Final Predictions

I haven't followed the minutiae of the race this year like I have in previous ones. In part because I never believed the GOP stood much of a chance, in part because Real Life loomed much larger this time than it did 4 and 8 years back, and I just didn't have the bandwidth to get too excited.

In sports, the final score comes down entirely to the game, but politics is different. The referees decide whether the cameras are rolling when each side scores a point, and how loud the crowd cheers actually helps decide the outcome. I've never been a huge fan of the "damn liberal media" narrative, but this year caused me to start shopping for a pitchfork. The media has become dominated by a cabal of overeducated, latte-sipping, arugula-eating, Prius-driving coastal urban yuppies, and Obama is without a doubt the most catnippy candidate for them since at least Jimmy Carter, and maybe Adlai Stevenson.

If Obama wins, I suspect at least 75% of Republicans will consider the media complicit, and will view them as an occupying force for the next four years. This is probably the beginning of the end for many newspapers and nightly news programs as we know them. An interesting local question is whether the Herald might weather this better than the Globe, at least in relative terms. I suspect a lot of these Hillary voters around here won't be too happy about Obama's plans. Personally, I can't remember the last time I read the Globe, and am not sure why I'd do so now. I suppose I could pay attention to the business section, though my business isn't really that local, and if it was, I'd probably get the Boston Business Journal. How many sequential 8-10% declines in circulation can happen before the Globe starts to resemble the Metro?

Of course, if McCain wins, the talking heads will instantly shift gears to analyses of how they could be so bleeping wrong, very few of which will likely discuss their internal biases. Of course, this is by far the worse scenario for them, as many Obamaphiles will blame the media for making their side overconfident and depressing turnout, but that won't be until at least 2010 when the arguments about a Republican race war start growing mold.

Anyway...
I haven't bothered to play the map games, but here's what I'll be watching closely. Feel free in the comments to bet me a beer on any of the following:

1. The black vote stuns, the youth vote sucks: These two have been the hard six of electoral politics--a vast pool of untapped liberal voters who are harder to drag to the polls than corpses in Cook County. I'm splitting my money here, because I think young people are pretty much the same year after year, but this is a truly historic day for black America.

2. Ohio and Florida stay red: After 2000, the Democrats threw everything at these states and still got their asses handed to them in 2004. My guess is that turnout, while extraordinarily high, will be as much anti-Obama as pro-Obama.

3. Pennsylvania stays blue: I thought Bush could eke out a win here in 2004, and based on that, I'm betting a McCain win now to be far less likely, particularly with massive turnout in Philly and Pittsburgh. There have been anxieties on the part of leading Dems about Pennsylvania, but that's more because of the cost of losing it than the likelihood.

4. New Hampshire completes its transition to a safe Democratic state: Obama's margins look insurmountable here. If NH votes for a one-term black senator from Illinois with the most liberal voting record in the Senate over John McCain, then it will pretty much vote for any Democrat.

5. Democrats break 56 in the Senate but do not make it to 60: I have wavered on this one many, many times. Let's look at the key states: Alaska, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, New Mexico, Oregon, Virginia. I am guessing the Democrats pick up AK, NH, NM, OR, and VA. In the remainder I am betting on ticket-splitting voters in relatively red states to blunt the charge. But 60 is not at all impossible, and that is quite something. While I suspect that would lead to vast overreaching leading to a 1994-style revival of the GOP, I'd really rather not see just how deep that rabbit hole goes.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.