Forgive me for offering a completely wild guess about the current state of the presidential race. I tend to notice different threads of data and try to mesh them together into an analysis of how they interrelate to form a cohesive story. Here is my theory.

The Obama campaign believes that it is losing

Whoa! You might be saying right now. The polls show this to be a tie or even a slight Obama lead. Why would anything be different now, when the race so closely matches the state of the race prior to the conventions?

I think Obama’s internal numbers aren’t matching the national polls we are seeing. I think several key states are trending away from him, and he is looking at an electoral map where he pulls in 250 EVs or less.

So what makes me think this?

1) The Obama campaign is acting insane. They are lashing out at everything they can, hurling wild fabricated lies in all directions, hoping something will stick to the wall. I wrote in a diary entry a few months ago that when the chips are down, Obama will revert to a Chigago machine politician and that prediction has come true.

2) The Obama surrogates (the online left and the media) are in full blown uproar inventing the worst possible smears, latching onto any flimsy rumor and giving the McCain/Palin ticket a complete body cavity search, while ignoring the giant ethical/moral problems of the Obama/Biden ticket.

3) The “dump Biden” rumor that has been circulating for awhile. Whether true or not, clearly some on the Obama side think they need a woman on the ticket now, and want to bring back Hillary.

4) The Clinton’s aren’t helping at all. They are content to sit on the sideline and watch the Obama campaign flail around. Bill gives lip service to Obama winning, but he won’t participate in helping it win.

5) The McCain campaign continues its brilliant media strategy (something else I wrote a diary on back in August) where they are able to release a biting commercial that skewers Obama right where it hurts within 24 hours. Obama tries to get on top of the financial crisis? McCain has an ad ready to go about his financial advisors.

6) For all the money Obama has raised, he spends it dumb. I saw an Obama commercial running on Fox(!) yesterday while eating lunch here in Los Angeles. The commercial is about how McCain is running the sleaziest campaign in history. Good job Barry, that ought to bring in the swing votes.

7) The racist spanish language commercial simply dispenses the truth all together and relies on the unwillingness of the MSM to report the truth. This might have worked years ago, but people who want information are going to other sources to find out the truth.

8) Ultimately, he is a rookie. He is making rookie mistakes, and looking like a candidate that is running his first campaign against opposition. Oh wait, he actually is, isn’t he?

Bottom line: If Obama’s internals showed he has a slight lead like he did in August, then he would be acting differently. Instead, we are seeing the actions of a desperate campaign, one that thinks it is going to lose.