There's a story about a young man who comes home one day and says to his father, "Dad, I know who I am and what I want to do with my life: I'm a sea captain."

The father looks at him and says, "Son, you know you're a sea captain, and I know you're a sea captain, but do sea captains know you're a sea captain?"

There's a political corollary that goes something like this: You know Barack Obama is crook and a failure and unfit to be president, and I know Barack Obama is a crook and a failure and unfit to be president, but do a majority of American voters know Barack Obama is a crook and a failure and unfit to be president?"

In other words, the big risk in this election is thinking that a majority of Americans see the presidential race as we conservatives see it, that they're as disturbed by the tone and tactics of the Obama campaign as we are. But if we take a closer look at what most Americans -- liberal and conservative -- are seeing, it should be a wake-up call to us.

First, the polling numbers are juiced beyond recognition. On August 1, a CBS/New York Times/Quinnipiac College poll used a sample that was skewed so badly it was borderline criminal. The polling sample was 36% Democrat and 27% Republican, when less than three months earlier polling data indicated that the numbers should have been 31% Democrat and 34% Republican. Obama "won" this skewed poll 51% to 45%. If the correct sample distribution instead of a 12-point swing in the Democrats' favor had been used, Romney would have received 54% of the vote in this poll.

But as if that weren't bad enough, ten days later Fox News cited its own poll in which Romney was nine points behind Obama. In this case, the sample was again skewed so badly that nine percent more Democrats were polled than Republicans. Fox News's Bret Baier looked befuddled as he reported the results and the Special Report panel went on to treat them as if they were legitimate.

The Democratic view of how the race is shaping up, based on skewed polling data as it is, is getting out to America overwhelmingly, despite its obvious illegitimacy.

A second point: Democrats are not "desperate." I hear pundit after pundit say that if the Dems weren't desperate they would not be resorting to tactics like having Harry Reid insist over and over that Mitt Romney hasn't paid income taxes in ten years. But that message gets repeated in more conservative circles as Fox News plays video of Reid's accusations again and again and Bret Baier's Special Report "all-star" panel breaks them down in segment after segment, pointing out how scurrilous they are.

The focus on the Democrat message by conservatives doesn't stop there. The only thing Sean Hannity seems to be able to talk about is the Obama campaign and how ugly and disgusting it is. Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter spent precious radio and TV segments talking about how Andrea Saul -- the nitwit Romney campaign spokesperson who insisted that Joe Soptic's wife wouldn't have lost her health insurance if she'd lived in Massachusetts and had RomneyCare -- must be fired immediately.

Do you think Democrats don't understand that there's no such thing as bad publicity? That the more outrageous their attacks are, the more they'll be repeated by Republicans and conservatives?

Democrats' scorched-earth, take-no-prisoners campaign is not a sign they're desperate; it's who they are. They're the most subversive, dirtiest enemy America has, and they must be stopped. We've got to quit reinforcing their message for them. Conservatives' attention does nothing except validate the Obama message through continuous repetition.

Republicans and conservatives are doing the Democrats' job for them, and it's overwhelmingly a function of the fact that most of them don't seem to realize who we're at war with in this campaign. They don't realize that in Barack Obama we're up against a merciless enemy and that the president and his cohorts are not going to play fair.

You think Islamist radicals are nasty? The Obama campaign staff is made up of political terrorists who are much more dangerous than Islamists. Hell, Islamists take their cues from the Obama campaign. "Oh, look," they must be saying, "when you tell a lie about an American of good character the press will back you up and destroy that person. Sharia law is being implemented in many places in America, thanks to the Democrats. We will be able to kill our wayward daughters with impunity by the end of Obama's second term if he is re-elected. We may not ever have to plant another explosive device or blow up another plane. Democrats are doing a great job of that for us."

With a strong conservative administration -- one which would unleash America's oil industry, rebuild the military Obama is intent on destroying, and lower taxes and spending to responsible levels -- radical Islam would slowly recede as a force to be feared as America reclaimed its position of economic and military dominance in the world. Americans would finally -- and in a very short time -- realize the scope of the nightmare we've been living under during the Obama administration and once again get back in the game, knowing that their government was not bent on enslaving them through denying them of their rights and undermining America's position in the world.

Mitt Romney is the standard-bearer for all God-fearing, upstanding Americans, and the best he can do is produce tepid responses as his message and his character remain under merciless and unrelenting leftist assault. All so-called conservative commentators can do is say, "The fact that Romney is nearly even in the polls means Obama's tactics aren't working" and "Wait 'til the debates, that's when Romney will shine."

Romney's pick of Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, a plain vanilla budget wonk, only promises to intensify Democrats' slanderous onslaught.  After the announcement, the Obama campaign immediately re-launched its campaign to brand Ryan as a "radical" who's out to destroy Medicare, while CNN's Candy Crowley correctly claimed that many see the selection as "some sort of ticket death wish" and a New Yorker blogger decried Ryan's lack of "private-sector experience," even as the rest of the media denigrate Romney for having same.  Villainous attacks on Ryan's storybook small-town family can't be far behind.

If Ryan is able to withstand the left's merciless attacks and provide a strong voice to say all the things Romney is afraid or unwilling or unable to say, we may have a puncher's chance.  And if, somehow, a majority of people in about nine swing states make their way through the wreckage of Romney's campaign and the nasty, obfuscatory lies that Obama and his confederates are going to continue to blast out and we manage to get Romney elected, we'll have taken a small first step.

Even then, though, the task of liberating America will only have begun. It's at that moment that we find out if Romney truly understands that our freedom is at grave risk and whether he is up to the job ahead of him. I only pray that he is. For the sake of our country's survival.