Raining on Obama's parade

Why is Obama not leading significantly in the polls? The Rasmussen Reports daily presidential tracking poll for Wednesday shows Barack Obama attracting 44 percent of the vote while John McCain holds at 42 percent. Obama is supported by 12 percent of Republicans while McCain earns the vote from 16 percent of Democrats. Is it possible that as Obama is pressured to roll out specifics about his vision for the country that he is even too liberal for most Democrats?

Jerome Corsi is doing his part to rain on Obama's parade by exposing what many see as the leftist socialism of Sen. Obama in his book The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality. The New York Times reports that the book will be number one on its best-sellers list on Sunday.

Corsi maintains that America is unfamiliar with the real Obama and if voters knew the truth they would not cast their vote for someone who may still have connections with Islam, never clarified when his experimentation with drugs in high school and college ever ceased, was dishonest, for example, about being present when Jeremiah Wright blamed "white arrogance" as the primary cause of suffering in the world, and so on.

The Corsi book is likely to raise even more questions about an Obama that most Democrats do not seem to know. The fact that Obama does not have a sizable lead in the polls, given his popularity, should be troublesome for Obama's campaign. Understanding that polls are not always exhaustively reliable, it is at least a signal that Obama's popularity is waning as more information is revealed about him.

Stuart Shepard, of Focus On The Family, took some flak for a video asking, "Would it be wrong to ask people to pray for rain?" during Obama's acceptance speech for his party's nomination. Shepard asks for torrential rain to start "two minutes before the acceptance speech begins."

"I'm still pro-life, and I'm still in favour of marriage as being between one man and one woman," Shepard says on the video. "I would like the next president who will select justices for the next Supreme Court to agree."

Focus on the Family withdrew the video after receiving complaints, saying it was meant to be hyperbolic and humorous. Shepard's prayer request for rain may be unnecessary as more and more Democrats lose enthusiasm about Obama as we approach election day.