There's an air of wait-and-see quiet amongst America's political pundits and analysts today -- an atmosphere that's almost relaxed, now there's little more to be said -- but Marc Ambinder has at least made a good list of all the things that we're waiting to see about. From his catalogue of "the known unknowns" about Tuesday's vote:
1. The Obama turnout machine (size, scope)
2. Racism
3. Secret Republican Obama Admirers (The Goodbye To All That Effect)
...
5. Whether people assume Obama will win and therefore don't feel compelled to vote for him (the Democratic overconfident effect)
...
7. The pro-or-anti-Palin vote (suburban women, jazzed conservative base)
8. The Bradley effect (whites lying to pollsters and saying they have NO opinion when they actually support the white candidate)
9. The Wilder effect (whites lying about supporting the black candidate)
... And something called the Howard Dean Red Cap effect. (Why am I only just learning about new "effects" at this stage in the game?) Meanwhile, Ezra Klein predicts a bigger-than-usual discrepancy between Obama's popular vote and his electoral college totals, because of all the Democrats in blue states who might not usually bother voting, but who want to be able to say they voted for the first black president.
At MSNBC, Chuck Todd's final electoral map of the race gives Obama a 286-157 lead over McCain: Obama could lose all the states Todd still lists as toss-ups -- Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Florida and Ohio -- and still come out the winner. Nate Silver detects a very small amount of tightening in the polls.
David Ignatius pauses to look back at John F Kennedy's first year in office, reminding us that it was essentially an unmitigated disaster:
A world of problems awaited him, and his inexperience showed. The CIA talked him into the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion. The Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, intimidated him at the Vienna summit and then erected the Berlin Wall. JFK discovered that the world was far more complicated than his campaign rhetoric had implied. The candidate who wins Tuesday will face a similar reality check...
But as Joe Klein points out, Kennedy's approval ratings were undimmed. Why?
Because Kennedy changed the American zeitgeist. He was a rebirth of American youth and vigor--or, as he pronounced, vigah--after a very hard midcentury slog. His arrival announced the coming of age of a new America: where most people owned their own homes, where a much larger number of people went to college, where the prejudices of the past regarding race and sex--and eventually sexual orientation--had no future. He embodied the return of prosperity, optimism and idealism (a bit too idealistic and optimistic, in fact--in Vietnam). He changed the way the world looked at America, and changed the way we looked at ourselves. He inspired my generation to join the Peace Corps, march for civil rights, get involved in politics. The nation became more adventurous, bolder, sexier, more prosperous and more powerful. It seems to me that if Barack Obama wins, there will be similar changes--similar in impact, if not in content. Obama's arrival may mean the beginning of yet another new America.
