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Polls are all higgledy-piggledy in the crucial state of Ohio. That's the state where McCain and his campaign manager, Rick Davis, are worried about taking blame if a German company, DHL, shuts down a shipping hub at an airport in Wilmington, OH, where 8,600 Ohioans work. That's because, as long ago as 2003, McCain and Davis had a hand in convincing Congress to let the foreign company take over the facilities, over objections by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and others that other countries shouldn't control U.S. air commerce.

Now the Germans want to save money by closing the Wilmington operation and putting that stage of delivery in the hands of UPS.

So union leaders are making it an issue that McCain's guy took $185,000 in lobbying fees to encourage this development. Meanwhile, the McCain campaign is telling the Cleveland Plain-Dealer that "[a]t the time of the merger, no one anticipated an impact on jobs in Wilmington." The Original Maverick finds himself in town today, reassuring folks, in a private meeting, that he cares about job losses. Last month, when a told a distressed Ohio woman, asked him to hold Senate hearings on the downsizing, that he'd give her "straight talk" on the issue, which came in the form of saying he wasn't sure if he could do anything about it.

Anyway, the survey firm Public Policy Pollings found that late last month, Obama was ahead by a comfortable eight percentage points in late July. Then Rasmussen Reports found McCain ahead by an even more comfortable ten percent. But a survey by Quinnipiac University finds it too close to call. Meanwhile, no one knows whether the word "Quinnipac" means people from the long-water land or to make a change in the direction of travel.

[Plain Dealer, Real Clear Politics, You Tube]