It would appear all the smiles and hugs and gestures of unity was just the meanest of ruses.

Mr. McCain is running roughly even in the polls with the presumptive Democratic nominee, Mr. Obama, a time when he is supposed to be way ahead. In early August of 1988, Governor Dukakis was ahead of Vice President Bush by a wide margin. In early August of 2004, Senator Kerry was ahead of President Bush. If Mr. Obama doesn’t have a big lead now, it could get pretty ugly for the Democrats as November approaches, the theory goes.

You can’t tell me Hillary doesn’t see the blood in the water.

All the signs are there, and the Hillraisres are ready to pounce.

It will only get worse when Messrs. McCain and Obama face off in presidential debates. The public will discover that Mr. Obama, notwithstanding his reputation as a silver-tongued orator, is not that good a debater — which explains why he did his best to dodge debate invitations from Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain. Feature Mr. Obama’s flubbering on the outbreak of war between Russia and Georgia.

Is all this enough to prompt Democratic super-delegates to re-think their allegiance to Mr. Obama and hand the nomination to Senator Clinton? If you count Michigan, Mrs. Clinton won the reported popular vote in the Democratic primaries and caucuses, 17.8 million to 17.5 million, and won many of the hotly contested big battleground states that the Democrats need to win in November — Pennsylvania, Ohio, California, New York, New Jersey, Florida. She won Massachusetts even after Senators Kennedy and Kerry endorsed Mr. Obama.

Of course it’s enough to prompt a re-think. If you look at Hillary when talking with her supporters, as well as the hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands, who’ve signed up on websites that demand Senator Clinton-or-else, we see a party far from unified, destined for a very public fracture, and an Obama campaign that seems clueless as to what’s about to blindside them.

C-SPAN will be covering it live.

And many think the Olympics are exciting…

This entry was posted on Monday, August 11th, 2008 at 7:59 am and is filed under Bob Parks, Election 2008, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.