D AYTONA BEACH -- At his second stop in his ''women for the change we need'' blitz through Florida, Barack Obama was feisty and loose. Who wouldn't be? A charged-up audience of university students, women and blacks energized the place.

Lots of lipstick but no pit bulls in sight Saturday at Bethune-Cookman University in this predominantly Democratic city.

Obama was in his element -- and on message after last week's Dow Jones roller coaster seems to have landed him on top in public opinion polls.

After weeks of getting hammered by GOP TV ads that even Bush dirty-tricks guru Karl Rove has questioned for their lack of veracity and penchant for exaggeration, Obama's numbers have started to climb nationally and are in a statistical dead heat in Florida. The star power of Sarah Palin, John McCain's veep choice, seems to be diminishing outside the GOP faithful.

And there -- rising above last week's tangled financial mess on Wall Street and the likelihood of a $1 trillion banking bailout on the backs of taxpayers -- stands Obama with an I told you so.

McCain comes off confused and defensive. The Arizona senator, who calls himself ''fundamentally a deregulator,'' argued at first against a bailout. Then he argued for it when President Bush and congressional Democrats agreed the U.S. government had to step in. Then he blamed Obama for the crisis.

On Saturday, Obama fired back. He pointed to a just-published article McCain wrote in a healthcare magazine in which the Republican argued for less regulation to open up healthcare insurance to more competition. To make his case, McCain used the example of the past 10 years of deregulation in the banking industry.

Bad timing.

''Let me get this straight. He wants to run healthcare like they've been running Wall Street? Well, Senator, I know some folks on Main Street who aren't going to think that's a good idea,'' Obama told the cheering crowd of 2,500 at the century-old black university.

With the economy ranking at the top of voters' concerns, McCain's economic libertarian credentials make him look like a blind and lost Mr. Magoo going in circles, trying to lead us out of a banking mortgage crisis that's second only to the Great Depression.

Enter Obama's tongue-twisting ''women for the change we need'' tour and that old Democratic sure-fire scare tactic -- privatizing Social Security.

Obama attacked McCain's proposed Social Security reform, which would allow retirees to invest a tiny portion in the stock market. He noted that without that safety net, half of all elderly women would be poor.

``If my opponent had his way, the millions of Floridians who rely on it would've had their Social Security tied up in the stock market this week. Millions would've watched as the market tumbled and their nest egg disappeared before their eyes.''

Told you he was feisty.

A new Miami Herald/St. Petersburg Times/Bay News 9 poll taken last week shows McCain has the edge in a statistical dead heat in Florida. But the gender gap is working in Obama's favor.

If terrorism is your top concern, then McCain wins hands down. But it's the economy, not the war, that's consuming voters.

Fifty-one percent of women, compared to 34 percent of men, trust Obama to ''change the way Washington works,'' according to the Herald poll. Only a third of women trust McCain to do the job.

On that front, the economy and healthcare, Obama is pummeling McCain, but he'll need women to get him over the hump. Whether they wear lipstick or not.

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