Michael Barone takes a look at what we might hear tonight half hour by half hour. He looks at the scenario if things are going Obama's way and then switches and supposes that things are going McCain's way. Even the optimistic scenario posits that it would be too close to call in four states: Virginia, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and New Mexico. Barone argues that McCain would either have to win PA and one of the other states or, if he loses PA, he'd have to win the three other states, that even optimistically he imagines being too close to call. It sounds like a pretty long shot, but of course that is all based on the poll results we've been seeing.
I'm skeptical of the polls, but also realistic. When the polls are all one way, it's either massive incompetence, or McCain is simply doing poorly and it's only a question of how poorly. I tend toward the latter conclusion. I well remember all the conservative bloggers pooh poohing the polls in 2006 and arguing that things weren't going to be as bad as they seemed for the GOP. Well, things were that bad - maybe the margin wasn't as large as the polls had predicted, but they still predicted who won and who lost pretty well. So, I'm not heading into tonight with any comfort of false optimism.
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1 comments:
It's not over till it's over, Betsy, and I don't trust any of the polls implicitly, but tend to agree with you that McCain's chances are lower than Obama's. It's hard to tell just how much lower, because the MSM have been and still are in the tank for Obama. But those lower chances are also because outside of choosing Palin, McCain and his advisors have run a pretty miserable campaign. (Were it not for Palin's selection, I think he'd be at least 15 points behind now.) A number of (alleged conservative) commenters on conservative blogs were still saying right before today that they did not trust McCain on core issues (e.g., immigration, global warming) and would not vote for him, because he had his foot in his mouth on such issues almost as often as Joe Biden did on other matters. Just when you thought you could trust him, he'd romp off the edge and make it clear you couldn't. I don't think he ever solidified his base on anything except national defense, and that wasn't good enough for the whole base. So - he's probably going to pay the price for his intransigence, but the MSM will probably renew its love affair with him soon. ;>)
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