My first memories of an election year date back to 1968--I was in elementary school then. The first election I really followed closely is 1972. I'm too young to recall much of anything from the '64 campaign. IOW, I don't have a lot of positive political memories.
I've never seen a campaign in which this many factors favor our party. 80% of the public thinks the country is on the wrong track. Our utterly out of touch opponent keeps tripping over his own tongue. Our party just completed a highly successful convention featuring an acceptance speech that had Pat Buchanan agog. We have a VP nominee who is clearly qualified to be prez--they have a nominee who may not be qualified to be gov of AK.
To put it bluntly, if we can't win this election going away, we need to start over from scratch w/ a new party. Things haven't favored us this much since the last time the GOP nominated a trigger-happy AZ senator*. Things may not have favored the Dems this much since 1932.
Getting to 270 EVs isn't the goal here. Getting >300 EVs, and preferably to more like 350-400 EVs should be the goal. Getting a plurality of the popular vote isn't the goal. Getting a solid majority (say 53%+) should be the goal. For a party that has gotten a majority of the popular vote once since 1944, 55% would be a huge accomplishment.
I was as nervous as anyone as I saw Obama's situation worsen on FiveThirtyEight in recent weeks. I don't spend that much time worrying about Gallup's tracking polls, but I trust Nate Silver's projections. I'm not worrying at all today.
I recall an interview of Ed Rollins, Reagan's Campaign Mgr, in 10/84. Rollins was asked what was keeping him up at night. Rollins replied that nothing was keeping him up at night.
Based upon my observations of Axelrod, I'm sure that he still has worries keeping him up at night. He really doesn't need to have them at this point. His biggest worry now should be how big of a margin he can pile up for his candidate.
The one bit of advice that I would give Axelrod would be to push for a party victory more than an individual one. In '72, Nixon went all out for Nixon, and the Dems maintained control of both houses in the face of his landslide. That fact proved to be a problem for Nixon 2 years later. In '84, Reagan went for a 50 state sweep--even appearing in Mondale's home state of MN the Sunday before the election. The Dems kept control of the House, and 2 years later, they took back the Senate.
We should be able to get 55+ Senate seats this year. We should be able to pick up enough House seats to seriously marginalize the Blue Dogs. We can get the kind of watershed victory that is long overdue.
4 years ago, we wondered if we'd ever make it back. Now, we are poised on an historic victory. Better late than never, I guess.
*I have suggested here running a version of the "Daisy" ad that proved to be so devastatingly effective in '64. I'm really not worried about it or any other ad the Dems run now--it won't matter that much in the big-picture scheme of things here.