Well, I just thought I’d indulge in that headline now, in case an apt opportunity for it doesn’t arise in the next couple of days. But it is far from being beyond the realm of possibility. Yesterday’s IBD/TIPP poll (which proved the most accurate poll in 2004) showed a two point race, with almost 9% undecided. If the bulk of those undecideds break for McCain, he wins. Yes, it comes down to a state by state contest for the electoral college, of-course, but one has to believe that if McCain wins the national vote the key swing states will come with it.

Obama did not have a good final weekend. The emergence of that quote he gave to the San Francisco Chronicle about his intention to “bankrupt” coal-powered businesses cannot be helping him in Pennsylvania and Virginia, among other places. He sounds callous, speaking so casually about ruining businesses and livelihoods in the name of this global warming ideology.

The news about his Aunt Zeituni living illegally in the U.S., in a rundown Boston housing project, and illegally donating $260 to his campaign, simply cannot be spun in any positive way. Obama loses on all fronts. His chosen reaction of just stating that “the laws must be obeyed,” again makes him sound callous. Yet, he can’t say that an exception should be made for his aunt either. There is an appropriate way of dealing with this. But, knowing that David Axelrod checks this site daily for insight: I’m not telling. The larger point is that Obama ought to know instinctively how to deal with it. And he ought to have taken care of it long before now.

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In NRO, Mark Steyn wrote a winner over the weekend: Obama in 2-D.

The Senator is a wealthy man, mainly on the strength of two bestselling books offering his biography in lieu of policy and accomplishments. Many lively members of his Kenyan family occur as supporting characters in his story and provide the vivid color in it. But they too are not merely two-dimensional cartoons. His Aunt Zeituni, a memorable figure in Obama’s writing, turned up for real last week, when the dogged James Bone of the London Times tracked her down. She lives in a rundown housing project in Boston.

In his Wednesday-night infomercial, Obama declared that his “fundamental belief” was that “I am my brother’s keeper.” Back in Kenya, his brother lives in a shack on 12 bucks a year. If Barack is his brother’s keeper, why couldn’t he send him a ten-dollar bill and near double the guy’s income? The reality is that Barack Obama assumes the government should be his brother’s keeper, and his aunt’s keeper. Why be surprised by that? For 20 years in Illinois, Obama has marinated in the swamps of the Chicago political machine and the campus radicalism of William Ayers and Rashid Khalidi. In such a world, the redistributive urge is more or less a minimum entry qualification.

The government as wealth-spreader-in-chief was not a slip of the tongue but consistent with Obama’s life, friends and votes. The Obamacons — that’s to say, conservatives hot for Barack- – justify their decision to support a big-spending big-government Democrat with the most liberal voting record in the Senate by “hoping” that he doesn’t mean it, by “hoping” that he’ll “change” in office. “I sure hope Obama is more open, centrist, sensible,” declared reformed conservative Ken Adelman, “than his liberal record indicates.”

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She ain’t no drag: Also in NRO, read Byron York on Loving Sarah in Middle America. If McCain pulls this thing out, it will not be in spite of Sarah Palin but because of her. She has provided a spark to the base that is indispensable.

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The day after the 2004 election, City Pages published a fake obituary of George W. Bush (set in 2018), written by Greil Marcus. Marcus foresaw a second term of Dubya that would include a “dismantling of Social Security and Medicare,” wars fought by a “private army” against both Iran and North Korea, resulting in the deaths of 12 million people, restrictions of free speech in America, and other disasters. He also imagines Bush’s daughters dying in a drunk-driving accident in 2011, Laura Bush dying of Parkinson’s disease and Bush himself returning to the bottle and ending his life in misery. Very charming stuff.

Jonah Goldberg, in the NY Post this weekend, wrote a similar post-dated post-mortem on President Barack Obama’s first term. Although he foresees an unsuccessful presidency for Obama, his vision is not quite as apocalyptically grim and also has the saving grace of some humor.

The first mistake many cite was actually made before Obama was even elected: the selection of Joseph Biden as his vice president. During the campaign, all eyes were on John McCain’s running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. But even then there were signs of the troubles to come (ironically, Biden’s biggest “gaffe” – about Obama being tested early in his presidency – proved eerily prescient).

Still, nothing prepared the country for some of former Vice President Biden’s comments while in office. Early on, when he told the Russian foreign minister he’d “rather punch a nun in the throat” than cooperate on an Iranian nuclear deal, the Obama administration knew they had a problem on their hands.

The strange comments and behavior kept coming: at an international summit on child poverty, he accused the Dalai Lama of issuing a “brain fart,” he phoned Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts at home and called him a “[re]tard in short pants,” and of course the several stories – clearly leaked by aides to the president – of Mr. Biden sitting in the president’s chair in the Oval Office and being more than reluctant to get out when asked to do so by the president.

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Tomorrow I expect to be live-blogging the election in this space. That’s right: live-blogging! No pre-recorded posts! No overdubs! No safety net! So keep it tuned right here. (And, if you would, say a prayer that it all turns out for the best. And, yeah, I mean the election rather than the live-blogging.)

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