WHY THE RACE IS SO TIGHT

Why? Well, just read these poll results. They may seem familiar, but I guarantee there's a surprise at the end:

President Bush's job approval rating remains anemic, creating a big drag on the Republican Party....

Likely voters have grown even more pessimistic about the direction of the country.... Sixty-eight percent say the country is on the wrong track, while only 23 percent say it's heading in the right direction....

Among likely voters, 49 percent would select the Democratic candidate and 36 percent the Republican candidate if the election were held today....

OK, here's the surprise:

But when the names of actual candidates were plugged into the question ... the spread narrows dramatically.

Democrat Hillary Clinton leads Republican Rudolph Giuliani by 3 percentage points -- 47 percent to 44 percent....

Yup -- this poll is from October 2007, and features the since-vanquished front-runners.

The race between a real flesh-and-blood Democrat and a real flesh-and-blood Republican is close because such races have always been close -- even last fall, when the real names were different. Republicans work so hard at demonizing any Democrat who even vaguely emerges as a potential national figure, in election seasons and between election seasons, and the press abets that effort so readily, that real Democrats always perform more poorly than generic Democrats, and always struggle to get out to decisive leads.

This would have been a close race no matter who was running. And it really might be that no Democrat will ever win the presidency until Democrats finally confront and neutralize the media's dutiful advancement of GOP memes every four years.