You Can Almost Smell the Fear

The Moderate Voice Blog points out that the balance of joy in the race for President has shifted to the Republicans. I am sure that the Democrats are beginning to feel like they have seen this movie before. Like some sort of monster flick, where the alien/monster/zombie keeps coming and coming with nothing able to stop it.
This was supposed to be the Democrat's year. After eight years of the unpopular George W. Bush, and a war that was seemingly going nowhere fast, they all looked around and licked their chops and declared themselves the "Savior of their country." Hillary had the aura of inevitability, and swiftly moved to the center in advance of the general election.
The trouble is, the guy who was probably only planning on laying the groundwork for a future run, ended up being their nominee. Sort of like Forrest Gump with a Harvard Law Degree, he then began to believe his own press and became convinced that he was "The One" that we have been waiting for. This was still not a problem for the Democrats, because this was their year. Except they had two problems that they couldn't quite grasp.
First, primaries are not for real. Okay, among the committed (or should be for that matter) political hacks, every vote in a primary is important. That is why Obama could count Idaho as a victory state even though he has no chance of it in the general. Losing more primaries at the end than Hillary, he was still able to limp across the finish line and claim the nomination.
Second, the Republicans are not playing fair. By that, I mean that they are not conforming to the playbook that the Democrats drafted for them. "McCain will be Bush's third term, that the surge was a failure, at least until it succeeded beyond the imagination of even those who supported it (What the heck is that supposed to mean?) but doesn't negate that we shouldn't have been there in the first place." and that McCain has so many houses that he can't count them, and that he has voted with GWB 90% of the time. Those are the talking points that are repeatedly distributed to the believers to be repeated on every news show and shotgunned to every editor of every newspaper in the land. So far so good.
But then, McCain, who the conservative base of the Republican Party felt had been selected for them and who was not their choice, picked Sarah Palin to be his Vice President. The initial response from the Obama campaign, was that she was just a small town mayor and lacked the requisite resume to be vice president. They quickly retracted the snark, for the reason that the Presidential nominee has even less experience than she does. And then it started.
The Main Stream Media taking its cues from the Left Blogosewer started to make every kind of idiotic smear that came to their little heads. As soon as one was knocked down, two more sprang up in their place, just like sowing dragon's teeth. Some were taking odds on when McCain would have his Eagleton moment, and drop Palin from the ticket. Mostly, because in their closed little minds, they thought that conservative closed little minds would reject Palin for having less than perfect children.
But then, the everymom stood in front of the country on Wednesday of the Republican convention, and spoke, and seemed, well, entirely normal. Except that she was funny, and smart, and dinged "community organizers" for having less responsibility for results than a, you know, governor. And America, (who aren't rabid partisans) fell in love. And none fell so hard as the conservative base.
This has driven the Democrats absolutely berserk. They are responding out of anger which is just energized fear. And boy, are they energized in their fear. The New York Times which had found little of interest in any past doings of Obama, sent teams of investigative reporters throughout the breadth and depth of Alaska to dig up some dirt on the good Governor. Any dirt. And if they can't find any dirt, they make it up. And so far, none of it has stuck.
So, all of a sudden, Republicans are happy. But how can this be? the Democrats ask. All of the above talking points still remain valid until later rescinded. But still the popularity of the McCain Palin ticket grows, and now has surpassed that of "The One." When your reality is found to have been a fraud, it can be psychologically disorienting. In this case, maybe devastating. For you see, the Democrats acknowledge that they are going to have a problem with racism that even their base is causing for them. Obama will probably need to have a lead of more that 6% going into the election just to overcome the "Wilder Effect" and even that may not be enough.
It is still possible that Obama with all of his non FEC money will be able to pull off the election. But if he does, what will be his mandate? How will he govern effectively if he has just snuck across the line again? Add in the fact that the first 100 days of his administration are going to be tied up just trying to pass the spending bills that the present Congress has not done, and Obama will have raised expectations and failed to deliver on them. The ultimate "community organizer" results I suppose.
And how will he govern when everyone in America will be comparing him to the governor of Alaska and how she is doing? Knowing that they could have had her instead, and that they will in 2012 because of the strange machinations of how Republicans select their favorites to run for President, she will be the leading choice for that election. And all of this assumes he survives a challenge from Hillary.
Maybe they are right. Maybe the Democrats have real grounds to be afraid.