Monday Morning

I track electoral votes at several websites but mainly at two. The more Conservative site currently has Obama at 369 electoral votes and the more Liberal one currently has him at 346.

When you're that far above the requisite 270, the details almost don't matter…but the Conservative site is awarding him Missouri, whereas the Liberal one has it at a tie, and North Carolina, whereas the Liberal one has that in the McCain column but weakening there. On the other hand, the Liberal site thinks Obama's ahead in North Dakota, which just feels wrong to me. There are a few other differences — and other sites which have a few blue states colored red or vice-versa…but the point is that Obama could lose every state where he's currently behind or even ahead by less than 3% and he'd still take the White House. This is the man some said was "not electable."

His lead scares me, as it would scare anyone who remembers recent Election Nights when it looked like the Democrat had won it. (Interestingly, as Bush's popularity has gotten down to around the level of cold sores, my friends who insisted he won both times "fair and square" all seem to be volunteering the suspicion that those elections were far from Kosher. It's like they want to absolve the voting public from blame for the outcome.) Since Obama is too hot not to cool down, and since the press loves a horse race, I expect we're in for at least one round of news stories about McCain coming from behind and closing the gap. Whether there's any evidence of it or not.