The Dems better not screw this up

I’m pretty sure I speak for most of us (lib­eral, elite, hand-wringers) when I say, the Demo­c­ra­tic Party bet­ter not screw this up. My wife asked me just recently if I was still con­fi­dent that we would win in Novem­ber. My answer? Not if Novem­ber were today. But I have con­fi­dence that the Dems will get back on their horse and fix what­ever has been ail­ing them the last few weeks.

Many of us are wor­ried because of the polls we see, trum­pet­ing gains and losses and slides and a tight race. But you can’t trust the polling num­bers you see, as each poll has a huge num­ber of vari­ables, and even CNN’s vaunted “Poll of polls” can be mis­guided. Of course, “national trends” don’t mat­ter a hill of beans any­way, since elec­toral votes are gar­nered on a state by state basis. But I don’t have the time to check out each state poll as it comes out, so I do keep track of a cou­ple of aggre­gate polls for a National snap­shot. This one at Real Clear Pol­i­tics, and this one at Poll­ster.

These two graphs show a tight­en­ing of the race, too. Which leads to my… um, un–con­fi­dence.

I think Biden was the best choice among the unof­fi­cial can­di­dates for VP, but I won­der what might have hap­pened had Obama announced a “change” can­di­date (like Tim Kaine) and then laid out a likely Cab­i­net makeup to assuage the “inex­pe­ri­ence” doubts. The ink is hardly dry on the Obama-Biden signs (and I won­der what Joe thinks about being a light shade of blue?) and the Rov­ian machine has already begun to strike at the new strengths of the ticket.

It is what we hate about the Repub­li­cans, but what we admire too. Really, you know you do. It’s what we want Obama’s cam­paign to start doing. Screw the high road, you can’t leg­is­late change from the high road if it goes off a cliff. I’d like to see the Dems fight for the chance to fix the coun­try. And I think we’ll see it. We’d better.

Also, let no one bring up “the new Joe-mentum,” please. Unless McCain is so silly as to pick Lieber­man. Then we can have duel­ing Joe-mentum.