I won't claim that I know for a fact that someone like Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gravel could beat McCain, but we haven't actually tried running a real liberal in a long time.

It seems as if much of this conversation is occurring in the shadow of the 1984 election, the last time the democrats actually ran a liberal against the GOP. Mondale said he'd raise taxes because he was concerned about the deficit, and of course Reagan walloped him. That's the connection people made, and apparently still make. It's as if once a simple explanation is offered at the time of the event, it's next to impossible for people to break free and regard subsequent events(and elections) in a new light.

Of course we've run our share of candidates with charisma deficits, like Dukakis, Gore and of course Kerry-- but we had a hell of a statistical outlier with Bill Clinton as far as that measure goes. Now it seems that people are looking at Obama and the 2nd Clinton in a sort of Gestalt daze, imposing attributes upon them and avoiding looking at what policies they stand for.

Obama has charisma, but darn it, he's black. Democrats use code words like "electability" because they don't want to seem uncouth. But that's what they're talking about, for the most part-- because let's face it, the more you chant "electability" as a mindless mantra, the more Obama's race becomes an issue that has currency. If you worry about "electability", you worry about race.

The same thing goes for Hillary's supposed unlikeability. Myself, I don't like the corporatist, faux-democratic policies

of either, but I am indifferent to both of them on a personal level.

I'd recommend to the supporters of both HRC and Obama that they stop worrying about either "electability" or "likeability", because the more you obsess over these intangible non-issues, the more you are just validating the superficial take that the big media outlets are imposing as a narrative.

And if you do this, how will you suddenly switch gears and tell average independent voters who only pay a casual, lazy attention to issues, that even though the MSM was right about the electability blather from the spring and summer, when they start to parrot GOP talking points in the fall,

"well, that's different".

The democratic nominee's credibility, whichever joker gets it, will be compromised, and swing voters will be repelled. And if the economy sours significantly by the fall, McCain will hit either BO or HRC with how they have nothing to offer and why didn't they talk about how they were going to help ordinary, hard working people, instead of doing the "change, blah blah blah," soft-shoe?

The democratic nominee will protest, but the media will parrot it without any editorializing or skepticism.

My prediction: either Obama or Hillary will lose to the 100 year man, because why should real liberals come out and vote for either of these? Ron Paul has denied he'll run as an independent, but if he changes his mind and accepts the Libertarian party's nomination, he'll get at least 6-8 percent and throw the election, and the democrats will deserve it.

What ordinary people and their children deserve, well...

In a golf tournament the total score going to the 18th hole is based on 17 (equally valuable)previous holes, whose mathematical values are at that point unchangeable, whereas in a general election, no sane person would insist that a voter had to be held to how she may have voted in a previous primary, nor that how she voted, or even if she voted in the primary at all should be a measure of the "strength" of her vote in the final round, i.e., the general election.

By your logic in comparing a golf tournament with its 18 mathematically equal rounds, the strength of how convincingly a candidate won his party's nomination would affect his final vote total. If McCain wraps up his party's nomination sooner than either Obama or Clinton(as appears likely), is that the equivalent of him earning a polling advantage (or several "strokes") over the democrat going into November?

It's tendentious and simply wrong for you to suggest that the American people expect anything other than for all the candidates on the ballot to enter the general election with a score of zero, and at least a theoretical parity. Anything less is undemocratic.

2.Also, your argument that the least popular candidate is likely to lose in a three way race is not borne out by recent US history. The data from various polllsters from the 1968 and 1992 elections, the last in relatively modern history that a 3rd party candidate played a significant role, suggests that Nixon and Clinton would have beat their main opponent even if Wallace and Perot weren't in the races. If you are aware of any studies that contradict the consensus view, I'd encourage you to discuss the '68 and '92 elections in a subsequent article and show me how I'm wrong.

I meant most popular candidate in a three way race.

c'est la vee, er vie.