For the past couple of months I’ve been admonishing everyone not to pay attention to polls, suggesting that predictive numbers will not appear until mid-to-late September. Now we’re at the starting point.

As the post-convention bounces level off, the prospects for Barack Obama and the Democrats are not very healthy, but far from terminal.

Obama is running a point or a point and a half behind John McCain in the national vote—down from earlier leads averaging six points. This is relatively insignificant because it is well within the margin of error—and of course the national numbers are less important than the electoral votes.

More troubling, he now trails McCain in the state-by-state count calculated by most of the accumulators, but the bag is mixed. A few have him narrowly ahead although one has him behind by as many as a dozen EVs.

It all depends on which of the many state polls one includes in the averages—some vary wildly. For example, Obama is either dead even or leading by 12 points in what should be the Democratic state of Minnesota.

These state polls usually have wider margins of error than the national polls. Pollsters still have problems establishing models for their samples because of the shift in voting patterns among younger people and African Americans, to say nothing of massive new Democratic registrations. Nor can they give any indication of ground-game strength, at which the Obamans currently excel.

Nevertheless, the gains made by McCain since adding Sarah Palin to the ticket are impressive and could portend Democratic disaster. Judging by the blogs and e-mails I receive, we’re at the edge of panic, with hundreds, maybe thousands, screaming Obama shoulda picked Hillary. Jeez—even Palin says so!

The otherwise brilliantly run Obama campaign is now deluged with criticism and free advice—much of it circular and contradictory. Agreed: they were caught flat-footed by the Palin phenomenon and lost a week trying to readjust.

But now there is every indication Obama is coming on stronger and more directly in his criticism of the Republican ticket, coordinated with attack ads and surrogate echo chambers.

This satisfies many of the critics and second-guessers, but they wouldn’t be Democrats if they didn’t eat their young.

Looking objectively ahead, a few things are clear.

First, Obama must get fired up again and reignite his audiences on the economy and the war. He must pound away that we’ve had eight years of lying liars in the White House and the opposition ticket will bring at least another four of same, based on the lies they’ve perpetrated repeatedly in the campaign.

He has to lock in the true independents out there, who remain skeptical of McCain-Palin. Moreover, he has to reach out again to those former Republicans who began calling themselves “independents” because they were disheartened by the Bush administration.

That latter group seems to have moved back to the GOP in significant numbers—the “homecoming” some call it, because they are elated by Palin and her rejuvenation of McCain.

The basic game is to remind all of them why they stopped self-identifying as Republicans during the past couple of years—expose the lies and hypocrisy, demonstrate that McCain-Palin is just an extension of Bush-Cheney rather than refreshing reformers.

It is likely that the media will now chip away at McCain, disappointed in his win-at-any-cost persona; it is more likely that the Palin bubble will develop a slow leak, even if it doesn’t burst. This will help, but it will not sink the ticket unless Obama is more clever and more aggressive—as he seems to be getting.

The first debate on Sept. 26 will be crucial. Obama must learn to answer questions simply and directly, not elliptically with more qualifiers than the Olympic tryout team. Use forthright, declarative sentences, like Hemingway. Forget about being the black William Faulkner or the straight Marcel Proust.

Now that’s not too much to ask, is it?