The next phase: Observing that McCain is a terrible candidate

After three months of watching Hillary Clinton try to postpone the inevitable, the media can finally start focusing on the general election. The spotlight shifted to Obama vs. McCain last night, and it didn't take long for the pundits to notice something very important: John McCain is very, very bad candidate for President and Obama is going to clobber him.

McCain chose to give a speech last night in New Orleans to complement those being given by Obama and Clinton. Here's what the pundits had to say:
David Yepsen: "The contrast between the 46-year old Obama and the 71-year-old McCain could not be more stark. Obama was cool and showed more energy than McCain who, well, looks old. Very old."
Talking Points Memo: "Here's how bad it is. All the Fox commentators are giving competing explanation for why McCain's speech sucked."

On to November! In 2004, when I wanted to predict which states each candidate would capture, I had to painstakingly color a map state by state. No more! Now I have this cool interactive map from USA Today, that allows me to click and save each state for Obama or McCain.

So here's my first prediction:
Obama: 313 McCain: 225














The map above does not include one electoral vote from Nebraska that I'm giving to Obama. Did you know that Maine and Nebraska do not award their electoral votes winner-take-all? Yep. They award their first two votes to the statewide winner, and the remaining votes to the winner in each congressional district. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, Obama might do even better than the map above. Let's go!

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