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So no big surprise stories over the weekend to substantially change the state of race.

I’m not one of those who subscribes to the inevitability of an Obama landslide, and I figure there are a few highly unlikely but still possible scenarios that could result in a surprise McCain win. McCain would need a combination of all Obama’s weaknesses to converge harmoniously:

• false confidence fed by exaggerated polls based on speculative models
• false confidence inflated by bogus “new voter” registrations
• traditional Republican under-polling of around 5%
• unreliable turn-out by non-traditional voters
• a failure to close the deal with the 10% of voters who are still undecided
• last-minute second-thought risk aversion by non-ideological swing voters tenuously in Obama’s column
• “Bradley effect”-like voters who won’t admit to pollsters their true intent to vote for McCain

I think pretty much all of these have to coincide for McCain to pull it out, and that’s not likely to happen. The very small gradual momentum McCain seems to have made over the last week may have plateaued over the weekend, which is not the best news. Obama will likely win, but will win small with a sputter, just like he did in the primaries. If McCain does end up somehow emerging with a tiny electoral college win, Obama should still get such a big margin in the popular vote that the Electoral College will be in serious danger of disappearing by 2012. Any McCain win could also trigger some unpleasant scenes of dissatisfaction in major urban areas, but I also wouldn’t count out unpleasant scenes of satisfaction should Obama seal the deal. American rioters don’t seem particular; any emotional high or low seems to be enough to warrant flipping over a few cars.

Even though I’ve already mailed in my ballot for McCain, I think the best case scenario for the U.S. is for Obama to win, barely, without a Congressional super-majority, and spend the next four years wrestling with the more conservative Blue Dog Democrat class of 2006 over his agenda. This way we would see very little of the damage I fear Obama wants to inflict in his unspecified cause for “change,” but we can still have all the feel-good history making crap we seem to need psychologically.

Either way, I think whoever wins will be a one-term office-holder and a huge disappointment to all voters, but the latter there is how politics should be.

Tags:   McCain · ObamaNo Comments