I honestly believe as I said a few months ago, the Dems are in deep trouble. They picked a candidate who appeals to a very specific group of African Americans, far left liberals, academia and college students. Hillary Clinton in her final days launched the campaign she should have had in the start, an aggressive appeal to blue collar working Americans who believe in God & Country but are tired of watching their jobs disappear.

The Republicans, who have been demoralized for two years now, got their groove back this week. McCain picked a candidate that has and will continue to unify the Republican base and give an equal amount of enthusiasm and interest to the Republican side that Obama generated until now. He is old news, we know his story, for the next six weeks the nation will be learning about hers.

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It all comes down to the debates. I believe Obama made the safest and worst choice for VP in Biden. He basically told the nation “I don’t have foreign policy experience, this guy does, so vote for me.” Palin is different for McCain. At his core McCain has always been a social conservative. The media built him into this thing he wasn’t. McCain has always been against abortion and always had a deep spiritual side. He never was the religious right though. All Palin does is give social conservatives the spunk and fight and attacks that McCain feels uncomfortable giving. At the end though, he has the issue already, just a difference on how you stand up for it unlike Obama who is filling in a hole.

In addition Joe Biden is the most insider-baseball-Washington-establishment-candidate Obama could pick. He will add zero states to the board and aside from an appeal to Catholics and Scranton, I think his penchant for saying the wrong thing at every turn is going to do more harm than good. Palin will stand up just fine against him in a debate, he will name off a list of foreign leaders he has had brunch with, it will be a wash.

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I have said for well over a year that I believe this election will be 50/50 and look almost exactly the same as 2000 & 2004. That means the only states that matter are Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Virginia, New Hampshire and maintaining the rest. Both candidates need a massive push in Ohio. If I were a Republican operative, I would get personal. Put McCain and Palin in business casual, have them speak to people in intimate settings, give them a stage and a microphone and hold nothing but town halls. Talk about their biographies and taxes, almost nothing else but taxes.

For the Democrats, I would separate Obama & Biden and have Biden go to fund-raisers and give lectures and hope he doesn’t say the wrong thing, I am serious on this. Obama needs to get a grasp of working class issues, get rid of the law review stuff, the academic stuff. Be offensive, not defensive and start offering concrete examples and policy. I would almost never talk about Iraq in Ohio, Pennsylvania or anywhere rural. Don’t say “I respect the second amendment,” say “I defend the second amendment just as strongly as I will uphold the first and the third and the fourth and every other right given to us by the founding fathers of this land.” This election will not be decided in a classroom, it will be decided by those people who distrust Washington, believe in the rightness of America and fear rapid change.

The biggest advantage Obama has had since the beginning of this race has been the media. There is a reality that needs to be addressed. The audience Obama needs to speak to doesn’t watch MSNBC, they watch FOX News. They don’t read the New York Times, they read USA Today. They are sick of having someone smug tell them what they should believe, they tune into talk radio but the TV set goes to Football or Prime Time TV or Daytime TV before it goes to CNN. For all the power of the media, the far left elements won’t reach the vast middle of this nation. It will turn them off and be warded off by the far more conservative parts of the spectrum.

The European trip, the stadium, the Greek columns, they were all bad ideas. The Obama team needs to stop running for the Democratic primary nomination they already won; they need to start running for a general election win where all that pomp and circumstance is circumspect to people who work hard to make a paycheck last more than two weeks.