Bottom Line: Obama should be winning easily. Instead, he is running a campaign that is still messaging to the already converted. While McCain is not running a great campaign, he is running a steady one. Senator Obama is blowing it.

Argument:

Polls can fluctuate, but at present Senator Obama seems unable to close the deal with the American electorate. There is no respectable poll that shows Obama getting over half the vote. Almost all of them show him getting a good bit less.

Following my rule of thumb set at the start of the race, as a challenger Senator Obama is losing when he dips under a five point lead in the polls this early. Why? Obama is a challenger in a year for challengers and poll weakness early on is dangerous. Ask Jimmy Carter who won, but barely in a race that he should have put away. I think this was because Carter never expanded his base, because he believed (with everyone else) that he could not lose in a Democrat year. [more]

This election will be all about Senator Obama.

He has made history in a good sense. Only a racist or a fool (while all racists are fools not all fools are racists) isn’t happy to see a nation conceived in the original sin of slavery nominate an African-American for president. That is not a good reason to vote for him, but it is a good thing.

Like Reagan in 1980, the country is fed up with the incumbent party. Like Reagan in 1980, the country is open (which is rare) to somebody more from the edge of acceptable politics. The attractive challenger can get a big majority of the voters . . . if. It is the “if” that makes this election interesting. My bet is that in the end it will not be very close. If Obama can show he is acceptable to moderates, then he will win. If he cannot, he will lose in Dukakis style.

Senator Obama has to not lose in order to win. [more]

Theodore Roosevelt was such a dynamic candidate that he towered over the President who chose him as running mate. Even though the popular Rough Rider may have helped William McKinley, there is little doubt that McKinley would have won with just about anybody not criminally insane (or at least known to be criminally insane) on the ticket.

I cannot think of one vice-presidential pick that has won or lost a race by him or Ferraro-self. A vice-presidential pick can do some harm even to a winner (Quayle for Bush), help a loser (Bentson for Dukakis) or he may do no harm, but not help much either (Kemp for Dole, Cheney for Bush). It is even hard to think of a recent case where a vice presidential pick “delivered” a state, unless one is ancient enough to think of 1960 as recent (Johnson helped in Texas by hook and by crook). Edwards could not do it for Kerry to cite on recent example of failure. [more]