I think the answer is an obvious, “Yes.”

First of all, have a reminder look at the 2008 electoral map. Now consider the changes in the electoral college. States that have gone to Democrats for the past three Presidential elections have lost a net of six votes. While states that have gone for Republicans in that same time have had a net gain of six votes. So instead of 365 electoral votes, Obama would have only 359 – still a safe margin – if he could manage to win every state he won in 2008.

Will Obama win those states? Well, 2008 was the first time in quite a while that Indiana, Virginia, and North Carolina went for a Democrat at the Presidential level. Those states account for 11, 13, and 15 votes, respectively. 39 votes total. Obama’s vote total is down to 320.

Then there’s Florida. With 29 votes, an Obama loss in Florida is vital for Republicans’ hopes. That outcome would drop the President’s vote total down to 291. That means that Republicans only need Pennsylvania’s 20 votes, plus one more state, to win.

It’s that easy for Obama to lose. Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania, and one more state. How likely is that?

Well, recent polling shows Obama’s job approval is upside down. Indiana, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Florida all had US Senate elections in 2010 – and every one of them voted Republican. (Incidentally, so did Ohio, Wisconsin, and Iowa – states that also went for Obama in 2008. Illinois did too, but I’m not even considering that Obama might lose his home state.) To the extent that the US Senate race is any predictor of Presidential voting – which is only a slight connection – then it’s bad news for Democrats.

Then take a look at the national horserace polls. Obama is leading potential Republican challengers, but the races are fairly close and show high numbers of undecided voters. In 2008, those undecided voters probably would have broken in large numbers to Obama – because he was an unknown and voters wanted change. But now? Well, exactly what has Obama given them to vote for?

State-level info is hard to come by. But what there is doesn’t look good for the President. Pennsylvania disapproves of him by a margin of 42-52. The author of the linked post makes a point of the margin-of-error, but I think a better indication of Presidential weakness is that the President only reaches the 50% mark when head-to-head with Sarah Palin. The President loses to Mitt Romney, wins by one point over Mike Huckabee, and two points over Rick Santorum. That’s weak, anyway it gets spun.

Obviously, they can only poll against known candidates. My feeling is that GOP will actually come up with someone who hasn’t announced yet (no, not Donald Trump). If they really wanted to mix up the map, they could pair Marco Rubio at the top of the ticket with someone like Susan Collins as VP. Rubio appeals to Hispanics and to Conservatives, and has already shown he knows how to win in Florida. Meanwhile Collins shows that the GOP is friendly to women, other than an antention-seeker like Palin, and has enough moderate credentials to say that they aren’t trying to turn the country to the hard right-wing.

I spent a bit of time today in email exchanges with a group of people who are just entirely pissed at Arlen Specter. The thing is: They’re Democrats. In fact, the whole thing started off with one person declaring that she wanted a “real Democrat” to run in the primary against Specter and that she wanted to help him “dip into his retirement account.”

So what, I wondered, happened to the idea of a “big tent” Democratic Party? And, while we are pondering things, let us consider what is meant by “real Democrat.”

Here’s the starting point. The Democratic Party does not require any sort of loyalty oath or statement of beliefs in order for a person to join. If you look to the national party for direction, you get stuff like this:

The Democratic Party is committed to keeping our nation safe and expanding opportunity for every American. That commitment is reflected in an agenda that emphasizes the strong economic growth, affordable health care for all Americans, retirement security, open, honest and accountable government, and securing our nation while protecting our civil rights and liberties.

I can’t find anything wrong with that. But I can’t find anything that anyone would find wrong with it. Honestly – is someone going to stand up and say that we don’t need to be safe or that we don’t need opportunity for every American? To address the point at hand, would Arlen Specter disagree with that? I mean, if he signs on to that vacuous statement, then he’s technically a “real Democrat.”

And here’s the thing – the people of Pennsylvania apparently like Arlen Specter. You can tell because they keep sending him back to DC. And they like him even better as a Democrat. Seventy-one percent of Democrats in Pennsylvania approve of Arlen Specter.

Seems like they are satisfied that Specter is a “real Democrat.” Or, more to the point, they simply don’t care what party he belongs to. They want to send him back to DC anyway.

Even Daily Kos’ polling only proves this point. In a Democratic primary, Specter beats “real Democrats” Sestak and Torsella, 54-29-11. That isn’t peanuts. 37 percent of Democrats are positive they will vote for Specter. That’s a pretty high floor to go into the primary with. In head-to-head matchups, Specter’s closest competitor is “undecided.” And close to half of those Democrats say that their support is not contingent on Specter voting for either the Employee Free Choice Act or health care reform.

Meanwhile, in the general election head-to-head match-ups, Specter walks away with more than half of the vote. The “real Democrats” manage to outpoll the Republican front-runner – who is generally unknown – by only two and five points. The DK diarist declares this a Democratic victory. I have no idea why.

Consider this continuum as an indication of political positioning:

<--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
L10 L5 0 C5 C10

In the absence of better data, we generally understand the distribution of political ideology to approximate a normal distribution. That means that the vast majority of voters are going to cluster around zero, or within one standard deviation of it. For our purposes, we’ll say that probably ninety percent of voters lie somewhere between L5 and C5. Now, let’s plot Specter at C2. For him to win re-election, he has to be closer to the voters than his opponent, and if his opponent were an L2, it would perfectly balance. Since Specter is winning by double-digits, we’ll say that his opponents have been around L3. Both candidates pick up all of the votes to their extreme side, and they split somewhat equally the votes between them (the five points between L3 and C2). Because Specter starts out closer to the center, where most voters are, he has a natural advantage and he wins, drawing voters from roughly L1 all the way to the conservative extreme – eleven points worth of voters.

From his level of support among Republicans, we could guess that the GOP distribution in Pennsylvania centers around C6 or so – meaning that Specter is naturally four points away from that peak. This is why more conservative Republicans threaten him in the primary. But, given that he has seventy-one percent support among Democrats, we could speculate that the Democratic peak is somewhere around L1. So Specter is three points away from that peak. When unaffilated voters are added back in, they pull the center back to zero, but they aren’t voting in the primary.

Specter is at a bit of a disadvantage in the primary, because he sits three points from the Democratic peak. To appear as a viable alternative to Specter, Sestak must move far enough to the left to appear different. At L4, Sestak would perfectly balance Specter. To win, he has to move back toward the center just a bit – L3. His stance would also have to be that C2 is just too conservative for Pennsylvania.

Now, let’s say that Sestak wins the primary. He goes into the general at L3 against an opponent that is C6. Again, each candidate picks up all of the votes to their extreme side. Normally, they would split the area between them – the nine points between L3 and C6. That means Sestak could count on picking up all of the votes to the left of C2. Sestak’s problem is that he has already been telling voters for months that C2 is far too conservative for Pennsylvania. That means he has drawn his circle of support back to at least C1 and maybe to dead zero. This means that running as a moderate liberal, Sestak has ceded enough voters to make the race a toss-up.

Pennsylvania naturally favors Democrats, so in a push, Democrats will likely win. The problem is that it will take millions of dollars to make sure it happens. And this is in a race that is sewn-up tight if they just leave Specter alone.

And there are better places to spend the money. Republican Senators are retiring in Missouri, Kansas, New Hampshire, Florida, and Ohio. Additionally, Republican Senators Jim Bunning of Kentucky and David Vitter of Louisiana are guaranteed tough races. Additionally, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma looks like he isn’t going to run. Eight Senatorial campaigns is a lot – Democrats picked up eight Senate seats in ’08 with the Obama juggernaut leading the ticket (actually, nine, but Minnesota is still running their election through the courts). In other words, there ar ealready plenty of targets to sink money into without looking for a safe seat to turn into a toss-up.

It would be incredibly dumb for Democrats to pick on Specter, just on philosophical grounds. Right now, the Democratic Party is looking pretty inviting to Republicans who just don’t feel at home in the increasingly Conservative Party. Start picking on ex-Republicans as examples of reflexive power, and that ends. Then disaffected Republicans decide to stay in the GOP and fight it out.

But, as has been pointed out before, Democrats love to sabotage themselves. So it will probably happen.

Marty Ryall as a article up for Politics Magazine explaining why the “Godless” campaign ad in North Carolina wasn’t a failure. He likes the football analogy:

Many in the media, especially on the liberal side, were quick to point to the ad and claim it backfired, costing Dole the election. Nothing could be further from the truth. When a football team is trailing by 7 points and throws a “Hail Mary” on the last play of the game, they don’t lose because they failed to complete the play, they lose because they were down 7 points and time was running out.

Um, is he saying “the losing team is the one who scores fewer points?” Wow. Insightful.

The analogy is of limited use, I think. A Hail Mary pass has the potential to win the game – so for this to work, we have to believe that Elizabeth Dole’s desperate attempt to win the race based on Kay Hagan’s attendance at a fundraiser held by atheists would have turned the election. I don’t see that evidence.

Kay Hagan outpolled Barack Obama – by more than a hundred thousand votes. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Dole fell a quarter of a million votes short of her party’s Presidential candidate. Even if everyone who voted for Obama also gave a kneejerk vote for Hagan, she still beat Dole handily. But I agree that it wasn’t the Godless ad that did it – the Godless ad was simply a symptom of a candidate that was completely out of touch with her electorate.

Ryall gives three reasons for Dole’s loss – 1) Dole wasn’t able to raise money; 2) Obama politicized the race heavily towards Democrats; and 3) Dole was hit for not being in the state. Reason 2 can be ejected because of the vote totals. When your opponent outpolls the top of the ticket, you can’t blame the top of the ticket for your loss. When your candidate drops a quarter of a million votes from the top of the ticket, it isn’t because of the top of the ticket. That’s an electoral judgment being passed on your candidate. Reasons 1 and 3 are essentially the same – North Carolinians didn’t really care for Dole’s missing-in-action style. So they talked about it and they didn’t give her money.

The Godless ad was simply one more losing strategy added to the sorry story. The GOP read the electorate as caring more about their faith (and the faith of the candidates) than they did about the economy or about Dole’s absence from the state. They were wrong. They were never in position to throw a Hail Mary pass. They were running a chuck-and-duck against a defense custom made to defeat it. The Godless ad is simply evidence that the GOP believes it can cynically step in, throw religion around, and win a race. North Carolina should have showed them that they can’t.

But what does Ryall say?

The risk was huge and not worth taking until it was evident we could not win without it, and that was not clear until about 10 days out. Had the ad run about 20 days out, it may have made it closer, but the data we had at that time did not warrant taking such a large gamble. However, in the end the ad had very little impact if any, in the defeat of Elizabeth Dole.

Right – it had little to do with her defeat. But it would have been a flop if they had run it twenty days or twenty months out. Where is there any proof of Ryall’s hypothesis? The best he can do is point to straight-ticket voters. But that hypothesis fails to explain Hagan outpolling Obama. So where does that leave his logic?

Stuck in another decade.

The campaign just won’t end. But it’s getting close.

Mark Begich now leads Ted Stevens by 814 votes. Meanwhile, in Minnesota, a canvassing board has been chosen to determine if Al Franken or Norm Coleman will win that race.

But Sarah Palin is willing to go to Washington and maverick-up the place.

Yes, the campaign that never ended has still not ended:

The U.S. Senate race in Minnesota is nowhere close to being decided, state officials said yesterday.

The recount in that election will not be completed until mid-December, and even then, a candidate or voter can challenge the outcome, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said. Sen. Norm Coleman (R) held a 239-vote lead over Democrat Al Franken as of late yesterday. That margin of less than 0.5 percentage points triggers an automatic recount under Minnesota law.

Even then, it stil ain’t over. That just moves the battle to the courtroom. But that ain’t all:

Two other U.S. Senate races also remain unresolved. Georgia will hold a runoff between Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss and Democrat Jim Martin. Chambliss fell just short of the 50 percent mark in Tuesday’s voting. A result is still pending in Alaska, where Sen. Ted Stevens (R) ran for reelection against Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich (D) despite his felony conviction last month of failing to report gifts.

The Washington Post didn’t include me in it’s panel, but I’m going to give an answer anyway.

The Republican problem is that they have too small of a God. Their God of choice remains the God of white evangelical voters in the South. That’s fine with me – it’s their choice to make and I believe God is big enough to deal with evangelicals, Mormons, mainline Protestants, Catholics, and everyone else. But for a political party, it’s a very poor choice.

The evangelical God is jealous and exacting and doesn’t brook any sort of compromise. That locks the GOP into a never-say-okay position where they are right. Period. If you agree with them, that proves they are right because God has worked his love on your heart. If you disagree with them, that proves they are right because God has yet to work his love on your heart and you are lost in sin. Only by taking a firm opposition against you can they lead you to the straight and narrow. Again, that’s fine theologically, but that brand of religious paranoia fares poorly in politics.

Consider that the Pew Research Center conducted a poll two years ago that said 69% thought liberals had gone too far in the church/state separation, but 49% thought that conservative Christians had gone too far, as well. Apparently, Elizabeth Dole didn’t get the memo that said only 20% think the Democratic Party is unfriendly to people of faith.

Further down, you see the real problem for the GOP. 60% of White evangelicals think the Bible should be the primary source for American law. Only 16% of mainline Protestants think that and 23% of Catholics. Despite some 67% of Americans agreeing that America is a Christian nation, only 32% overall think the Bible should outweigh the will of the American people.

According to Pew’s exit polls this week, McCain got votes from 73% of White evangelicals. That percentage drops to 65% of “other Christians”, and drops again to 54% of “non-evangelicals”. But McCain lost the Catholic vote (45%), the Jewish vote (21%), “other faiths” (22%), and “unafilliated” (23%).

What happened is that the coalition between intellectual conservatives and the Christian right became a purity movement among the conservative Christians. It was no longer good enough to swear fealty, they wanted extreme loyalty. There’s a lesson there for the Democratic majority, by the way.

As far as the WaPo’s panel, I think Geoff Garin gives the best answer:

First, who thought it was a good idea to spend the last week of the campaign railing against “spreading the wealth”? Americans understand that during the Bush years the rich got richer and the middle class got poorer, and they are angry about it. When McCain went on (and on and on) about his moral indignation that Barack Obama wanted to redress that imbalance, he was indignant about the wrong problem. His tone-deafness only confirmed that on economics, he saw the world through George Bush’s eyes.

Second, saying that “government is the problem” was okay for Reagan’s inaugural, but it was politically untenable in today’s economy. Exit polls Tuesday showed that, by an eight-percentage-point margin, voters said that government should be doing more rather than less — an 11-point swing from four years ago. The Republicans were even less competitive this year than in 2004 among those who want government to be involved in solving problems. Americans may be skeptical of government’s effectiveness, but they want it on the playing field. They don’t think the GOP does.

Third, while Republicans may have gained some momentary advantages by engaging in the culture wars (and might do so again from time to time), in the longer sweep they have paid a steep price by identifying themselves as wanting to turn back the clock on what many Americans, especially younger ones, accept as progress that comes with changing times.

Who cares if Randy Scheunemann was fired? The election is over and everyone who worked for McCain’s campaign no longer has a job.

So the guy wanted to position himself for the future. Maybe he was the only guy in that campaign that was dealing with reality. Or maybe the whole party.

Look, this is a party still addicted to the specter of Reagan. The two Presidents they have had since Reagan have been his Vice-President and his VP’s son. And not only did Bob Dole try to paint himself as the heir of Reagan, but every single GOP candidate this year, with the exception of Ron Paul (who is really libertarian), claimed that mantle as well.

What they just found out is that Ronald Reagan no longer matters. And retrospective firing of campaign advisors isn’t going to change that.

New York goes to Obama. Also Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. McCain picks up Kansas, Wyoming, and North Dakota. Forgot RI -to Obama.

Obama: 174
McCain: 61

Udall picks up a Senate seat for Dems in NM.

Obama sweeps Maryland, Delaware, Connecticutt, Maine, Pennsylvania, Vermont, New Jersey, Illinois, and Massachusetts! Wins the Presidency (I call it!)

McCain wins Tennessee, Oklahoma.

Obama: 102
McCain: 34

McCain takes SC; Lindey Graham wins re-election.

Obama: 3
McCain: 16