Democratic convention has already veered from message of discipline and unity
The Democrats should have been arriving in Philadelphia for their pre-election convention today in buoyant, even exultant, mood.
They face an opponent who is wildly inflammatory and who has a relentlessly pessimistic - even apocalyptic - view of America and the world. Donald Trump should be the gift that keeps on giving to Democrats
Hillary Clinton has been a First Lady, a Senator, a Secretary of State, and can claim to be one of the most qualified Presidential nominees in American history.
And here is the shocker: today's polls put Donald Trump ahead.
A CNN survey shows Trump leading by three points, 48% to 45%. That represents a six-point convention bounce for Trump.
The Democrats face their own severe fault lines. As we saw on the streets of Philadelphia yesterday, Bernie Sanders supporters still have not reconciled themselves to Hillary. They widely regard her as a dishonest and corrupt figure of the establishment, in the pay of Wall Street and big political donors.
So plenty on the left despise Hillary. And those are Democrats. We know the refrain from Republicans last week at their convention: "Lock Her Up."Somehow this week Hillary Clinton must try and reverse her negative ratings.
It's a massive challenge for her and the party organizers. They can hardly seek simply to "reintroduce" her to the American people - she has been such a powerful and polarising figure for decades that opinions are firmly fixed. Sixty-eight per cent of Americans think of her as dishonest.
There is a further controversy surrounding leaked emails. Hackers - possibly working for the Kremlin - have published (via Wikileaks) internal emails that appear to show that Democratic Party bosses were never really neutral in the fight between Sanders and Clinton. The party officials, behind the scenes, always had their thumb on the scale in favour of Hillary.
That has further infuriated Sanders' supporters. So this convention appears to have already veered from its message of discipline and unity. And it hasn't even begun yet.
We are bracing ourselves for another tumultuous week in American politics, in the convention hall and on the streets.