“Buyer’s remorse” is setting in as Republicans who have been toying with the idea of voting for Obama because they were pissed off at George Bush appear to be coming home. That phenomenon has shrunk the Democrat’s lead heading into the final four days.
I’ve looked at the trends and analyzed the data. Since this is Halloween I can’t think of a better day to predict the results of this race.
Take Pennsylvania and put it off to the side for a moment. Barack Obama will win all the rest of the states won by Kerry plus Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. That will give him 257 electoral votes.
McCain will win all of the remaining states won by Bush in 2004 including the so-called battleground states of Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio and Missouri. That will give him 260 electoral votes.
Whoever wins Pennsylvania will win the election and we won’t know that until the early hours of the morning of November 5th.
My fear is that McCain squeaks out a win in Pennsylvania and wins the election 281 – 257.
Why am I afraid this could happen? Because (1) I think the race is really closer than the public polls are showing, (2) the youth vote is not going to show up in the quantities that Obama needs and (3) the “Buyer’s Remorse” is going to be much worse than usual this year with large numbers of folks reverting at the last minute.
This is my nightmare scenario. I'm afraid of sitting there with Obama stuck at 257 votes while one by one the "too close tocall" states that could put him over the top fall into the McCain column.
Should my nightmare scenario come through, we're in big trouble. McCain and the Republicans will just try to continue down the same path with the Democratic Congress fighting them every step of the way. A good definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result.
You think this country is divided now? You ain’t seen nothing yet. We’re talking about four years of total gridlock while literally everything deteriorates. Don’t expect much out of Washington while things are going to hell beyond partisan finger pointing and recriminations.
It’s not likely I’ll live to see the 2012 elections. Look for Hillary to go for it again and McCain may, or may not, be in a position to run for re-election. He may face a revolt from the extreme right wing of his own party. Hell, we might see Sarah Palin stab him in the back and end up as the Republican nominee. Dang, Hillary against the born in an igloo dingbat, I’ll be sorry to miss that one.
Hopefully this is just my natural paranoia and pessimism raising its ugly head. I’d never be so glad to be so wrong. But I'm not the only one that's worried. The internet traffic is pure angst and paranoia. You know the old saying, no smoke without fire. All of us must be sensing something in the numbers.
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