Who Can Really Say?

In the NY Daily News, Zev Chafets writes that Bush will win in November. He starts with a wonderful anecdote I'd heard before.

In 1972, The New Yorker's movie critic, Pauline Kael, won herself a place in political lore by expressing astonishment at the Republicans' 49-state landslide victory. "How could that be?" she demanded. "I don't know a single person who voted for Nixon."

Heh heh heh. Anyway, he goes on:

John Kerry is not a bad man. He probably wouldn't make a bad President. But he is a bad candidate in a terrible situation. He represents the wing of the Democratic Party that is imbued with a sense of its own moral, intellectual, cultural and social superiority. In short, he is the standard bearer for the unbearable.

These people don't comprise a majority of the electorate or even Democratic voters (how could they and remain an elite?), but they have convinced themselves that they and their candidate - if packaged properly - will prove irresistibly attractive to lesser Americans.

I appreciate where he's coming from but talk is cheap, even if it's a funny anecdote or a fair assessment. There's no shortage of this talk from either side (although I'm too lazy to track down the links) about how victory is surely at hand because the opponent's failures are so obviously apparent. Blah blah blah blah blah.

Chafets handles the Democrats. I want to handle the GOP, who's fans seem to me to have the confidence of Baltimore Colts supporters on the eve of Super Bowl III. But it's now late in the 3rd quarter and the team is behind, yet not out of it. There's a sense that Unitas will soon play (the GOP Convention will kickoff the real campaign) and success will be at hand. Well it didn't work out that way for the Colts although it might have. And it can still work for the GOP's supporters too (this race is closer today than SB III was late in the 3rd quarter), but if their hand is as strong as they thinks it is, in a political sense, they why is the game still so close?

If you want to know who I think will win, click here.