Dr. Potomac notes the new Zogby tracking poll for the New Hampshire primary that has Dean surging to within three points of Kerry. Needless to say, even a close second for Dr. Dean would once again scramble the race for the Democratic nomination setting up a fight between a well-financed but wounded Dean and underfinanced, wounded Kerry. It is too much to hope for but wowza.

Zogby is known for being prescient (as in calling the 1994 GOP takeover of the House and Senate) and also for getting things badly wrong. For instance, the Sunday before the 1998 Senate election in New York, the Zogby tracking poll showed incumbent Al D'Amato closing rapidly on Chuck Schumer in a stunning reversal of fortune. The New York Post ran a screamer (when don't they, you ask?) AL STORMS BACK announcing the poll results and had Republicans, including Dr. Potomac, dancing in the aisles. Unfortunately, the poll was either seriously flawed or recorded a dead-cat bounce with Schumer rolling to a solid victory.

It is worth noting at this point that the Zogby poll is an outlier: USA Today and ARG are both out this morning with polls that show Dean hovering in the high teens/low 20s. ARG's three-day trend line shows only that Dr. Dean has staunched the hemorrhaging -- not even a dead-cat bounce there. In other words, the balance of the polling evidence is that the Iowa Scream is still dead-weight around Dean's neck. This view is reinforced by the fact that Kerry has not shown the least concern about Dean in the past few days, breaking his positive messages only to dope slap Wes Clark for questioning his military credentials.

I am afraid this means that Albert's bet with dear old dad remains in jeopardy.