26th
Air Force That One
Obama is dominating the air space of the electoral map. Only North Carolina, Missouri, and Nevada now are up for Obama with an aggregate 4% or less. Virginia, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico are 6% or more outside of McCain now. This makes it a 306-232 Obama victory in the electoral college. McCain is seeing his numbers roll back in the red bastion states of Indiana, Georgia, Montana, North Dakota, and Kansas. This means McCain is now primarily waging a defensive war, except in Pennsylvania.
McCain is trying to capture Pennsylvania from Obama’s column. In this election round, Pennsylvania is the kingmaking Queen, to make a chess analogy. A solid flip of Pennslvania and its neighbor Ohio, which is up for Obama but had trended Republican in recent presidential elections, would bring the electoral votes to 265 Obama to 273 McCain. This race boils down to two states for McCain.
McCain is simply losing the election. This doesnt mean he cannot win. It means that his campaign is not gaining ground fast enough to lose what Obama is taking. The impending civil war in the Republican party its moderate elites and populist social conservatives is working against McCain, who is relying on party discipline to work its legendary voter turnout machine on election day. His message of a terrorist-palling, crypto-Socialist Obama is not gaining traction with moderate Republicans and center-right Independents. The white social, evangelical conservative base of the Republican Party, disgusted initially with McCain’s RINO liberalism but rapturous over his choice of Palin, is faced with their mortal enemy, an energized Black electorate, resurgent with the Obama campaign, indicating that Black turnout will be in high in the South. McCain is losing this campaign so fast that Republican candidates for Congress are making their last pitches to the electorate that an Obama presidency and a Democratic Congress would create a monster without any restraints - the irony that this is why America is voting against the Republicans - for the 6 of the last 8 years that they ran Washington with arrrogance and little virtue - is lost on them.
Interestingly, if the Republican internal schism widens between moderates and conservatives, and Obama runs a decent ship of state for the first two years, then the 2010 Congressional elections could continue the Democratic majority, which gives them the Holy Grail of American Politics; the authority to reapportion voting districts based on the updated census in 2010.
