Even more gruesome than that Rasmussen national poll this morning putting The One at a cool 52 percent. The samples lean a bit towards the Dems in both states — eight-point and nine-point gaps, respectively — but given the size of the leads, it doesn’t much matter. From the Virginia poll:

There is movement among men, where immediately after the GOP convention, McCain led by 10, and where today Obama leads by 11.
There is movement among whites, where McCain’s once 22-point lead is today reduced to single digits.
There is movement among the well-to-do, where today for the first time Obama leads.
There is movement among pro-choice voters, where Obama’s lead has doubled since August.

New Hampshire went blue in ’04 so McCain doesn’t absolutely have to have it, but it was one of the states he thought he had a shot at flipping. Same with Michigan, which he’s now abandoned. Virginia, though, went red four years ago, as it has in every election since 1964. Remember our back of the envelope math on electoral votes last week? If The One can hold on to Kerry’s states and his current leads in Nevada and Iowa, Virginia would put him over the top. And Survey USA’s not the only new poll showing him with a double-digit lead there. In fact, Karl Rove’s electoral map based on public polls as of Friday already puts Obama over the top with 273 EVs, and that’s with Virginia and Nevada bpth in the toss-up column. Not all the blues are lost causes — Colorado, Wisconsin, and Minnesota are all within six — but look how many yellows are teetering.

What’s the way out? An Ayers/Wright offensive simply isn’t going to hack it; even I can’t be bothered with it today between covering my face and peeking through my fingers at the sinking Dow. A sustained attack on the left over Fannie/Freddie will help, but I don’t know how you push that message through to low-information voters with the time left. It seems unlikely in the extreme that people who don’t follow this from day to day are to going react to a meltdown on Wall Street by electing the guy from the party commonly derided as a pawn of big business. On the contrary, the worse things get, the better The One’s vacuous rhetoric sounds. After all, what surer tonic could there be for a looming depression than Hopenchange? Pricetag: $5 trillion. Horrifying exit quotation from an unnamed McCain advisor suggesting they’re ready to give up: “If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we’re going to lose.” Note to Team Maverick — you have no choice.

Update: Almost forgot. If you think things can’t get worse, bear in mind that the preliminary report in the Troopergate probe is due out Friday.