Crystal Balls

I might otherwise have felt some small urge to lay down a prescient Presidential prediction, but that need has been more or less obviated by Nate Silver at http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/. Given that he's run every single poll ever through a massive simulator to create 10,000 different electoral-vote scenarios, suggesting that I could make a better guess would be almost as ignorant as it would be egotistical. Plus, of course, the Hamilton factor.

So here's my prediction: a lot of people are going to be disappointed when Obama starts enacting the policies he has, not the policies they wish he had.

But we shouldn't underestimate the unprecedented nature of this campaign: the rich white war hero is the underdog and the born-in-poverty, mixed-race, community-organiser is the clear favourite. So much so, that he got the Nazis on his side:

Rocky Suhayda
Who: Chairman, American Nazi Party
Likes: Hitler, white people
Dislikes: Jews, immigrants, multinational corporations
Career highlights: Being widely quoted bemoaning in the fact that so few Aryan-Americans had the cojones of the 9/11 hijackers: "If we were one-tenth as serious, we might start getting somewhere."

"White people are faced with either a negro or a total nutter who happens to have a pale face. Personally I’d prefer the negro. National Socialists are not mindless haters. ... we have a black man, who loves his own kind, belongs to a Black-Nationalist religion, is married to a black women--when usually negroes who have 'made it' immediately land a white spouse as a kind of prize--that’s the kind of negro that I can respect.

Obama-Biden 08 - reaching all the way across the aisle.