Michael Bloomberg

Democrats like to panic.  The past eight years have left them Rove-shocked, they have political PTSD after being Florida-ed and Swift Boated in the last two generals, but they need to buck up.  It’s not going to happen this time.

John McCain has peaked.  This is it, his high water mark.  Maybe, just maybe he’ll pull even or a point or so ahead in this weekend’s polls, but it’s all downhill from there.

I don’t like crow, even though I hear it tastes like chicken, and I’m sure my fellow hypocrisy blogger, Righty Rich Cochrane will serve me a big heaping plate if I’m wrong, but it says here McCain/Palin is a losing ticket.

Al Gore polled 600,000 more votes than his opponent in 2000—which is about 85 times the total population of Wasilla Alaska—but lost because of an electoral college quirk, and a few hundred votes in Florida by Jewish retirees whose cataract surgeries were scheduled after November and voted for Pat Buchanan by mistake.

John Kerry lost in 2004 because he was a hairdo in search of a personality who ran a wussy campaign.  Kerry proved that not only can you not beat somebody with nobody, you can’t beat nobody with nobody.

But this time it’s the GOP that is saddled with the superannuated grump and the empty dress.  Barack Obama is no wuss, he’s smarter than Gore, Kerry, McCain and Palin put together, and cooler than George Bush’s true feelings about the Maverick from Arizona.  He’s what the Democrats have been looking for since Bill Clinton.  A winner.  Just ask Mr. Clinton’s wife.

Once the convention bounce is over, and the two candidates appear side-by-side and commercial-by-commercial, it will become clear—Barack Obama wears well, John McCain is worn out.

Right now the Republican faithful are giddy about Sarah Palin, a woman nobody ever heard of until last week.  That seems like good fortune, a game-changer appearing out of nowhere to save the day, but it’s not.  It’s desperation.  When a party has to reach into the low minors to fill the second spot at the top of the ticket it says two deep things: The party doesn’t have a deep bench, and the party is in deep trouble.

I listened to her speech.  I didn’t hear an original thought, I didn’t sense a penetrating mind, I was not inspired to great dreams or deeds, I didn’t wet myself with enthusiasm, like the desperate GOP delegates, I wasn’t wracked with chills of fear, like some chicken-s**t Democrats.  What I saw, all anyone saw, was a nice lady reading a nice, safe, mediocre speech.  If you saw more than that, you weren’t watching, you were projecting.  You were fooling yourself.

Do you want to know who wasn’t fooled, watching Sarah Palin deliver her ghost-written lines?  Vladimir Putin.  Ho Jintao.  Hugo Chavez.  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  Or anyone else who took the measure of the woman who could be one melanoma away from the oval office in four months, and smiled.

Joe Biden is a man of many parts, too many of them mouth, but he’s up to the job if Something Happens To Obama, God Forbid.

In three months Sarah Palin will be back in the frozen north.  The conservative base is bonkers over her now, but she’s just a rental.

John McCain said he is the candidate of change—no, he’s not.  John McCain said he’d fix the mess that is Washington—no, he won’t.  John McCain said he can cure our energy problems—no, he can’t.  All he can offer is four more years of Republican rule.  America can’t stand that, and won’t.

This election will be close.  Barack Obama needs to convince the electorate that he’s a smart, tough-minded liberal who will help restore our most precious commodity—American self-confidence.  He can do that because he is living proof of those ideals.  It won’t be easy, but he’ll get it done.  His opponent, John McCain, is a man who has done great things for his country; he’s made many sacrifices.  And he’s about to make one more.

Obama 49, McCain 47, others 3.  The margin in the electoral college?  Bigger.

The Republicans had a good week.  I hope they enjoyed it because it’s all over now.  John McCain has peaked.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger grace this week’s Time magazine cover, and on Tuesday the two “joked” about forming a presidential ticket. Bloomberg’s was very palsy-walsy with California’s Governor Schwarzenegger as he ripped Washington for various sins. Maybe that explains Arnold’s flip-flop telling the press he refuses to endorse anyone on the eve of the California February 5^th primary. Schwarzenegger is term limited. Rumor was he had been eyeing Senator Barbara Boxer’s seat if she does not run for reelection in 2010 but she has announced she will run and she remains very popular so that’s off the table.

Picture this: The six leading candidates in both parties getting together, pitching their spare change into one of those games where you use a crane controlled from outside the glass enclosure in order to get coins to drop out into a tray. It’s popular at many family restaurants in parts of the country. Dreamy isn’t it. Bipartisan agreement.

The increasingly bitter nominating contests in both parties seem likely to offer an ample supply of disgruntled voters from whom billionaire New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg could draw upon for a Presidential run. He could hijack Ralph Nadar’s Green insurgent party or petition himself as an entirely new party candidate. Giuliani, McCain and Obama are political androgynous candidates, they draw well among both Democrats and Republicans and, so far, seem to alienate relatively few voters, and thinks one time Clintonista Dick Morris, pose obstacles to Bloomberg. But, if Hillary and either Huckabee or Romney get their party’s nod, it is easy to see Bloomberg emerging as an alternative.