How the Democrats will lose this election, which is theirs to win

I've been trying to figure out, for a while, how the Democrats were going to lose this election. I mean, it's been handed to them. Just to prove my point - I was about to write a list here of all the reasons Obama ought to crush McCain, but then realized it would be useless, as 1) there are too many reasons to enumerate and 2) everybody knows them all already anyway. So I've just been waiting to figure out how, by being such awful campaigners, the Democratic party would start seeing the easy win slip away.

And now we have two answers. One external, one internal. Externally, McCain's camp has gone on the attack with the new round of ads and talking points, and explicitly inserting racial fears into the campaign. Now, this ought not to be an issue, if only the Democrats weren't so braindead as to let these attacks slide off them like water off a duck. The problem is, these attacks aren't made of water, and they stick to Obama. Wait, huh? That analogy worked prior to a few beers, and now I'm just not going to worry about it.

Remember the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth? You know, the group that somehow managed to challenge Kerry's decorated Vietnam record while not mentioning Bush's complete failure to serve during the war? That would have gone away, if Kerry's camp hadn't waited three days - which in media cycles go by even quicker than dog years - to respond. By that time, the attacks were out there, and the damage done. Can't recork that shit. And Obama's doing the same now. Not rebutting the ads that compare him to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. Not rebutting the Republican talking points that state - explicitly - that Obama is playing the race card the exact same way O.J. Simpson did. Democrats take these issues and think, "No right-minded person would actually believe this!" And then they turn to talking about baby seals in the uninhabited Arctic. While the rest of America, which is full of not right-minded people, couldn't care less than seals they'll never meet, and instead are focused on the pseudo-issues the Republicans (very masterfully) told them to care about. It's the Democratic pretension mixed with deviously adept Republican campaigning that equals ruin.

And then there's the internal issue - the pandering to the center. The reason Obama's so popular, the reason he got the nod over the clear front-runner, is that he had new, fresh, exciting ideas. Things that leftist Democrats have been waiting to hear for years. The base was not this emphatic for Kerry - in fact, there barely even was a base for Kerry. So Obama gets all these people amped for politics, gets people excited to be a part of the system, because he's bringing change to the system.

And then Obama says he's willing to tap our petroleum reserves, and maybe he'll be okay with offshore drilling.

And now, all the leftists that voted for Nader in 2000 stay home, because what's the fucking point. Obama's business as usual.

And so we get idiots that are sucked in by Republican strategy coming out in droves to vote against Obama, and idiots that think Obama's no different than McCain staying home, and lo and behold, all of a sudden McCain has won the election that was literally Obama's to lose.

Good work, Democrats. I am hard-pressed, at this moment, to think of a party that is better at being worse for itself than you have been for the past, oh...fifteen years?