The pre-Democrat convention polls aren't where Obama and his supporters would like them to be.  This is actually worse than 2000 and 2004, where two other liberal Democratic candidates were faring better at this time, despite the fact that it was Gore and Kerry, neither of whom achieved greatness as campaigners.  Now, even Democratic strategists and analysts are getting nervous, and with good reason, since McCain has been polling within the margin of error with Obama.

Writing in the Huffington Post, Lincoln Mitchell animates the evolving electoral anxiety, but, predictably, he focuses on the left's hobgoblin, race, rather than the growing realization by many voters that Obama simply isn't the heavy weight they once thought he was.  Like his liberal brethren, Mitchell has less than perfect political pitch when it comes to race, creating an edifice of bigotry as the pretext for Obama's failure to achieve electoral traction.

He begins with a wholly fallacious assertion:

One of the recent complexities is that among white Americans there is a virtual consensus that racism against African Americans is a thing of the past.

The more accurate characterization is that most Americans (i.e., not just white Americans) believe that the nation has made steady and meaningful advances, both legislatively and culturally, to combat racism.  They also recognize that Americans of African descent are in unprecedented positions of power, in corporate America, in politics, and in academia.  But the reason the Mitchells of the world keep rekindling the times  when racism was rampant is that if we're obliged to judge Obama merely on the integrity of his ideas, on his credibility as a presidential candidate, he falls conspicuously short.

That's why the best Republican strategy is to let voters get to know Obama as intimately as possible, because the more they know about his ideas and his vision for America, the less comfortable they are with him. 

For instance, just as Western Europe is removing the obstacles to capital formation by reducing corporate income tax rates and dismantling their vast regulatory apparatus, Obama is recommending higher taxes; he's similarly out of step with most Americans who correctly applaud the success of the counter-insurgency initiative in Iraq, rather than equivocate as the Harvard professor he once was; he maligns guns as the source of violent crime, naively subscribing to the anachronistic notion that the real victim is the criminal because he had an alcoholic father or was the child of a single parent; add to that his most recent misstep, preaching the virtues of driving with fully inflated tires (next week he'll move on to ways to combat tooth decay and how to avoid trans fatty acids).

To make matters more painful and tiresome, all of this is delivered with an arrogant professorial sternness and haughty confidence that makes us wonder about having him around day in and day out for the next four, or perhaps eight years.  Political bias aside, the one truism about presidential elections is that we elect people we like, people we're comfortable with.  That assessment is result of listening and watching these two men, of gauging their authenticity, their ability to command respect by convincing us they're up to the job.

In that regard, Obama's recent response to a seven year old girl who asked why he wants to be president, betrays a less than ringing endorsement of America.  Rather than stating that he wants to build on America's greatness, he echoed his wife Michelle's oblique disparagement of this nation.  That may play well in Berkeley, but it won't in middle America.

One of the more perverse products of the secularization of the Western hemisphere is the morally toxic notion that all species are equal.  But that, of course, is the logical and therefore inevitable conclusion--that humans are an accident of nature and therefore can't be held in higher esteem than the lowly reptile of your choice.

That, in the view of these arch radicals, justifies all means to achieve their ends, one of which is to stop  scientific research at our universities.  An article in U.S. News & World Report documents the weekend attack on two researchers at the University of California at Santa Cruz, one of whom's home was firebombed, and the other, whose car was firebombed and destroyed.

These terrorists post the names and addresses of scientists in public places along with blatant threats to them and their families.  But beyond the savagery of their methods is a moral cowardice of epic proportions, which highlights the fragility of their claims, for instance, that a rat ought to enjoy the same legal protections as a human being.  Indeed, it's the intellectual insecurity of their beliefs that leads them to the kind of violence on a par with Islamic extremists.  People with credible differences of belief in a pluralistic society such as ours are welcome at the debate table.  But those with fantastic claims, be they the domestic terrorists who perpetrated these heinous acts or the radical Islamists, hide in fear in the civic shadows, because their ideas are so delicately framed and susceptible to rebuttal.

The abdication of religious belief, of God as the agent of our creation and existence, underlies these terrorists' actions.  When you subtract Him from the equation, moral anarchy is sure to follow because the only laws that remain are those produced in their own self-referential world.  In that context, every act, regardless of how vicious, is justified, from petty larceny to capital murder.  So, regardless of the fact that these scientists, and thousands like them, are in pursuit of cures and advancements to better our lives, the use of animals in experiments and testing is so abhorrent to these terrorists they are willing to kill those whose works might one day save their lives.

It's a convoluted morality that leads one down this path because the average American is deeply compassionate concerning the treatment of animals.  That begins with the humane treatment of animals that are used for food.  It's no surprise that record numbers of Americans choose beef and poultry that are raised in natural settings and brought to market with a measure of care and concern.  Our pets, whether dogs, cats, or birds, have a special place in our hearts and lives and are part of our family.

And, although most of us eat meat, poultry, and fish, it's absolutely true that we're far more tolerant of vegans than they are of us.  Indeed, there's nothing so smug and arrogant as someone who parades his sanctimonious behaviors before us, be they the recycling fanatics or those who call meat-eaters murderers.

One of the pet entreatries of the left is for us common folks to "evolve," to move beyond our conventional lives, to join the rarefied few whose exquisitely refined sense of the universe places them on a higher plane--or so they assert.  They're welcome to any plane they wish inhabit, so long as they obey the law.  But those responsible for these hideous crimes should be hunted down like the vermin they are, and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.