Is it over? And if we think so, do we say so? And if so, how do we say it? These were some of the questions that Michael Calderone, who covers the media for Politico, asked me the other day. He’s a good reporter, and the questions were the right ones.

My essentially weasely but honest answer was: Barack Obama’s chances obviously are better than 50-50, if for no other reason than he has led (with only a brief exception) from wire-to-wire in the national polls. Candidates who have done that have won.

Obama has been the default setting, if you will, from the start and nothing that John McCain has done so far has changed that fact. From that first cold day in Springfield, Ill., this election has always been about Obama.

But what impresses me--and should give Obama himself pause as he considers a possible victory--is that this race is far closer than it should be. Consider:

• The economy is headed for its worst recession since the Great Depression and most Americans now know that, even if they have not lost their own jobs.
• Studies show that the party that controls the White House loses if the economy grows at less than two per-cent in the year before Election Day--and the economy right now is shrinking.
• McCain’s Republican Party brand is in ruins thanks in good measure to the current GOP president, who is fin-ishing his term as one of the most unpopular chief executives in history.
• The war in Iraq, which McCain supported, is widely seen as a horrendous mistake. His neo-con foreign policy is in disrepute.
• Obama is spending four times as much on advertising as McCain, and has pioneered new methods of voter education and outreach on the Inter-net that McCain cannot match.