I'm tempted to paraphrase Gerald Ford at this moment. You know, the business about "Our long national nightmare . . .?" But I'll wait until tomorrow, or maybe January 20, since Dick Cheney could revoke the Constitution between now and inauguration day.

As the guy who long ago predicted Obama by eight points nationally, this election appears to be working out much like I thought. There will be countless postmortems tonight, tomorrow, and in the days to come. But in short, the Democrats will have one man to thank beyond all others if the polls and pundits are correct . . . Karl Rove.

[By the way . . . speaking of punditry. Yours truly, along with my pal and adversary, Sarah Janecek, of Politics in Minnesota, former Governor Arne Carlson--on a higher dais--and others will be offering quality bloviation this evening on KMSP FOX9. I can't promise much, but I can always do better than Fred Barnes.]

Conventional wisdom, of course, is that Obama owes everything to George W. Bush. Without his gold standard executive incompetency, none of what follows could have been possible. And that is true enough. But there is a scenario that says a truly gifted, engaged conservative, a person with personal credibility, could have taken the Rove strategy and built something with it. It'd be tough. But given high enough doses of telegenic charm and reptilian venom, anything is possible. But Bush--too intellectually lazy to shape his own destiny--was captive to Rove's pandering to the so-called "Republican base," and that pandering locked him in to a set of fundamentals that left him profoundly out of touch with the realities of a twenty-first planet.

Those fundamentals, of course, would be the so-called "small government" ethos, a purposely vague, anti-intellectual mindset that encourages cynicism toward all levels of government, essentially arguing that no facet of government--except the military--can be trusted with tax money. (Conversely, this same ethos argues there is no amount of public money--Social Security--that shouldn't be trusted to Wall St. and the private sector.) This "ethos" required an endless parade of sycophantic cronies--Alberto Gonzalez, "Heckuva Job" Brownie, etc.-- to occupy vital offices, where they failed utterly and miserably when thrown into the spotlight . . . thereby validating the claim that government couldn't be trusted.

The irony that Rove treated "the base" with outrageous cynicism, largely ignoring their "hot-button" issues of gay-marriage, Roe v. Wade, etc., in between election cycles was, of course, lost on those who bought into it. By exploiting 9/11, Rove papered over everything else by advising a climate of perpetual warfare and fear, which fit nicely with the Cheney-Feith-Wolfowitz concept of re-purposing Iraq as a "war on terror." 

Old-school, fiscally conservative Republicans--who have accepted the religious zealots, one-note social conservatives, and the talk radio's delusional knuckleheads as a regrettable but necessary component to building Rove's "permanent majority"--will be asking themselves, "How do we flush this crowd out of our system?" If polling holds up and the Democrats pull in both huge numbers of blacks AND Hispanics--the latter group senselessly antagonized by Rove's "base"--they're looking at a sweet spot coalition as the United States moves toward a multi-cultural majority over the next generation. (And let the talk radio yobs froth over THAT one.)

Anyway, most of that can wait.

My bold predictions:  Obama by eight nationally, with something in the range of 380 electoral votes.

Minnesota Senate: Al Franken, narrowly. In a "normal year," with a moderately effective incumbent such as Norm Coleman, Coleman would win by four to six points. But this year, against a tide of staggering antipathy towards George W. Bush and a genuinely charismatic, transformational candidate such as Obama driving thousands of new voters to the polls, the opponent rides in on the coattails.

Sixth District:  Bye, bye Michele. My guess is that the RNCC held their nose every time Bachmann turned up on TV. Before Hardball, she was a national joke. After, as the RNCC yanked ad money, she was expendable. In a year when they expect to take a serious beating, the Republican brain trust may well have said to itself, "She's reliably bat shit in a reliably Republican district. If we lose her in '08 to a wonk, we are still in good position to find someone more credible--that won't be hard to do--and take Tinklenberg down in '10."  

President

Senate

6th District