Election update: refs are beginning to call the fight

As I pointed out in a previous post below, the election appears unwinable for Sen. John McCain for a variety of reasons. The mainstream media is a bit more resistant to step in and call the fight, but the more independent experts are beginning to line up to make an early prediction. While nobody (besides my non-audience having ass) has made a definitive pronouncement, you can tell that they really want to.

Chuck Todd, from MSNBC, pointed out - as I did a month ago - that the election all comes down to Colorado and Virginia.

If Obama holds all states where he now leads by large margins (New Mexico, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania in particular), then he needs only one of the Colorado/Virginia duo. The rest, is just gravy, adding to his mandate for "change." No, not a "man-date, for pennies."

Also lining up with me is one of my favorite analysts: Nate Silver, at fivethirtyeight.com. He sited, among other things, the fact that McCain appears to be pulling his ad monies from Colorado. He was also on MSNBC taking about McCain's Colorado problem, and he said everything BUT, "McCain will win."

The self-described "vote master" at electoral-vote.com said today that "all the metrics point to an Obama win." He also points out that Charlie Cook listed some good reasons why McCain won't win in an article that received wide readership last night:

1. No candidate this far back two weeks out has ever won;
2. Early voting is going strong and even if something big happens, those votes are already cast;
3. The Democrats have a 10% advantage in party registration; in 2004 it was even;
4. Obama is outspending McCain 4 to 1 in many states;
5. There is no evidence for the so-called Bradley effect in the past 15 years;
6. Obama is safe in all the Kerry states and ahead in half a dozen states Bush won.

My gut tells me to be wary of predicting Colorado for Obama because of the Republican voter suppression there (see previous post). That's also one reason why I didn't feel comfortable calling Ohio for Obama. The other, was the extreme reaction that Ohioans had to the ACORN B.S., even calling their offices with death threats and racial slurs. But barring an obscene number of voter who are turned away due to illegal purging of the rolls there, I am still confident that we can start calling Obama "Mr. President."