Speaking at the Missouri Caucus breakfast, pollster Peter Hart styled himself as a “coldblooded analyst”. Being a coldblooded pollster, though, doesn’t mean Hart isn’t partisan. He’s done polling for so many years for the Carnahans and for Ike Skelton that he claims to have worked for Ike in his junior high run for student council.

Some partisans can be objective, and as someone who has helped run the NBC/Wall Street Journal polls for the last twenty years, Hart feels he is that person, and he was there to give us his unbiased take on Democratic chances and on Obama’s chances in particular this fall.

2008, he says, “is as good a year as it gets for the Democratic party.” Voters are as unhappy and disappointed as he’s seen them in his 35 years as a pollster. In fact, 80 percent of them believe the country is on the wrong track. That’s some number. I don’t think you could get 80 percent of Americans to agree that the earth is round.

It does look as if voters plan to throw the bums out. When asked which party should be in control of Congress, Dems get the nod 47-36. That bodes ill for Republicans in congressional races, and Hart figures Dems are likely to take as many as twenty more House seats and five more Senate seats. When asked whether they want a Democrat or a Republican for president, they prefer the Dem brand 46-37.  

Those raw numbers will also be influenced this November by what I think of as the booster factor. Fervent support from large numbers of people boosts a candidate’s chances, and Obama has that. A whopping 46 percent of Democrats say they are excited about Obama for president. McCain, on the other hand, has 12 whole percent of Republicans excited. Sheesh, talk about tepid. With support like that, a candidate could launch a … a frisbee? The booster factor makes this year very different from ’04, when most of those who voted Democratic were voting against Bush but with little relish for Kerry.

Hart did, however, issue one cautionary note. He says Democrats need to reach out with three messages that they are so far not adequately conveying. First, they must convince voters that the party is unified. Before the convention, only 35 percent of voters thought we were unified. That is a mistaken impression due in part to the media exaggerating our divisions. It’ll be interesting to see whether those poll numbers rise now that Hillary has spoken at the convention.

Even more important than correcting that misconception is the need to define McCain. It will never do for Obama merely to fend off attacks on himself as an elitist or as someone who hangs with a domestic terrorist. He must firmly brand his opponent as McSame, George W. McCain, or McBush.

And finally, Democrats must expand the portrait of Obama. What the electorate knows about him so far, they like, but they don’t know enough.

But despite these weaknesses in Obama’s execution of the campaign so far, Hart feels optimistic. He predicts that the following states will turn from red to blue: Iowa, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Virginia, Colorado … and Missouri. He wants a little more icing on the cake, though: he wants McCain to pick the right running mate: “Please, oh God, select Mitt Romney. That would be the most silver spoon ticket ever.”

I’d like to know why he thinks those particular states will turn blue, especially in the case of Missouri. I see only polls here with Obama trailing by five points or more. I’d also like to ask him why he left Ohio off the list. Sherrod Brown kicked an incumbent Republican senator out of office there two years ago by talking about jobs and the economy, but I take Hart’s omission of that state to mean he doesn’t believe Obama can do the same. I just googled Ohio polls and I find that SurveyUSA puts the two men about even and that a Time/CNN poll shows them splitting Ohio.

I hope Hart’s optimism turns out to be justified, but I know that Democrats better bust butt communicating to voters who McCain really is–and who Obama really is.