Obama vs. McBush

By now you probably have heard President Bush's speech at the Knesset in Israel late last week. At this speech, Bush compared (indirectly but pretty clear who he was talking about) Obama to those who appeased Hitler at the start of World War II. Even John McCain jumped on this to criticize Obama for being "naive" and "inexperience" (where have we heard that before) to deal with foreign affairs. Democrats, on the other hand, were outraged at what Bush had said and were quick to fire back against Bush. But what Joe Biden said was classic: "This is bulls***". Nicely and bluntly said.

Because of this, Obama responded quickly and forcefully. From the AP:

"If they want a debate about protecting the United States of America, that's a debate I'm ready to win because George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for." He blamed Bush for policies that enhance the strength of terrorist groups such as Hamas and "the fact that al-Qaida's leadership is stronger than ever because we took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan," among other failings."

This seems to be a present in disguise for Obama. For the past couple of days, the media has been abuzz about this, saying that this is Obama vs. Bush. So why is this good for Obama? Nobody was talking about Hillary Clinton. The focus of the media was on this supposed attack on Obama from Bush. And how has that fared for Obama? He has shot up in the head to head match up against Clinton

As you can see from the Gallup Daily Tracking Poll, the start of Obama's uptick started when the news of Bush's attack on Obama. Since then, he has seen steady growth of support culminating to his largest lead over Clinton (16%). Can we finally be seeing Democratic voters coalescing behind the soon to be nominee? A couple more days of polling will show if they are or not.

However, the blatant attack from Bush might just be what Obama needs to galvanize support from Democrats and even disaffected Republicans.