters wonder whether the new guy can handle a crisis of this magnitude and experience a bit of buyer's remorse. (This, in my view, happened to Hillary Clinton during the primaries, when she initially ran a cautious, front-runner's campaign and lost the sense that she represented change, both as a woman and a challenger.)

These may well be problems worth having. Since Obama would succeed 43 white presidents, he might benefit from Americans getting used to the idea that he can, and perhaps will, make it to the White House. But elections have a way of tightening toward the end. Obama needs a big turnout in those half-dozen key states. And a sense that the contest is effectively over could diminish the voter surge he needs.

Politico runs the numbers and uses the L word: