Obama about to hit it out park: analyst

by Frank James

Political analyst Charlie Cook is about the closest Washington political culture has to the opera's singing fat lady. (Don't read too much into that Charlie.) He tends to be right so he tends to be listened to.

So his column in the National Journal yesterday was really noteworthy because he came as close to saying the presidential race is over as you can without saying it's over.

For a political analyst, the normal posture this time of year is much like a baseball umpire's: hunched over, peering carefully as the ball approaches the plate, watching for whether it breaks left or right, whether it's coming in high or low. But, these days, we analysts are more like outfielders, watching in awe as a ball seems on a trajectory to not only clear the fence but very likely land in the upper deck.

By every metric, Barack Obama's presidential campaign appears headed for the upper deck. Polls (both national and state-by-state), organization, money, and momentum are all running strongly in Obama's favor. At this point, one wonders whether Obama's winning margin could be greater than Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton's 5.6-point win over President George H.W. Bush in 1992, more than Bush's 7.7-point win over Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis in 1988, or more than Clinton's 8.5-point win over Sen. Bob Dole in 1996. Even higher on the landslide roster is California Gov. Ronald Reagan's 9.7-point victory over President Carter in 1980 and Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's 10.9-point win over Adlai Stevenson in 1952.

Certainly, the 2008 presidential contest could reverse direction and result in victory for John McCain. But at this point, he would have to be the beneficiary of something quite dramatic for that to happen.

He was on "Meet the Press" this morning and stuck with his view that the presidential race is basically stable and has been so since about mid-September.

When you have someone like Cook not able to see any daylight for McCain, and essentially saying just over a week from Election Day that the question isn't whether Obama and other Democrats will win but how bid their margin will be, we're either going to see Election Night end earlier than has been true in the past two general-election cycles or, if McCain wins, the biggest political comeback in modern American history.