It's been nearly a month since I posted here as I've mostly turned my attention to another project, but with the election coming tomorrow I thought I would throw in my two cents worth.
It's pretty clear that Barack Obama is going to become the president-elect Tuesday night and that John McCain will return to the Senate and end up on the virtual scrap heap of weak GOP candidates past.
Many predictions have Obama winning well over 300 electoral votes. That I don't see. My prediction, with the help of a chart at Realclearpolitics.com, is Obama will win 291 electoral votes or 21 more than necessary to win the White House. McCain will take 247 electoral votes. I think McCain will hold hotly contested Ohio and Florida but Obama appears to have a decisive edge in Pennsylvania and Virginia has moved into his camp. It would be less shocking for Obama to steal Florida or North Carolina to add 42 more electoral votes than it would be for McCain to pull an upset in Pennsylvania and hold Virginia for the GOP. The Democrats have the benefit of a popular politician running for senate in the Old Dominion, so he'll carry the top of the ticket to victory there.
We've heard two things from the conservative media in the past couple of weeks. One, that the race is tightening. That's true, but only by a percentage point or two here or there. The sort of last-week polling avalanche toward one candidate or the other has not happened in 2008.
Their other point is that those who have been undecided heading into the last week or so will break for McCain. That's also true, which is why I think McCain will win in many states where Obama is currently leading polls by only a plurality or in which he's within two points. However, there still does not appear to be a tsunami in the offing.
I also see no reason to disagree with the consensus that Democrats will make moderate gains in the House and Senate, but won't get the 60 seats necessary to invoke cloture in the upper chamber. The advances will come through simple math and GOP retirements than any change in voter preference to Democrats like in 2006.
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So how did we end up here, instead of predicting a McCain victory as would have been perfectly reasonable not much more than a month ago?
I haven't seen this explanation anywhere else, but to me it makes perfect sense. When talking about the meltdown of the U.S. financial sector in the vice-presidential debate, Sarah Palin blamed Wall Street and corporate greed and nothing else. John McCain in the first of the debates on domestic issues did the same thing.
The fact of the matter is that Wall Street and corporate greed were (and still are) about a third of the problem. Poor oversight and economic stewardship by the executive branch were substantial contributors. However, also significant bad actors were congressional Democrats who pushed wrongheaded policies on the nation's financial system, and not only failed themselves in oversight but were buddy-buddy with some of the worst of the greedy cads -- Barack Obama included.
We all know that the blame for the financial mess is widespread, not limited to just one area. McCain and Palin assessed blame in the same manner that Obama and Biden did. Therefore, the millions of voters at home who watched the heavily viewed debates saw no major difference between their two choices. They did see a Republican ticket that appeared destined to fail in the second most important task we had for him: confronting a Democrat-led Congress that had a voter approval rating of 11 percent at last check. If McCain wasn't going to challenge Democrats or his fellow congressmen in a campaign debate, how was he going to take them on when he became president. The McCain as a barrier to a radically left legislature concept immediately disappeared.
This scenario played out roughly at the time the polls appeared to be at a tipping point. Voter sentiment could have gone either way. People were looking for an alternative to Barack Obama and did not see one in John McCain. With Iraq less of an issue and Obama seemingly hawkish on Afghanistan, the GOP candidate provided no other reason to get our vote.
On Tuesday, McCain will in fact receive many millions of votes by people who correctly understand that an Obama presidency will impact the U.S. Supreme Court and will bring a lot of people to Washington who hold sentiments similar to William Ayres and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But Obama will be chosen by a million or two more. McCain had his chance but blew it.
