And in terms on campaigning, it hurts democrats to have a complacent or hostile media, which lets mccain and his surrogates say all kinds of crazy lies without questioning them. Liberals get Keith Olbermann. Conservatives get at least a whole news network. In addition, it seems that republicans are a lot more shameless in their campaign tactics – scary robocalls, ruthless push polling, distributing flyers to less-informed populations telling them that they can’t vote, posting lawyers everywhere to challenge and intimidate voters, and quite possibly owning the voting machine companies themselves (remember the infamous Diebold exec memo to Bush, “we’ll get ohio for you”).
Democrats have to run a good campaign, and it seems to me that the people who made their way to the top of the consultant heap did it on handshaking over strategy, but it still seems like the republicans have been given a good handicap.