If you start handicapping states for November, you might get something like this:

Start with assigning all of Kerry's states to Obama, the rest to McCain.  Now shift New Hampshire to McCain, who is popular there, having spent about a year of his life campaigning there.  Then take Iowa away from McCain, who won the caucuses there and leads in the early polls.  Colorado seems likely to go to Obama as well, and also New Mexico.

Which leaves the electoral vote at :  Obama 269, McCain 269.  Now, if Obama leads in one Congressional District in Nebraska....

This week's election in Wisconsin showed that the Right is alive and thriving in this politically schizophrenic state.

In Milwaukee County, there have been painful cutbacks in government services, particularly in funding for public transportation and the parks.  More cutbacks are certain to come in the near future.  A progressive Democratic candidate ran a spirited campaign to fight for better goverment, and she was handily defeated by the Republican incumbent, who promised to hold the line on taxes.  There is widespread speculation that the Republican county executive, Scott Walker, will be Wisconsin's next governor in 2010.

Lowering (or at least not raising) taxes is still a powerful argument for Republicans.  

There is a general belief in Milwaukee that property taxes here are extraordinarily high, and that this discourages people from moving here.  The story that is told usually follows these lines:

Something is very wrong here.

You have escort services operating pretty much in the open in most (maybe all) large cities in the U.S.  The reason, I suppose, is economic.  Any business that draws in tourists or gets tourists to spend more while they are in the city is welcome.  I suspect eliminating prostitution would be a bigger disaster to a city's economy than losing a pro sports franchise.

But a particular escort service gets busted.  And not by a state or local DA trying to get a cheap headline.  But by the Federal government.  Oh, and in the process of busting this escort service, the name of one particular customer happens to leak out.

It has become a cliche to call the Bush administration a failed Presidency.  The evidence for that -- a war (or maybe two wars) that didn't go so well, out-of-control budget deficits, an abysmal approval rating -- seems pretty strong.  But I would argue that looked at another way -- starting from the position of what the administration was actually trying to accomplish -- Bush can be viewed as one of the most successful presidents in American history.  Perhaps only FDR and James Polk were as successful in advancing their agenda as Bush has been.

It seems incredible that with one of the most unpopular presidents in history, an unending and unwinnable war, and an economy where all news is bad news, that the party in power would not only retain the White House, but do so with panache.  But that seems to me precisely what is going to happen this year.

There are good reasons for favoring Clinton over Obama for the Democratic nomination.  There is the argument that the country is in such awful shape that it is imperative that we elect someone ready to take charge from the first day.  The Clinton team has been there, they know the ropes, they can handle it.  There is the argument of Clinton's intelligence, her incisiveness, her grasp of the issues.  There is even the argument that with Clinton, "it's personal," that decades of attacks from the right have hardened her and given her the fire in her belly to get payback.  But ever since the Team Clinton's panic after Iowa, all those reasons have been swept aside, and been replaced with a reason that is poison for her candidacy.  That is the argument that Clinton should be nominated because a black candidate cannot be elected.