In an election cycle where Republicans are reviled and the GOP candidate, John McCain, seems to inspire less excitement than a Droopy marathon on the Cartoon Network, it's hard for some people to understand how the race is still close. After all, Barack Obama is drawing record crowds and generating the sort of wild-eyed loyalty from the press that hasn't been seen since Guyana, right before they broke out the Kool-Aid -- and yet, on paper, this race is a coin flip.

Why is that? Because this race is turning into a referendum on Barack Obama and quite frankly, he has absolutely nothing going for him besides the fact that he's young, good looking, black, and does a great job of reading the speeches his handlers have prepared for him. Once you get beyond those paper-thin qualifications for office, Obama is nothing but a mass of flaws, bad character traits, and left-wing agitprop. While the press lauds Obama as if he just cured cancer and invented a car that runs on lawn clippings in the same day, everyone else can't help but notice...

The Snobbery: If little girls are made up of sugar, spice, and everything nice, then Obama is made up of arugula, personal presidential seals, and hubris. Never before has a candidate with so few accomplishments to his name looked so far down his nose at the American people.

The Phony Idealism: Silently, there must be a lot of liberal Democrats kicking themselves today because all during the primaries, the race was portrayed as a battle between Barack Obama, the idealist and Hillary Clinton, the pragmatic, say-anything-to-win candidate. Then, the moment Obama captured the nomination, all of those precious ideals flew out the window and Obama started shifting his positions farther and faster than Hillary Clinton ever did. So much for the candidate who was supposed to be a "new kind of politician."

The Anti-White Racism: Obama spent 20 years going to a virulently anti-white, anti-American church while he used Jeremiah Wright -- who's the moral equivalent of David Duke -- as a spiritual mentor and a sounding board. This is not a man who looks kindly upon what he refers to as "typical white people."

The Lack of Patriotism: Rather famously, Obama refused to hold his hand over his heart for the national anthem and publicly made a point of not wearing a flag pin -- and then had the "audacity" to complain when people quite naturally questioned his patriotism. Since then, Obama replaced the American flag on his plane with his own symbol and made a point of running down his country and calling himself a "citizen of the world" while he was overseas. Is having a President who loves his own country too much to ask? In Obama's case, apparently so.

His Liberalism: Although Obama has attempted to shift to the center since he captured the Democratic nomination, his record is one of radical liberalism. In fact, he was ranked as the single most liberal senator in 2007 by National Journal, actually supported a complete ban on handgun sales, and wants to hand out 845 billion dollars to foreign nations as part of an effort to "elimin(ate) extreme poverty." If you would be thrilled to have a President who is as liberal as Michael Moore or Keith Olbermann, then Barack Obama is your man.

His Changing Position On The War in Iraq: In one of the most ironic twists of the campaign, Obama beat Hillary Clinton by being so stridently anti-war in Iraq, but his latest ever-shifting position essentially mirrors that of John McCain. Although Obama is still promising a timeline, he is saying he could leave 50,000 troops in Iraq and that the withdrawal is "entirely conditions-based." Although the lefties are biting their tongues, you know they must be seething that they've been sold down the river on their biggest issue -- or maybe they just assume he's lying, which is entirely possible.

His Inexperience: Obama has never served in the military, the House, or as a governor, was first elected to the Senate in 2004, and his battle with Hillary was the only tough campaign he has ever been in. In other words, if he's elected, he would be one of the least worthy candidates ever to make it to the White House. If we had another 9/11 on his watch or even if one of those infamous 3 AM emergency calls that Hillary campaigned on were to come in, would you rather have Obama or McCain handling it? For that matter, would you rather have Obama or a random person picked out of the phone book handling it? Neither Obama nor the random person from the phone book would have much relevant experience, but at least the random person would probably be humble enough to realize it and ask for help, unlike Obama.

The Poor Judgment: This is a guy who stayed in a racist church and stuck by a bigoted reverend for 20 years, grotesquely leaked his Western Wall prayer to the press, and blew off a visit to see wounded troops while the whole world was watching him overseas. In other words, even when it comes to matters of mere politics, this is not a man who can be trusted to make wise decisions. So, how can we trust him to make good policy decisions for the country?

He's Gaffe Prone: When John McCain makes mistakes, the media tries to portray him as senile. But Obama makes dumber mistakes than George Bush, more mistakes than Dan Quayle, and that's despite the fact that he spends far less time talking to the press than McCain. So, what's his excuse for thinking that we have more than 57 states, claiming America's "fallen heroes" were in the audience listening to him, and his claim that "'10,000 people died' in the Kansas tornadoes when the death toll was really only 12?" Dan Quayle’s notorious potato(e) error, which was used to forever portray him as a drooling moron, wouldn’t even qualify as one of Obama’s top five mistakes.

His Fuzzy Platform: Obama's positions on guns, the war in Iraq, taxes, FISA, and public financing, among other issues, have shifted faster than a cheetah chasing a greyhound through an obstacle course. Since he doesn't have much of a record to go on, seems to have very poor judgment, and he doesn't have a solid platform to stand on, how are people supposed to know what he will do when he gets in the White House?