Time to make a call

I cannot WAIT for Nov. 9, when this election will be pretty much over save any runoffs in weird states like Louisiana. I'm assuming it'll go into the wee hours of the 8th so the 9th would be the first full day of rest from a barrage of ads.

In the meantime, this may be the October Surprise folks have been looking for. It's not even from one party trying to get one over. It's just foot-in-mouth disease at its finest, courtesy of the 2004 standard-bearer.



He tried to deflate it today, but this is gathering too much steam.

Somewhere, Rahm Emanuel is hanging John Kerry in effigy, for going against the playbook of shut-the-hell-up-and-don't-say-anything.

Great idea, trashing the troops one week before the election. That'll REALLY sit well in the Rust Belt, South, Southwest, Midwest, and everywhere else except NY and MA. Heck, you might encourage GOP wins in Connecticut if you keep up the good work.

Smart, nuanced, tough.

Time to make the final prediction. I'd said the Senate would be 52-46-2 for the GOP. I'm adding Allen into the total now to make it 53-45-2 for a total net loss of 2 seats for the GOP. I know the numbers aren't there for Santorum in a lot of polls, but I think they have had too much of a margin of error lately to be reliable.

As for the House, I think this is going to shift a LOT of races once local candidates get ads together to throw the Kerry albatross around Democratic candidates' necks. I'd said it would flip but be no more than 5 seats.

GOP 221, DEM 214. GOP loses 9 seats but keeps control. Some races are going to be lost, mostly in Ohio and New York, but I think a lot of other races will start trending GOP and flip over when it's time to cast votes. Even Connecticut.

As I won't be in class, I'll be able to liveblog and update when results come in. I'm not starting at 7:01, though, unlike MSNBC and CBS will probably do ("With 0% reporting, we report the Democrats have won every race.") I'll have a lot of links up to SOS websites instead, because I would rather max out my bandwidth and drive everyone in the house crazy myself with 50 updates an hour rather than have the TV drive us crazy and not know for sure.

That's just how I roll.