Hope

At lunch today with my friend Michelle I expressed my pessimism about the future of our country. I have doubts about Obama's electability. But she came back at me with the goods - see below.

Guess we should never give up hope.


And here’s a solid analysis of state-to-state electoral votes . Obama’s got a slight lead, had a larger one in the summer, but it’s not all bad news. And my ex-Dean campaign friend feels more optimistic than most Dems these days, for the following reasons in particular:
It's not all doom and gloom for Obama. So far this month, he's seems to have solidified his narrow margin in Michigan and New Hampshire (states McCain is hoping to flip) while expanding his edges in the Bush states of Iowa and Colorado, where he now leads by 9.7 percent and 2.3 percent , respectively. If he wins these states in November--along with Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Wisconsin and New Mexico--he wins the White House. New Democratic registrations and Chicago's sophisticated field operation will surely help. But what the last week of polling has shown beyond any doubt is that McCain's successful convention and shocking choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate have shifted the map ever so slightly to the right, transforming a landscape that favored Obama into a landscape that favors, well, no one. For the next six weeks, then, expect Obama and Joe Biden to play defense (Pennsylvania, Michigan) as well as offense (Colorado, Virginia, Nevada) while focusing much of their attention on the king of all swing states: Ohio. But don't expect the final map to look all that different from 2004.