The day before I cast my vote for Barack Obama, I wrote a column titled "Barack Obama Is Smarter Than Us." By "us," I meant the legions of us lefty bloggers out here, who second-guessed his campaign on a daily basis for nigh on two years. I included myself in that "us" as well -- because, I fully admit, I got incredibly frustrated during Obama's campaign when he didn't do what I really, really wanted him to. Or didn't do it fast enough to suit me.

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Much like Sherlock Holmes' non-barking nocturnal canine, the remarkable thing about President Barack Obama's poll numbers last month was that nothing remarkable happened. Both trendlines were pretty flat for the month, which was the second month in a row of little movement. Things are not getting much better for Obama's approval rate, but then neither are they getting much worse.

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I say this because Obama has stopped his slide in the polls. The downward slope of his approval numbers came to a screeching halt, and instead began hovering above (but never dipping below) the 50 percent mark. Since then, they have wavered in the 50-55 point range -- not trending clearly upwards, but at least not trending clearly downwards, either. Better news for Obama fans is the fact that his disapproval numbers did actually reverse course, after hitting a mid-month peak, and have settled downwards from that point on.

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So make of it what you will. Gibbs never even uttered the "V" word. But it's heartening to see the White House start to mildly threaten the use of the veto. This is an extraordinarily powerful arrow in the Executive's quiver, and one that they've been much too reluctant (in my opinion) to pull out. Now (extending this Robin-Hood-esque metaphor far further than I probably should), Gibbs didn't take the arrow out, nock it, and draw back his bow's string (much less aim it at anyone in particular). He merely reached over his shoulder, fingered the fletching of the veto arrow, and pulled it two inches out of the quiver -- before letting it drop back in.

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The chattering classes inside the Washington Beltway have decided amongst themselves that when all else fails, they can always revert to their "least common denominator" story about President Barack Obama -- that he is in danger of being "overexposed." You don't have to look very far to find this viewpoint on television, in print, or on the radio. It's like talking about the weather, for the political punditocracy. There's only one problem -- there's not a shred of evidence to back up the idea that President Obama using the bully pulpit (as often as he likes) is somehow a bad thing for him. But that doesn't stop it from being talked about endlessly, whenever Obama is in the same Zip code as a news camera.

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President Barack Obama will address Congress and the nation this Wednesday night on the subject of healthcare reform. What he'll say is anyone's guess, at this point. Which (by the way) is exactly the problem he's trying to fix. Nobody's really sure what Obama will fight for, and what he will toss overboard in the name of political expediency. Even staunch Obama supporters would be hard-pressed to say, right now, what Obama will say in his speech this Wednesday. But whatever he says, one fact remains crystal-clear: Obama has got to be specific in his speech, or else the healthcare reform effort may collapse of its own weight soon after. And by being specific, Obama's got to start taking some things off the table. If Obama attempts more lofty (but detail-free) rhetoric, and does not (his other favorite metaphor for this situation) "draw bright lines in the sand," then he is going to disappoint a lot of people who voted for him because they thought he would be a good leader.

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So, with the standard disclaimer aside, we can delve in to Obama's poll numbers for August. The news for Obama fans continues to be bad, unfortunately. There may be a faint glimmer of a spark of hope in the numbers -- but that's about all I can promise here, sorry about that. Obama's approval numbers continued their downward trend this month, and his disapproval numbers also increased. We'll go into these numbers in detail, up front.

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Would the Democratic Party, and Senate Democrats in particular, be better off if current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid loses his re-election bid next year? This is a provocative question, but it is now one that needs consideration, since Reid's poll numbers in his own state remain so dismal. The possibility of Reid becoming only the second Majority Leader since the 1950s to lose his own seat (Daschle was the other one) is looking more and more like the safe bet (to put it in gambling-friendly Nevada terms, as it were). Which leads to the question of what impact this will have on the Senate, what impact on the Democratic Party, and what impact on the country at large.

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I've always been confused why the media goes berserk about rating a president's "first 100 days," but then just stops counting after the first milestone. This, to a statistician, would be known as a "zero dimensional data array" -- one data point, to be exact. If you don't re-test the sample on a regular schedule, how are you supposed to compare it to anything?

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It's the beginning of a new month, which means it is time again to take a look at President Obama's poll numbers. The news this month for Obama fans is not particularly good, as Obama has definitely ended his "honeymoon" period (which virtually all first-term presidents go through). The downward trend to his numbers was expected, but the increase in the curve downward is slightly worrisome at this point -- but not yet what I would call a cause for alarm.

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