Headlines for tomorrow:

Obama wins 51-49!  Mandate for a second term!

Romney wins 51-49.  New President faces deeply divided country.

The worst that happens tomorrow is Obama wins a narrow victory (Reagan, Clinton, and Bush the Younger all improved vote percentages and margin of victory in their re-election wins; Obama won't).  Republicans hold the House easily and end up in the same place in the Senate (although I think they'll pick up a seat).  Obama then gets to learn that the second term is much tougher than the first and a good number of red state Democrat senators are going to be thinking about their 2014 race.  That sounds pretty entertaining to me, except for the part where the economy crashes, but I'm afraid that is already baked into the cake.

Mind you, Indiana might happily kick it into Illinois given the chance.  Indiana polls close early, and Vigo County has always been pretty quick reporting results.  We'll probably know who won the county before Ohio closes.  I'm going to be watching it now.  The more I think about it the more I believe this might actually be a good indicator.  Vigo trends bluer than the rest of the state.  If Romney wins it; it may  indicate Dem weakness in the Midwest. 

I was up and then started to deflate after Gallup stopped releasing polls.  But, you know what, Obama is still under 50% and is acting like he is behind.  If you had described this situation to me back in May, I would have felt very comfortable about it.  Romney wins, maybe even big.

The Vigo County test: Vigo County is in Indiana.  Terre Haute is located there, and I lived in Terre Haute for six long years (it's not all that bad really....I guess).  I moved back to Missouri a couple of years ago, but I'm pretty sure that Vigo county will go Romney.  It's a union county, and the Republican party is kind of a dead letter, but it is very socially conservative.  In 2008, Terre Haute was visited by Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, and Obama.  

Huh, and here I was planning on a trip to Arby's today for lunch.  Now...perhaps a nice salad.

That's easy!  All you have to do is carry the four and...um.

If Newt wants to defeat Romney, he's got to get out now.  If he waits until Louisiana, he will just split the delegates three ways again, rather than give Santorum a chance to win a majority and take most of them.  To be nominated at the convention, you need to have won five states.  Newt has two and Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas seem to be his best chance at getting five.  I suspect that he'll quit after Louisiana, but Romney will have extended his lead by then and it will be too late to stop him from reaching the magic number (honestly, I think it is already too late, but it's going to be hard to convince candidates who have put so much time and effort into this that their time is up).

Even if Romney falls short in actual delegates, it's pretty clear that he will be far closer to the magic number than any of his opponents (unless one drops out very soon).  Even if it's not a decisive win; it's a win.  I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that Romney will do surprisingly well in Kansas, Missouri, Mississippi, and Alabama over the next week.  The consensus may well be that this is over come March 18.

This is also an attack on the media.  Consider a Republican candidate openly praising a radical conservative professor, preacher, or public figure twenty years ago.  It seems highly likely that the media would be asking the candidate whether he agreed with the positions of the radical and why did they praise him at the time?   The main thesis of Bell's 1992 book Faces at the Bottom of the Well is "racism is an integral, permanent, and indestructible component of this society."  If I were a reporter, I would want to know Obama's thoughts about that book. 

Walmart sales and consumer confidence might have something to do with this chart from the Fed.  For a moment, at the start of the recession, I thought that people had learned a lesson about easy credit.  It appears that they have not. 

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=5uh

Once, in a meeting about I don't recall what, so I don't even know why it came up, an ultra-liberal friend of mine groused about having to pay for birth control.  She made it sound like it was downright immoral.  Now I was on the same health plan, and the cost of the pill that my wife was on was $10.  It barely even registered as part of the monthly budget and we have two kids.  My friend had only one (her now ex-husband).  This is ideology, pure and simple.

I'm thinking that the political landscape will look very different come October, especially if the modest bump in the economy turns out to be due to a warm winter and people foolishly pulling their credit cards out to snap up Christmas deals.  And if Afghanistan keeps blowing up for months on end.  And Syria.  And Iran.  Perhaps the debt ceiling will need to be raised as well.

Romney may not light a fire under anyone, but with a decent convention speech, he might look pretty good to the independents.

It's true that this has been a crazy cycle, but I think that the math is starting to work in Romney's favor.  They are holding caucuses in Wyoming right now and Romney is winning.  He's going to clean up in Virginia and Mass. on Super Tuesday.  I think he'll do OK in North Dakota, Idaho, and Vermont.  Since the primary states next week will have a form of proportional delegate allocation, he can limit the damage from losses in Ohio, Georgia, and Oklahoma.  The only thing that might change the dynamics is if Gingrich drops out.

I remember when McCain won Florida in 2008.  I immediately said to my wife that McCain was going to be the nominee.  I'm having the same feeling now about Romney.  He's beat back the Santorum threat. 

Take a look at the returns from Hillsdale county in Michigan.  It appears that over 50% of the vote is going to candidates no longer in the race.

And not five minutes later, results are corrected to show a Romney/Santorum dead heat.  Weird.