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.