And Down Goes McCain

Good-bye Wolverines, good-bye $8 million in mad ad money, good-bye 17 electoral votes, and, probably, so long, farewell to that object number of such intense, contemporary love and desire: 270.

Yes, once again hiding behind Sarah Palin's skirt, John McCain & Co. meekly announced during the obsessive run-up to the vice-presidential debate Thursday that the maverick in chief was packing his mess kit -- what an aptly named metaphor -- and headin' out of Dodge.

Well, Detroit, actually, as well as every other hamlet within the boundaries of Michigan.

Dodge, McCain will never have to worry about, of course, because no amount of rationality can shake its determination to forever live up to Tom Frank's diagnosis. But apparently in the vast, northern expanse of Michigan the multitudes read the papers and watch the news and consequently are apoplectically contemptuous of Bushian McCainism.

After all, they've plenty of time on their hands, since the genius of supply-side economics has so many of them engaged these days in leisure activities rather than a job. Imagine that -- a bold new economic theory sketched out on a cocktail napkin and in contravention to what had worked for decades not wearing so well.

At any rate, under the cover of night, so to speak, Sen. McCain and his unhappiest of warriors started fanning out to redder pastures. The Politico called this "a stunning move," since not that long ago "Republicans had been bullish on Michigan," but now, with only four weeks to go, it "indicates the difficulty Republicans are having in finding blue states to put in play."

Look at it this way. You-know-who won the 2004 race with 286 electoral votes. Iowa's seven were part of that 16-point winning margin. This year, they're gone, solidly blue (even though Mr. McCain mysteriously keeps showing up there, to every Republican strategist's infuriated consternation).

That leaves a possible 279. Hence take away from McCain's column just one more sizable swing state or any combination of two smaller ones within Bush's 2004 category and the former winds up as toast. His map is a shrinking Battle of the Bulge, leaving him with extraordinarily little maneuverability.

McCain, admits a campaign insider, "now must win Pennsylvania, Wisconsin or Minnesota in order to get enough electoral votes to win the presidency." Bush, by the way, lost all three, both times.

And just where do things stand today in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Minnesota? The best measure is an averaging of competent state polls, rather than any individual study, such as Quinnipiac's exceptionally dubious finding of a 15-point Pennsylvania lead for Obama.

And here, we see why Obama looks so damn calm on the campaign trail -- with blue averages of +7.9 in Pennsylvania, +5 in Wisconsin, +5.7 in Minnesota.

Ah, but you say, there's always Ohio and Florida, just to keep McCain competitive. Right? Well, there could be, but at the moment both are trending Obama, with respective, averaged advantages of +2 and +3. And "trending," remember, means even those positive numbers will likely inflate.

But here's the nut of it, McCain's last-and-only-ditch firewall: His campaign perhaps quixotically figures that if it can just pick up Pennsylvania, Wisconsin or Minnesota (in arithmetical fact, it must pick up one of those), and of course retains all those What's the Matter with Those Idiots? states, he's only a blessed 10 votes short of the triumphant 270.

And said a campaign official of Panglossian bent: "We can dig up an additional 10 electoral votes in Nevada, Colorado and New Hampshire." But that might have to be done from their vital statistics departments, death certificate divisions, since in those states, too, Obama is trending just outside the margin of error, except in Nevada (with a statistically insignificant lead, but a lead nevertheless).

Indeed, add up all the averaged probabilities and safe states and trends and positive toss-ups and Obama currently stands at a whopping 353 electoral votes to McCain's 185. That is a whole lot of electoral territory for McCain to recoup, and his every retraction, such as in Michigan, only means more Obama resources poured into shoring up other probabilities and toss-ups.

Now, it should go without saying that four weeks in any presidential campaign is a stretch of hellish eternity and no one can know what will happen. Yet I'll say it -- again -- since that disclaimer seems necessary to foreclose the likelihood of some moron writing me to skewer the worth of political predictions.

So here, you're right, whoever you might be, my official disclaimer: Four weeks in any presidential campaign is a hellish eternity, and no one really knows how things will turn out. Happy?

Other than that, I am. And Obama sure looks that way on the campaign trail, too.