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.
• Obama’s own Democratic Party is relatively unified, the sulking of the Clintons notwithstanding.
• Even in good times, it isn’t easy for the “in” presidential party to keep the White House for a third consecutive term.
• McCain, aged 72, would be the oldest person ever to become president, not exactly an enticing calling card at a time of generational change and challenge.
• The Arizona senator has a history of skin cancer and chose as his running mate someone widely regarded as unqualified to assume the top job.
• The “mainstream” media, or what is left of it, has favored and fawned over Obama from the start--even before the current parade of official endorsements. Much of the coverage has been egregiously slanted. Just ask Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
• McCain’s party never has trusted him; he had to use his veep pick--Gov. Sarah Palin--to assuage conservatives who nevertheless still distrust him, in some cases because he picked Palin!
• A gang of lobbyist-insiders, whose identity is glaringly--almost comically--at odds with his supposed devotion to maverick change, runs McCain’s Washington-based campaign.
• America is reviled in the world as a result of the war in Iraq and George Bush’s policies, and most voters are not happy about that.

And yet despite all of this--and more--McCain remains sort of in the ballgame, hanging around in some reputable national polls more or less within the margin of error. How the heck is that possible?

Sure, folks admire and honor McCain’s history of military service and sacrifice. They like his spunk, and never-say-die spirit. But that can’t be the explanation for why this isn’t yet a colossal blowout.

It is a question Obama had better be asking himself. For if he is lucky enough to win, he will have to address--and allay--the fears and doubts about him that have to be lurking out there somewhere.