Via Email: Don't Panic Just Yet!

So is McCain a lock? Despite all the media's bloviating about McCain's reinvigorated campaign, a lone voice of reason rises amid the cries of despair. I give you Miller:

"To the question, would you say it's time for everyone to panic ("yes i would, kent"), i'd say the answer is no. i mean, the prospect of mccain winning is terrifying, and there's no way not to be on pins and needles to some extent. but open pollster.com up in another tab and check out their map. (the reason it's better than the realclearpolitics map for our purposes is that you can hover on a state and get its stats.) as i write this, they've got obama at 243 likely electoral votes, meaning he'd need 27 more. if he won ohio, where he's leading, that would net him 20. michigan, where he's leading, 17. virginia, where he's leading, 13. he could win any two of those and do it. he could win just ohio and colorado (worth 9), where he's also up, and do it. he could win just michigan, colorado, and any other tossup state, no matter how small, and do it.

to come at it from the opposite angle, mccain/palin can win florida, they'll no doubt win north carolina... that only gets them to a piddly 221. they'd have to run the table and get practically all of those tossup states to win. not likely in this climate.

to come at it from still another angle: notice how almost all the traditional blue states--all the states that went to gore or kerry--are solidly blue in this election. traditional swing states, like michigan, ohio, and florida, are still swing states. but where's that traditional all-but-coast-to-coast sprawl of red states? a considerable number of those states are in contention this time around. can obama win some of them? of course he can. they're running a tight, sklllful campaign. he's more appealing than either gore or kerry by several orders of magnitude, and those elections were close. mccain is also more appealing than bush, but the country's wised up (a little), so mccain's facing skepticism and resistance that bush didn't.

finally, it's been said (by mencken, apparently) that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the american public. however, if the american public fails to recognize that the last eight years have been disastrous (that part, at least, seems to have sunk in), that mccain is not identical to bush but way too close to be believed when he talks about change, that obama, though not the second coming, is an immensely talented, once-in-a-lifetime politician who would get our rebound underway the moment he was elected through symbolism alone, and finally, that we're incredibly lucky to be offered this chance at a do-over of sorts, it would mean that america has its head so far up its own ass--that we're so colossally, unforgivably stupid--that we surely will continue to decline as a power (at any rate, in terms of soft power and influence), and we'll deserve to. we're stupid, but i'd like to think we're not that stupid."