And Yet. . .

From Bloomberg:

``Watergate is the last time things were so overwhelmingly tilted against the Republicans,'' said David Rohde, a political scientist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Democrats kick off their nominating convention in Denver today expecting strong gains up and down the ballot, even in many historically Republican counties and states. Their optimism is fueled by widespread discontent with the Bush administration, anxiety over the economy, rising Democratic registration, unprecedented turnout in primaries and record fundraising by Obama.

The political energy is on the Democrats' side. In a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll published Aug. 19, 55 percent of party voters said they are ``very enthusiastic'' about their presidential candidate, compared with 29 percent of Republicans.

And yet the race is in a statistical tie with McCain actually leading in some of the most reliable polls.

And yet Susan Page writing in USA Today tells us that their polling shows that fewer than half of Hillary Clinton's voters have made up their minds to vote for Obama with 30% of Hillary's primary voters saying that they have definitely made up their minds not to vote for Obama.

And yet the RCP state by state polls show McCain ahead in Ohio, which was supposed to be an easy Democrat pickup, leading in Florida, a state the Democrats were hoping to turn blue this year, and tied in Virginia, which was supposed to be another Democrat pickup.

And yet Obama felt compelled to pick a gray-haired white man to be his VP even though that gray-haired white man was on record as saying that Obama wasn't ready to be president and that he would be honored to be John McCain's running mate. All because Obama knows that he simply can't win on his own - and I suspect because he knows somewhere deep in his heart that he can't govern on his own either.