Lets take a look at history and what it can tell us. For a starter lets take a look at the fate previous leftist liberals that have run for the presidency.  George McGovern comes to mind. There was no NEW MEDIA at the time, so the Anti-War Anti-Nixon Cronkite was the most trusted man in America. There were just 3 big networks and NPR. There was no talk radio. The fairness doctrine then the law made talk radio as we know it, illegal.

And yet McGovern lost 49 states. How could it be? What were the polls like in June of 1972? They showed McGovern with a double digit lead over Richard Nixon. Some think the Watergate break in of June 17th 1972 was the result of some of Nixon's people believing the polls. Nixon in 1972, by the way, won the biggest victory any Republican has ever won. He came with in one tenth of one percent of beating the all time record set by FDR in 1936.

How could it be that a candidate opposed to a war that took 58 thousand American lives, and who pushed the same surrender policy Obama pushes, could have such a massive failure as a candidate opposing the Vietnam War. We all know how popular the Vietnam war was... Don't we?

How about Michael Dukakis? Wasn't he liberal enough? And Rush was on 50 small market stations with a small audience in 1988. Most of us had never heard of him. Only about 10 percent of the people ever listened to AM Radio. There was no influential New media to expose Dukakis.  Do you really thin  Dukakis got beat by the fantastic speaker and dynamic personality called  George Herbert Walker Bush?  UH HUH!!!!!  Sure you do!!!

It was such bad a defeat that the Democrats in order to win in 1992 ran a NEW DEMOCRAT. We were told that NEW DEMOCRATS were NOTHING like OLD DEMOCRATS. Remember?

The keys to this election are deep in the polling data. The party the voters want, keeps coming back Democrat. But the candidate keeps coming back McCain. As you go through the issues one by one the voters say that Democrats are better than Republicans on each issue. When the question is McCain or Obama.. McCain wins many of the issues. For example voters are opposed to the war in Iraq by a large margin and agree we should pull out.  But by nearly the same margin they think McCain would do a better job handling the war in Iraq than Obama.

The media likes to tell us that Obama is a great speaker. He is on a stage in front of 10,000 people. He speaks loudly, and slowly. He speaks with great emphasis and large gestures just as any great stage performer does.

But it is how it looks on TV that counts. A few hundred thousand will see Obama in person. A hundred thirty million voters will see him on TV. The problem for Obama is your TV is in your house. And you watch it by your self or at most with some of the members of your immediate family. TV is an intimate medium. People on TV are guests in your home. Formal speakers who pontificate do not do well with any TV audience.

TV requires a different technique than a stage performance.  A speaker can not belt it out on TV. He must talk to the voters as if he were just talking to them one on one. He must talk to a single viewer. The same is true on the radio.

When Obama does his over sized act that makes the young and not so young girls swoon, it turns the TV audience off. On TV his act comes across as cocky, looking down his nose, and contemptuous of his viewers. Even his still pictures taken at these events are not appealing.

I can tell you from 35 years in broadcasting that his act will not play on radio or TV. Journalists, even those in broadcasting, don't understand. They watch the crowd reaction and assume he is great as the gals swoon and some reporters get tickles up their whatever.

Look at the polls, Obama is doing far worse at this stage than did McGovern or Dukakis. You may recall that Dukakis had a lead at this point in the 1988 game. Look at the polls. McCain is leading in Michigan, West VA, Ohio, and is close in Pennsylvania. And remember that except for Indiana, and states with large black populations Obama polls a lot better than he votes. Obama had walking around money and the Chicago machine working in lake County, Indiana. But he did not beat Hillary and he will lose Indiana big time.

I would urge you to get ready to be surprised at this years debates. It is likely that McCain will not get his town hall one on one debates. They will likely end up in the joint press conference style we have come to dislike. But McCain will be perfectly at ease. Does anyone think that a man who spent 5 years being tortured, can be frightened by a TV audience and a MSM moderator or three?

Like all fighter pilots, McCain loves competition. He will be at ease, and in an ad lib situation he will eat Obama's rump in the debates. Reading a prepared speech poorly is a curse many very bright people share. His mind keeps trying to revise what he reads as he reads it. That does not happen in an ad lib situation. In that situation McCain out thinks and out performs his less bright opponent. McCain has an I.Q. of 133. Obama is not in that class and neither is his wife. Obama has made moves that if they had been made by McCain would have destroyed McCain.

Obama whose act is built on written speeches delivered using a TelePrompTer, will not be able to handle McCain in an ad lib situation. Obama, you'll recall, stopped debating Hillary. Hillary is a terrible debater, but she could and did best Obama so he refused to do any more debates. He will have to debate McCain. His position of "I will talk to all our enemies with no rules or conditions.", will be seen as a lie if he refuses to debate McCain. Liars don't get elected president if the voters know the candidate is a liar. Obama will have to debate McCain.

The media is doing what it has always done. It has painted Obama as far better than he is. In fact Obama has painted himself as far better than he is. McCain has been painted far worse than he is. McCain is painted as a less than bright man with a terrible temper. He will come across as a nice guy, with a witty and likable Irish sense of humor. The moderators for the debates will try to get McCain to blow his cool. He will tease them for trying and the viewing audience will laugh at the moderator with him.

Three other things. There will be no gender gap in this election. Hillary has seen to that. Obama needs a gender gap to win. The dumbest thing I have seen was the constant  cry for Hillary to withdraw. No one demanded that Teddy Kennedy withdraw when carter had over 2100 delegates to Kennedys  less than 1,200. In fact Kennedy at the 1980 Democratic convention asked Delegates that Carter had won in the primaries to desert Carter and vote for Kennedy on the first ballot.  Kennedy did not concede in 1976 until Carter had won the nomination on the first ballot at the August Convention. No one called for Teddy Kennedy to with draw for the good of the party. And many of Hillary's older women voters remember and are angry.  They are angry enough for their to be no gender gap in 2008.

And there is no way that Obama will get the votes of the white working class Democrats. The pollsters are discounting their pledge to not vote for Obama. They think they will do what Democrats have always done in the past ... fight like heck in the primaries and then unite for the general election. This is a new ball game. And those white working class Democrats fear, and I do mean fear, new affirmative action laws. They will not vote for Obama. Just go on any factory floor and listen to what those white working class Democrats are saying.

Finally McCain is an expert at getting the votes of independent voters. In a contest between a far left liberal and a right wing conservative, the liberal wins. See the Barry Goldwater - LBJ debacle for details. But when a RINO runs against a far left Liberal the RINO wins a majority of the independent vote. McCain has spent the last 8 years painting himself as a RINO.

Their are two reasons McCain will win most of the independent vote. The far left liberal is interested in society. He is after all a socialist. He thinks about the good of all the people. He is interested in the masses. Independents are not ideological. They are all about me, myself, and I. They tend to vote for a candidate that will do things for them.

Let me give you an example. Here is the pitch for the ideological. A growing economy is hurt by high income taxes. If you want economic growth and recovery from a recession cut taxes.

Here is a pitch that Reagan used on the independents. "Why is it better for government to take YOUR money and spend it the way government wants to, rather than YOU keep YOUR OWN MONEY and spend it the way YOU want to?  Obama is not likely to make a pitch that independents will buy. It is not his socialist style. Obama will be pitching a policy of tax the rich to help the disadvantaged. That does not sell with independents.  McCain has spent 8 years learning to appeal to independents.  Look at the primary returns for a clue about how he does with independents.

The other factor for independents is likability. About half of  the independents  vote for the guy they like.  And in that contest, as you will see this fall, McCain will display his Irish charm, and nice guy personality. The voters watching will find he greatly exceeds the expectations painted by the media. On the other hand Obama will come across cool, hard and not very likable. He will look like his pictures with his head held high while looking down his nose at the little people. He will stand in perfect control at the lectern. And lose millions of votes in the process.

One final thought. I saw the most recent polls on Ohio's 18th Congressional district. This is a district Gerrymandered to be 53 to 47 Republican. Republican Bob Ney who held the seat until 2006 went to prison for being bribed.  And the Democrat candidate Zack Space won an easy victory in 2006.  But in this Democrat year, Fred Dailey, the Republican, is leading Zack Space, the incumbent Democrat. by more than the Gerrymander margin.

I think this is a throw the incumbent  SOB's out of congress year. And this year there are more Democrat SOB's in Congress than their are Republican SOB's.

At this point my perspective is this not going to be that bad a Republican year. It is very likely to be the Democrat year everyone seems to think it is.