If I had any faith in the American populace, I would agree with you. However, daily tracking polls suggest that McCain is receiving a significant bounce from the GOP convention, and with a complacent, obsequious media and a base that seems incapable of noticing when they're being pandered to, he just may be able to pull this heist off.

As but one example of the lengths they are going to mislead the public, Sarah Palin has been holed up in Alaska this weekend, being prepped by McCain's campaign staff. She hasn't faced the media at all since she was chosen as McCain's running mate, and will not do so until the middle of this week, when she will sit down with ABC's Charlie Gibson for "multiple interviews." What this means in practice is that the McCain campaign can dictate the terms of the interviews, what kind of questions will be allowed, etc., and if the questions go off the script, the remaining sessions will be canceled.

This is a complete farce, and any media outlet with any dignity and self-respect would call the McCain campaign out for being afraid to talk to the American people without a script. Since there are no such media outlets, McCain gets to carefully craft the message, and the tough questions go unanswered (and unasked.)

This trend will continue until November, so the debates may be the only chance Democrats have to force the GOP to talk about the issues, and even that depends on having competent debate moderators. November 4th could arrive with the American public having no idea how dangerous McCain/Palin would be to the country.

In other words, the Democrats will *not* be able to sleepwalk through this election, no matter how awful a ticket McCain/Palin is. They will need historic turnout in the swing states. They will need to steal a couple of red states from '04. And, quite possibly, they will need an army of lawyers to fight election fraud. Landslides are hard to come by these days, and I don't expect one.