This morning's survey release by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute is the best news Chris Christie has had in a long time. While he hasn't yet closed the deal -- he'll need five more days of hard, error-free campaigning to do that -- the greatest threat to his victory is on its way to becoming a spent force. The race for governor of New Jersey is, once again, his to lose.

That lede might upset the team running the campaign of embattled Democratic incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine. After all, they might think that Corzine's first significant lead of the year -- at 43-38 percent over Christie, with Independent candidate Chris Daggett drawing 13 percent of the vote -- would be cause for celebration.

It will be. But for Christie, not for Corzine.

"New York 23" ... Them's fightin' words.

These days, whether you're a conservative activist, or a Republican Party official, saying "New York 23" out loud leads to a shortening of breath, a quickening of the pulse, and a tightening of the muscles. Heads whip around to see who said it, and in what context -- friend, or foe?

With less than a week to go before the special election in New York's 23rd Congressional District, tempers are flaring on the campaign trail -- and fingers are being pointed in, and at, a big white building at 320 First Street SE.

UPDATED

Barack Obama wants to help Jon Corzine win in New Jersey — so he’s coming back one more time. But will it, in fact, help?

Data from a Monmouth University/Gannett poll, conducted Oct. 15-18, suggests it might not — depending on how you look at it, and who’s doing the looking.

According to the survey, President Obama’s job approval rating in New Jersey is 53 percent approve, 39 percent disapprove. That’s a net plus-14 on the job approval rating. On the face of it, it looks like it would be a good move to bring him in.

But a closer look at the data reveals that among the few undecided voters remaining in the race, his job approval ratings are a bit lower — 44 percent approve, 35 percent disapprove. So that net plus-14 among all likely voters is only a net plus-9 among undecided voters. And his approval rating among those key undecided voters is less than 50 percent. So it looks like it’s still a good idea, but a bit less of one.

Why in the world is Barack Obama going to campaign for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Creigh Deeds in Hampton Roads next Tuesday?

After reading this bombshell in this morning’s Washington Post — “Deeds ignored advice, White House says” — any words of support from Obama’s mouth to the assembled masses will ring hollow.

The post-mortem blame game is always the worst part of any losing campaign.

And, speaking from experience, I can say with confidence that most practitioners of the fine arts of the campaign would rather lose by a lot than lose by a little — when you get swamped, you realize there was very little you could have done differently to change the outcome, and you can mentally shake off the loss and look forward to the next campaign as soon as you recover from your hangover.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

That aphorism -- penned by the Spanish-born Harvard philosopher George Santayana more than a century ago -- must be hanging on a wall wherever it is that New Jersey Republican leaders gather to swap campaign war stories, because boy, oh, boy, do these guys check every move they make against something that happened once in a previous campaign.

Remembering the past is a valuable tool in a campaign, where the most valuable resource is time, and there's precious little of it to waste. Done properly, remembering the past can help inform a campaign's decisions, and help it avoid obvious trouble.

But there's a limit to the value of memory, and a campaign should never allow itself to become a captive of its collective memory.

Tonight is the final "televised" debate of the New Jersey gubernatorial campaign.

I put "televised" in quotes because while it is true that it will be televised, very few people will see it -- because the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission chose to pass on the League of Women Voters invitation to joint sponsorship with the ABC television affiliates in New York and Philadelphia, this debate will "air" on Saturday afternoon at 2 PM on Philadelphia's FOX affiliate, and Sunday afternoon on WWOR in the New York market. The debate will be up against college football on Saturday in south Jersey, and on Sunday, the debate will be programmed against a New York Giants football game.

Most people learn about debates not by watching them, but from news coverage afterward. In this case, that dynamic will be amplified.

If National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Pete Sessions were a movie golfer, he'd be David Simms, the fictional antagonist of director Ron Shelton's 1996 romantic comedy, "Tin Cup."

That movie, you'll recall, also starred Kevin Costner as driving range pro Roy "Tin Cup" McAvoy.

Tin Cup/Costner is the Errol Flynn of movie golf, the swashbuckling hero of derring-do, always ready to pull the three wood and have a go at it, even from bad lies in the rough and over water; Simms/Johnson, his nemesis, is Tin Cup's exact opposite, a "grinder," the kind of golfer who's perfectly happy with par, and who always plays the safe shot, even when the riskier shot isn't all much riskier.

Here's yet one more item for the file called, "If Sarah Palin Wants To Run for President, She's Got To Learn To Handle Press Inquiries Better."

Politico this morning has a piece reporting that former GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin is not wanted by the GOP nominees for governor in either of the nation's two marquee governor's races.

That she should not be a desired surrogate -- neither as a draw for a fundraiser, nor to generate earned media -- should not be a surprise.

In both New Jersey and Virginia, moderate suburban female non-partisans are keys to victory. Right now, depending on which poll you examine, they're either lining up with the GOP candidate or remaining neutral.

A Palin visit -- as much as it might energize the base -- could quite possibly do more damage than good for the GOP nominee.

"Dems beg Deeds for positive message," read the headline on Politico last night, over a story reporting complaints by Democrats Terry McAuliffe, U.S. Rep. James P. Moran, and outgoing Gov. Tim Kaine that Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Creigh Deeds is relying too heavily on negative messaging against his GOP opponent, Bob McDonnell, and should instead re-focus his campaign communications efforts to highlight a more positive message in the closing weeks of the campaign.

It's the exact reverse of the situation in New Jersey, where it is Republican armchair quarterbacks -- yours truly included -- who have been urging the GOP nominee to re-focus his campaign communications efforts to highlight a more positive message in the closing weeks of the campaign.

In both states, the insiders running the campaigns have decided the surest route to eventual victory is to run a primarily negative campaign, raising the opponent's personal unfavorable ratings to toxic levels and doing very little positive that might threaten to draw coverage away from their negative message.