Why - despite "gloom & doom" economic reporting - is McCain still doing great in the polls?

The MSM has been saying we're in a recession for a year or so, so why don't the polls reflect that, why isn't Obama leading by more!?

One reason is that people know the MSM is in the tank for Obama. (Heck, even Lou Dobbs and Ed Rendell have spoken out about this). And people intuit that things aren't as bad as the MSM and the Dems say. The people - like McCain, basically know that our economy is fundamentally sound - and that we are just going through a rough patch (to use Bush's phrase), a rough patch due to energy inflation and the subprime mortgage fiasco.

Read this article and see if you agree....

WASHINGTON POST - (IT'S A LONG ONE - RTWT) : Economy May Not Influence Election As It Has in Past - Polls Contradict Forecasting Models

... Economists who say economic conditions can be used to explain the outcome of almost every presidential election since at least the 1950s are perplexed.

"Historically, the economy seems to matter. And given the state of the economy, it should be giving Obama an edge," said Chris Varvares, president of Macroeconomic Advisers, a St. Louis firm whose forecasting model found that Obama should trounce McCain by nearly 10 points in November.

Indeed, certain economic factors are so negative that, according to Varvares's model, 2008 should be one of the few years the economy "rises to the level of being a deciding factor." But, he said, the polls "certainly show something different." ...

... Forecasting models by Macroeconomic Advisers and Global Insight, a Massachusetts forecasting firm, suggest that stagnant disposable income is "the key economic variable that should be hurting the Republicans," said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist for Global Insight. Gault predicts that per capita disposable income will decline in the current quarter, making this year "only the second time since World War II that we'll be going into the election with real disposable income having fallen" from the previous year, he said.

That should leave McCain fighting "a real uphill battle," said Gault, whose model shows Obama winning by 7 points. ...

... To be sure, the polls could be wrong and Democrats could win by a big margin in November. In the meantime, however, the tight race has led some economic forecasters, political scientists and frustrated Democrats to conclude that factors other than the economy must be weighing more heavily than they have in the past.

One possibility is that the economy is not actually all that bad -- that, this year, it's not "the economy, stupid," as Bill Clinton's campaign famously put it in 1992. ...

Ray C. Fair, a Yale University economist who created the first economic forecasting model for U.S. presidential ballots in 1978, predicts electoral outcomes by using different economic data, such as inflation and the number of quarters of "good news" -- when the economy grew by 3.2 percent or more -- in the previous four years. His latest update shows Obama winning narrowly, by less than 3 points.

Race is another possibility.

"We have a black candidate this time around. That's a wild card," said Alfred Cuzan, a political science professor at the University of West Florida, who has combined a variety of polls, expert surveys and other forecasting models to arrive at his conclusion that the 2008 race is a dead heat.

Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg says the notion that racism is causing white Democrats to reject the first African American on a major party ticket is too simplistic. In recent surveys and focus groups in the heavily white, pro-union bastion of Macomb County, Mich. -- home to the Reagan Democrats of 1980, where Obama trails McCain by 7 points -- Greenberg found that blue-collar voters are holding back for more subtle reasons.

... In a report released Monday, Greenberg wrote that Macomb voters questioned Obama's patriotism and his dedication to national security. And they said they find his prescription for change "disconnected" from their "anger at the elites of business and politics who have sold out the American worker and middle class."

"Listening to Obama has not generated excitement about the change he will bring," Greenberg concluded.

BOTTOM LINE: It's Obama's long-held ties to the corrupt Chicago Machine (and anti-Americans like Wright and Ayers), his inexperience, and his postmodern leftism, stupid!

VOTE ACCORDINGLY.