I would not call it a dead heat when current polls indicate that Obama could win the election even if he doesn't take Florida OR Ohio.

I would also say that popularity is relatively important when guaging the quality of a candidate. How much can an unelectable candidate accomplish? Practically Zip. When none of your positive attributes have a serious chance of manifesting as policy, your quality rating goes way down in my book, regardless of whether that circumstance comes from hypocrisy, unelectability, schizophrenia, or some other reason.

As for the main question of why democrats rarely have candidates perform as well as Obama:

1. Democrats have a built-in disadvantage under the electoral college system. In 2000 the Republicans took 9 more states that the Democrats- that's an 18 point electoral advantage derived from senate representation, which is no proportional. 6.6% of a minimal Republican electoral victory comes from the fact that our electoral system bends the one person one vote principle.

If I didn't have to leave right now I'd go on to talk about how democratic base demographics indicate a lower probability of voter turnout when compared to republicans, how the conservatism is in large part a "default setting" for voters because of its social principles which makes creating liberal voters something of an uphill fight, and how the long period where the House of Representatives was the greatest bastion of Democratic power in Washington had the effect of creating an unhelpful amount of diversity in Democratic platforms, which has made even hardcore liberal Democrats more of a coalition than a single base.

I'll have to cover all of that later.

I think Bill Clinton was a more successful president than some of you give him credit for. He wiped out the enormous deficit caused by Reagan and Bush 41, initiated no foreign wars, and his term in office coincided with a period of prosperity, some of which you could give him credit for. Republicans, especially, very much liked his welfare reforms, though I'm not so enthusiastic about those.

But Clinton ran to the right of his party, as did Gore and even Kerry to some extent. It has been awhile since a "real" Democrat has been in office. There was LBJ in the sixties with his great record on civil rights legislation and his "great society" and "war on poverty," but the war in Vietnam was his undoing. There was Carter in the 1970's but he had difficulty working with Congress, which turned out to be his undoing.

Barack Obama is a "classic" liberal in the mold of Roosevelt, Truman and JFK. He actually is a little (not a lot but a little) to the left of the Republicans. Thus he is decried as a socialist, a Marxist, or even, by six degrees of separation, a Weatherperson. That, however, is an indication of how far to the right this country has shifted, not an accurate measure of where he actually stands.

It is because he has taken up the "classic" Liberal banner that he generates so much enthusiasm. His ideas seem new and fresh in a country that has had no left to speak of in a long, long time. His charisma, like Kennedy's, contributes to his aura of success.