It ain't over till it's over...or until O gets to 270 electoral votes

The consensus of the pollsters is that the election is over. McCain/Palin is toast, Obama will cruise to easy victory, and the Dems might even have a fillibuster-proof majority in the Senate. And people are still worried.

Here's the deal: Obama has 260 electoral votes in the bag. And by "in the bag," I mean, "more than 10 points ahead with a week to go." He controls the Northeast, the West Coast, and the upper Midwest. This tally does not include Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Missouri, Colorado, or any of the other "close" states. Just the gimmes. This means he only needs ten more EVs to capture the White House.

So: if Obama wins Florida, he wins. If he wins Ohio, he wins. If he wins Virginia, he wins. If he wins North Carolina, he wins. If he wins Indiana, he wins. If he wins Missouri, he wins. If he...

You get the idea. He only has to win one of those states -- and he's up in all of them.

Don't believe in polls? Bradley Effect got you down? Check out the numbers on Intrade.com, the best predictive market out there, with over 80,000 members. Intrade is almost always more accurate than even the pollsters in predicting elections. As one of their bloggers, my good friend and math geek Cody Stumpo, writes, with a week to go, McCain has a one percent chance of winning. Long odds, indeed.

SARAH PALIN COMPARISON TO SOMEONE MORE EXPERIENCED

Some thoughts as I wait for the presumptive GOP VP candidate to speak

CLAIM: Two years in the Alaskan Governor’s Mansion—or Governor’s Igloo, as it were—comprise sufficient experience to run the bleeping country should something happen to the 72-year-old cancer survivor at the top of the ticket.

REALITY CHECK: Put this in perspective. Let’s say McCain decided to name Greg Ballard, the Republican mayor of Indianapolis, as his running mate. He would be stoned from all sides. Even the GOP talking heads would have trouble selling that.

But here’s the rub: Ballard is more qualified for VP than Sarah Palin is. He unseated a popular Democrat to win the mayoralty—according to Wikipedia, the biggest upset in Indiana history. Also, Indiana is in play because of Obama’s Illinois sphere of influence. Indiana is smack-dab in the center of the country, not so far away that most elementary school kids think it’s located beneath California, in a box.

And the kicker: Indianapolis has a larger population than Alaska. In fact, nineteen U.S. cities, including juggernauts like Fort Worth and Columbus, Ohio, boast more citizens than Alaska. Nineteen. One-nine.

Simply put, Alaska is small potatoes. Running Alaska for two years doesn’t prepare you for running the United States of America any more than winning your high school Battle of the Bands prepares you for opening for the Rolling Stones.

CLAIM: That 16-year-old, unwed Bristol Palin is five months pregnant is completely irrelevant to the issues.

REALITY CHECK: Not if one of “the issues” is sex education. Sarah Palin supports abstinence-only sex education, the egregious failure of which is incarnate in the body—the womb, to be precise—of her daughter. (Someone should have rented JUNO, huh?)

Contrary to popular Religious Right belief, Democrats don’t actively campaign for women to get abortions. Abortions should be legal, safe, and rare. By foisting this ridiculous “sex” education on ignorant kids—that abstinence is no match for biology and peer pressure is axiomatic—the Religious Right are putting more women—check that, more girls—at risk of having abortions, which they profess not to want.

Forget for a moment that it’s hypocritical. It’s stupid, is the point. And so, therefore, is Sarah Palin.

CLAIM: She’s bulletproof because she has five kids and the baby has Down Syndrome.

REALITY CHECK: She named the baby Trig. I don’t care what language that means strength in, it’s just cruel.

GENERATION X FACTOR

Much attention has been paid to Barack Obama becoming the first African-American major-party presidential candidate, and rightly so. But the Obama campaign is historic in another way, too: should he win the White House, Senator Obama, at age 46, would be the country’s first Gen-X president.

Granted, the cusps between one generation and the next are highly subjective. William Strauss and Neil Howe, who in their remarkable study Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584-2069 take great pains determining these generational cusps, locate the boundary between Boom and “X” on January 1, 1961—with Obama on the near side of the line. Terms used to describe Obama’s campaign—“post-racial,” “post-Boomer,” “transcendent,” “inclusive”—suggest something new, a turning of the page. George W. Bush and his predecessor, Bill Clinton, both born in 1946, are Baby Boomers. So is Hillary Rodham Clinton. Obama is a different breed of cat, and not just because of his skin color.

The 71-year-old John McCain, on the other hand, is a member of what Strauss and Howe call the Silent Generation (1925-1942). This means that Election Day will pit a member of the post-Boom Generation—Obama—against a member of the pre-Boom Generation—McCain. After sixteen years of Boom occupancy, the Oval Office will either advance to Generation X or revert to the Silents.

Looked at through this prism, McCain is facing tough odds—not because of his age per se (Reagan was almost as old when he assumed office), but because of the fact that his coevals have already been eclipsed by the next generation.

William McKinley was the first president of the 20^thcentury and also the first of his so-called Progressive Generation (I’m using Strauss and Howe’s generational names and cusps) to become Chief Executive; Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson were of the same generation. Warren G. Harding, nine years younger than Wilson and 22 years younger than McKinley, ushered in the Missionary Generation, which included the subsequent presidents Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, representing the Lost Generation, were followed by G.I. Generation presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush père.

The pattern is obvious: once a generation takes over, it either stays in power or passes the baton to the next generation. Only twice has the preceding generation re-assumed the presidency after a new generation has won the White House. The first time, 64-year-old Zachary Taylor took over from 53-year-old James K. Polk (which probably wouldn’t have happened had the wildly successful Polk sought a second term), and promptly died. The second time, 65-year-old James Buchanan took the reins from 52-year-old Franklin Pierce, and spent four years doing absolutely nothing to ease the escalating tensions between North and South.

This is not to say that McCain can’t win. Or, for that matter, that the Baby Boomers are finished in the White House. Hillary will be younger in 2016 than McCain is right now, and Mitt Romney, Rudolph Giuliani, Condoleezza Rice, and Al Gore are also Boomers. But it doesn’t bode well for McCain when, the last time we went back a generation to elect a president, there was Civil War after the guy left.

TAKE HEART, OBAMA NATION

Or, The Audacity of Knowing We Can Kick McCain’s Septuagenarian Ass

Lately, many of my left-leaning friends have started to fret. Maybe McCain is more formidable than we previously thought. Maybe the twin fatigues—Clinton-, and election in general—will turn “undecideds” away from the donkey column in November. Maybe Obama’s association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a preacher with such incredible influence in politics that “the typical white person” has never heard of him, will flatten his campaign bus’s Denver-bound tires. Maybe we can’t handle two quality candidates, and hold with Portia’s lady-in-waiting in Merchant of Venice, who said, “They are as sick that surfeit with too much as they that starve with nothing.”

I’m here to tell you, friends, stop worrying. As soon as the once-inevitable Hillary Clinton accepts inevitability and bows out—a moment that Bill Richardson’s endorsement of Obama will hopefully help hasten—the Dems can turn their attention to beating John McCain. And beat him we will—like a 71-year-old piñata.

For all the valor he displayed in Vietnam, and his maverick reputation, and his many centuries of public service (I hear be brokered the Missouri Compromise), the guy is not the strongest candidate. Stronger than Romney, Huckabee, Paul, and etcetera, but by no means strong.

Here are some of the many reasons why, short of another terrorist attack or a revelation than Obama was also a client of the Emperor’s VIP Club, McCain doesn’t stand a chance come November. Think of these as arrows in the Democratic quiver.

Age Before Beauty...Or Anything Else
Yes, he has displayed vigor on the campaign trail. Yes, his mother is 96 and still spry. But facts is facts, and actuarial tables is actuarial tables: he’s a 71-year-old cancer survivor who spent five years in a POW camp (and they say Obama is the Manchurian Candidate?!). How will his body handle the rigors of the job? Wouldn’t he be better off with his constituents, at one of the many retirement communities in Arizona? Contrast him with Obama, 46. One is pre-Baby Boomer, George H.W. Bush’s kid brother; one is post-Baby Boomer, a New Age JFK for the 21^st Century. Does the country want Methuselah & Mitt, or Camelot Part II?

Generation X Factor
One of the underreported items in the primary coverage is that Obama, born in 1961, is the nation’s first Generation X candidate (the post-Baby Boom generation begins roughly in 1960). It is not just his skin color (although, as Geraldine Ferraro suggested, the bi-racial background doesn’t hurt) but his membership in Generation X, and the more inclusive worldview that comes with it, that allows him to transcend racial barriers, break down traditional ways of thinking about politics, and inspire younger voters. If anyone can draw the withdrawal-in-disgust-is-not-the-same-as-apathy crowd to the polls, Obama’s the guy. Look for a big spike in younger voters, the ones who supposedly don’t vote.

Rush, The Spirit of Radio
Rush Limbaugh refuses to endorse McCain. Not enough of a right-wing goon, apparently. Ann Coulter says she’ll vote for Hillary instead of McCain, because “she’s more conservative than he is.” Charles Krauthammer’s support has been so lackluster, he’s taken to parsing Obama’s speeches instead. William Kristol, David Brooks, and George Will write as if the GOP is dead and buried. And William F. Buckley is dead and buried. So the conservative pundits ain’t exactly drinking the McCool Aid. The evangelicals, meanwhile, can’t stand McCain, because he’s not a “values” conservative (they heart Huckabee, who as a serious presidential candidate is one heckuva bass player), so they’re not jumping aboard the Straight Talk Express—even though McCain is pro-life, or, as I like to call it, pro-foisting-women’s-medical-decisions-on-them. So McCain has managed to turn off both conservative Christians and women’s advocacy groups. Who says two sides can’t agree?

Temper, Temper
McCain is a hothead. He gets mad and swears and breaks things. I get mad and swear and break things, too, but I’m not sitting across the negotiating table from the North Koreans, nor do I have the keys to the nuclear football. Obama, meanwhile, is the picture of serenity, grace under pressure, calm, cool, collected, and just the guy you want making decisions when tempers flare. In the presidential debates, which unlike the primary ones will actually have an audience, this contrast will be stark. Anger might work in the Senate, where you can tell Pat Leahy to fuck off, but is a liability in an executive role. Ask Eliot Spitzer how well the “fucking steamroller” thing worked.

The Viagra Factor
I saw McCain once, at the Unity journalism conference in 1998. He approached our booth, which was attended by about a dozen journalists, and was about to march right by when he noticed that one of our number was actually a hottie. He stopped in his tracks, did a perfect pivot, and offered her his firm handshake. “John McCain,” he said, his eyes twinkling, ignoring the rest of us. My point is, the guy is something of a rake. The Times story about how his aides were concerned that he was having an affair? The one he denied in no uncertain terms? Let’s just say where there’s smoke, there’s a politician with his pants down.

It’s the Economy, Stupid
We’re staring at the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression—a crisis exacerbated by two Republican staples of governance: ill-conceived tax cuts for billionaires and reckless deregulation (anyone who argues in favor of less government regulation needs to buy a high school American history book and read about the second half of the 19^th century). Conservatives call it laissez-faire; I call it asleep-at-the-wheel. McCain admits that economics is not his strong suit; his most relevant experience with money matters involves the Keating Five. His big economic proposal involves “a panel chaired by Alan Greenspan, whether he’s dead or alive.” The same Alan Greenspan who presided with pompoms over the real estate bubble. That McCain would joke about the economy in the midst of the subprime crisis shows how out of touch he is. Republicans have nothing to offer poor and middle-class Americans, economically. Democrats are so used to watching Obama and Hillary debate almost health plans, we’ve forgotten how progressive universal health care is, and how hard it will be to debate against. Which is what McCain will attempt to do, using the “socialized” word to scare us. Sorry, John, but rising health care costs are scarier than socialism.

It’s the War, Stupid
With Obama, we will be spared the Kerryan I-voted-for-it-before-I-voted-against-it equivocality that would mar a Hillary campaign. It's cut and dried: Obama, a staunch early opponent of the war, wants us out of Iraq a.s.a.p.; McCain, a staunch early proponent of the war, wants us in Iraq for the next 100 years. I realize both senators’ positions are more nuanced than that, but I think we'll be hearing that 100 years quote a lot this fall. The election will be a referendum on the war. "Surge" or no "surge," McCain loses that debate soundly.

Map Math
If that doesn’t convince you, take a look at the electoral map and do the math. The 2004 election was extremely close, even though the Democrats ran the most unelectable candidate since…since…who, Mondale? McGovern? Despite his numerous flaws, Kerry lost the electoral college by 34 votes. A win in Ohio would have handed him the presidency. Now, do you really think that Obama loses any of the states Kerry carried? Of course not. All he has to do is duplicate what Kerry did, plus win Ohio. Or he could make up the 18 electoral votes by winning Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado. This is more than possible; it’s likely. Moreover, the demographics will be vastly different in this election: huge black turnout, big young turnout, a drop in “values voter” turnout. Georgia is 30% black, South Carolina a third, Mississippi a whopping 37%. This will only help Obama.

Conclusion

If Obama and Clinton spent the next few months sniping at each other, that's fine. If the process drags on until the convention, that's fine, too. All of the above arrows will be used to pelt McCain, and if we only have two months to use them, it only means we won't run out of ammo.

Bottom line: Obama could pick Jeremiah Wright as his running mate, and still kick McCain's butt.