Daniel Larison doesn’t go quite as far as to say that, but he’s been keeping an eye on Obama’s state polls and the trend does not look healthy. New Hampshire is the latest harbinger of bad news for the Democrat.

How meaningful is Obama’s slump? Not very. After all, who would expect Obama’s ratings to be rising at a time when most of the media’s attention has been on Wright and the acrimonious race between Obama and Clinton? He would have to be superhumanly popular to withstand all of that without losing support.

The political environment that exists now, however, is nothing like the one that will exist in the summer, let alone November, when the Democrats will be fighting McCain instead of each other and the media glare will be upon the Arizonan as well as Obama. The present circumstances are — as several commentators, including me, have pointed out — the best that McCain is likely to enjoy for the rest of the season. I suspect present conditions are also nearly rock-bottom for Obama, though it’s a mistake ever to underestimate how much slime a Clinton can excrete. Nevertheless, barring new skeletons spilling out of Obama’s closest, the race is going to get better for him and worse for McCain.

That’s not to discount altogether the polls that Larison points to. The farther Obama falls now, the bigger his bounce after clinching the nomination will have to be to put him back into play in states like New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. But there will be a bounce, and the Republican Party’s fundamentals — McCain’s lackluster (though improving) fundraising, the GOP’s poor showing in recent House contests in traditionally Republican districts, and Bush’s subterranean approval ratings — are so bad that handicapping the race for McCain at this point is unwise.