LINK: Diary of a Dean-o-Phobe picks up on one of my arguments that I've been harping away on recently--that any serious calculation of what will be swing states in 2004 includes only states that went for Gore, and most of those are ones that barely went for him. My forecast is Bush by 8 electoral votes (if the election happens today); should a Democrat lose even only one or two of the potential toss-ups, you're looking at landslide-type numbers.
Interestingly, though, I've been wondering whether longer-term electoral trends might favor the Democrats, and Howard Dean becomes more like Al Smith than Alf Landon. Partly this rests on the question of whether the Dean insurgency really does say something significant about how politics are changing (if it pays to start at the grassroots and start early, don't be surprised to see some Dems gear up for their 2008 runs in 2005, a la Andrew Jackson), and partly this is because there are a host of questions now coming into political importance (gay marriage, terrorism and (pick 'em: health care, taxes, or international relations more broadly) around which there has been no major national election, so there really don't exist data points. As Dan Drezner says, developing...
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
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