So for the second time in this election, John McCain has yelled "Fire!" in a crowded room to desperately change the topic of an unfavorable conversation.

Internals of the ABC/Washington Post poll this morning must have really scared the pants off our hopeful Commander-in-chief to pull a stunt like this. But as Todd points out, the McCain camp revealed their hand in their transparently phony rebuke.

Obama has regained the lead in Gallup!

Whatever Obama is doing seems to be working. Or, if denegrating Obama is still en vogue for you, whatever John McCain isn't doing seems to be working.

"Due to the very nature of fans, their mere presence can have profound impacts on how the teams perform...The term is trademarked by and originated with Texas A&M University in 1922."

Although it was just yesterday that I demonstrated how the Gallup Daily tracking poll pretty much negates the wholly unwarranted panic that all has been lost, the results from today reinforce my assertion that the polling percentages aren't that much different today than when we began the democratic convention, despite a vastly changed nature of the race.

I'm going to make this short and to the point: buck up, you sniveling cowards.

They say you should campaign like your down 10 points. Since when does that translate into supporters of the campaign fantasizing that they're irrevocably down 20?

There's an old political strategy. It makes the claim that how one campaigns indicates how one governs. It's particularly useful against a politician running a negative campaign.  I don't think it's too large of a logical leap to assume that how a politician's supporters behave reflects what that politician stands for.

Democrats have long been cast as the cowardly yellow bellied weaklings. And you know what? You're doing everything to reinforce that stereotype. How does that reflect on Senator Obama? I'll give you a hint. The netroots panic, then the meme spreads that Congress is in panic, then a right wing U.K. tabloid picks up the story, and the next thing you know, it appears on the front page of Drudge. Hey, take a page from the Big Dog and show some backbone, okay?

In the first sign that the hysterical panic that set in after the RNC is, in fact, hysterical, John McCain's surge in the Gallup Daily tracking poll has halted. John McCain now leads Barack Obama by 4% (49% to 44%)

So the convention is over, and John McCain received his bounce, moving ahead of Barack Obama in the Gallup Tracking poll. Bounces are referred to as such for a particular reason: they tend to be fleeting. Will this even be discussed in a week's time? And so far, it appears that neither McCain's (nor Obama's) bounce is atypical.

Regardless, with Obama generally perceived to have been the slim frontrunner since June, John McCain leading in any poll is difficult to swallow, especially with a history of imploding democratic campaigns.

The news from the Gallup tracking poll has been consistently positive since the night of Sen. Obama's big speech. Obama continues to hold a sold and steady 6-8 point lead over the past 6 days.