* Recent battleground state tracking polls showed a big jump for Barack Obama. But a Democratic news outlet dumped a tanker truck of cold water on Obama’s presidential aspirations yesterday….

In an unusually candid interview, a top official for the largest union backing Obama said that internal union polling shows that the race remains much more volatile and fluid in key battleground states than public polling suggests. He warned that low-information swing-state voters are saying they still don’t have a firm enough grasp on Obama’s life-story, character and record for the Illinois Senator to close the deal with them. […]

“This election remains extremely volatile in the battlegrounds,” [AFL-CIO deputy political director Mike Podhorzer] told us. “The public polls are giving a false sense of precision about where the race is. That’s a story that’s not really being told.”

Strikingly, Podhorzer said that his union’s internal polls — which push voters hard on the question of whether people are really firmly committed to their pick — show that as many as “15 to 20 percent” of battleground state voters remain “persuadable,” as he put it, despite what public polls say about the level of undecided voters.

“There are more voters than you’d expect who are just starting to pay attention to the election,” he said. “And there’s a lot of room for people to go back and forth.” […]

“Low information voters who haven’t been following this don’t know very much about Obama, in a way that might be different from other elections,” he said. “Voters are saying, `I really don’t want another four years of this, but I don’t know much about him.”

* As if the uncertain polling, the Tony Rezko deals, machine endorsements, and his ties to people like Senate President Emil Jones and Gov. Blagojevich isn’t enough already, the FBI is now reportedly looking into one of Sen. Barack Obama’s bestest buddies…

FBI agents met with Will County Auditor Stephen Weber for two hours Wednesday morning regarding an investigation the auditor initiated into a countywide office, the Tribune has learned. […]

Sources say the investigation centers on Will County Executive Larry Walsh’s office. Walsh, who faces Joliet businessman Dan Kennison in the November election, was outraged by rumors that investigators were looking into whether one of his employees was improperly accepting payments from a lobbying firm hired by the county.

Walsh, a Democrat, blamed the accusations on gutter politics. Weber is a Republican who also faces a November challenger, Democrat Kevin Duffy Blackburn.

Walsh has been prominently featured in some of Obama’s TV ads during the presidential campaign.

* More…

At 9:45 a.m., Chicago agent Joseph Basile and another man walked into the offices of Will County Auditor Steve Weber. They walked back out again just after 11 a.m. […]

“If you are insinuating that [chief of staff Matt Ryan] is receiving some kind of monetary reimbursement from them, I find that totally preposterous,” Walsh said.

The lobbying firm has secured quite a bit of federal funding for the county, including money to clean up and modernize the water and sewer system in Joliet Township’s Ridgewood neighborhood; to do engineering work at 143rd Street and Interstate 355; and to add laptop computers to the squad cars driven by Will County police. […]

“I have never received one nickel of compensation from anyone, including Mr. Smith, since I have been a county employee,” Ryan said.

Walsh is up for reelection, so this could just be a political game. But the timing isn’t just bad for Walsh, it’s bad for Obama.

Please remember our rule forbidding the use of mindless DC talking points in the comment section. They’ll just be deleted anyway, so you might as well come up with something original to begin with. Thanks.