I don't mean race, I mean the even more basic premise here, the one that no one dares question but just repeats ad naseum, the one that says that opinion polls taken now mean anything about how people will actually vote (or even mean something about how they would vote if it were today) and that according to these polls, the candidates are "tied" in some way.

First, opinion polls months before have historically shed little light on outcomes in November. John Kerry was ahead. Ross Perot was ahead.

There's little doubt that some of the people who won't vote for Barack Obama will do so because of race. It seems likely. To quantify that somehow into A) precisely how many, and B) of that group, how many of those will say that now and then be won over by November once they get used to the idea-- I'm sorry this is all beyond any reasonable calculation I can imagine anyone getting right this far out.

It's just frustrating to watch us all trying to gather these complex things up into some pat statement, as if we can put values on these things. He "should" be ahead by exactly this much, because we think that "it's a Democratic year" and then since he's only 4 points ahead, well that's not enough, so ah okay, that's race then, and...

Yeesh. Who knows?

Electoral counts are far more interesting, here's one I saw today that has McCain with no chance of winning 270 even if he got every single state listed as "undecided", at this point.

http://www.slate.com/id/2195956

Should I be rejoicing? Should we be writing lots of columns about this "landslide electoral victory" that's on its way?

Well, maybe. But it's just a guess, at this point. And oddly, no one is doing that, only the hand-wringing about "Why are they tied??" instead, which is based on far shakier and far less meaningful data.

This matters by the way, because it creates a narrative, and the GOP just loves this one, the "OMG Obama is doing worse than a Democrat should this year!" It's the expectations game, they've been admitting, for a year, that "this isn't the GOP's year", just saying it right out loud. Ever wonder why? Partly because now that they've laid that groundwork, they can now say "Look! McCain is outperforming expectations!" and thus the "maverick" nonsense gets pumped up again.

Yep. Playing us like a two-dollar banjo, and we're all too willing to get played. I think it will come out all right this time but it would be nice if we weren't quite so eager to be instrumental in their little orchestra all the time.

For months now, everyday I hear you people in your ivory towers in New York and Washington blathered over and over about 'Does Obama have a problem with...insert a group of the week"

But, you never talk about whether mcCain has a problem.

-vwcats

I wish I could light this comment up and stick it on a marquee. There are places it's being asked, many of them. This just isn't one of them. Somehow Salon has gotten into the position of pushing a kind of concerned cautionary tone about the presumptive Democratic nominee (I suspect I know why but that's been hashed and rehashed and not worth the effort to pile on) which ends up looking depressingly similar to the rest of the lockstep media.

It also distracts from putting all that energy instead raising exactly those questions often enough about John McCain, which you would think this kind of publication would spend far more time on. So rather than offer any sort of alternative to most of what's out there, it just adds to the general giving a pass to McCain syndrome that you correctly identify as alive and well.

Obama was hoisted on the collective shoulders of the DNC in large part because he is black (and also, Not Hillary), and now has the burden of proving that there's more to him than just the color of his skin.

-ex-Leonardo

So in your mind, it's Barack Obama who was the Democratic establishment candidate, foisted on the rest of us by a creaky old political machine? And that would make Hillary, in your version of reality, the grassroots, Netroots, non-establishment outsider who ran an insurgency funded by small individual donations and bucked the system?

Wow. I'm tempted to make some crack about how it must be nice to live in a through-the-looking-glass world, but I don't think you're actually looking at all.

As far as "what he believes in" it's all readily available, he's been out there saying it, and the fact that you don't know is no ones fault but your own.

I suspect from your comment that you'd say that no matter what, though. Just a hunch.

we may have just dodged having another resident astrologer in the White House a la Nancy Reagan's. We may have dodged it by a lot, I mean he didn't necccesarily ever have that big a chance, but still.

Wow, I remember McInerney's book, that was Allison Poole? I remember sort of merging the character with the Allison evoked so well in the song of the same name by Elvis Costello, it made a nice soundtrack while reading it.

I always loved the hilarious last lines of that song (it had nothing to do with violence as some had surmised, "my aim is true" was about devotion, he said) which describe, in a self-deprecating way, that embarrasing condition of desiring someone who you think is sort of an idiot:

Sometimes I wish that I could stop you from talking

When I hear the silly things that you say

I think somebody better put out the big light

'Cause I can't stand to see you this way