The winner is the person who ends up with the nice tote bag with the ability to obliterate the world. Yes, the electoral college and ballot theft are predictable factors, as is the assessment of a candidate's willingness to fight in the trenches on behalf of the votes of his followers. What happened in Florida was not specifically predictable, but it was always clear that Gore would fold rather than face a real fight. He gamely litigated in a gentlemanly way, but while the GOP was organizing riots in Dade County, he was telling his activists to go home. And when the Supreme Court stole the votes of black voters who had dragged themselves to the polls despite Gore's lame campaign, Gore just politely folded up shop. Gore should have won easily and the fact that he allowed it to be close enough to be stolen makes him a loser. If I had bet on Nixon in 1960, I wouldn't be looking to duck out on the bet whining about missing ballots in Cook County.

Jeff thinks media bias will win it for Bush. I think claims about media bias in the electoral sphere is overblown whether it comes from the Left or the Right. The media has a strong pro-corporate bias, but that favors the pro-corporate wing of both parties, even as the media dislikes the working class base of each side-- dissing the union base in the Dems and the Christian foot soldiers and gun nuts over at the GOP. If the Dems ever nominated a real anti-capitalist candidate, the media would be a factor, but since that ain't going to happen in 2004, the media is as likely to favor a "responsible reformer that can save capitalism from its own greed" (a likely media headline at some point). If media bias explained much, we wouldn't have had such dead heat elections for the last decade. If the media has any consistent bias, it's in favor of scandal. And the Right has been far more united in recent years in mouthing the same "talking points" that keep scandals going-- that was the brilliance of the attack on Clinton: they pounded dry hole after dry hole until they hit semen. It wasn't the media but Al Gore who essentially gave Bush a pass in the last election on all his slimy business deals.

Terror as Bush Campaign Asset? Both Yuval and Kos think another terrorist attack or some other way to extend the war on terrorism will save Bush. I don't buy it. A serious attack on the US may cost us some more civil liberties, but it will also just revive the questions over Bush's handling of the first attack and this one couldn't even be subtly blamed on anyone else. And it would raise the harsh issue that we fought a war that failed to catch or kill the prime targets, Bin Laden or mullah Omar.
...War is not a guaranteed winner for incumbents. There is a short rally around the flag period, especially if things go well, but prolonged conflict can be very bad. Lincoln almost lost reelection in 1864 and probably only won because of last minute victories just before election day. The Dems lost the Presidency in the middle of the Korean and Vietnam Wars. For Bush to really ride this thing to 2004, he needed a series of short, small invasions-- Iraq to Columbia to the Phillipines etc. Whether he would have gotten bogged down is an open issue, but he won't find out. His game plan should have had him in Bagdad this summer, but he so mishandled the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that he blew any potential regional support for invading Iraq. And his showdown with Europe over everything from Kyoto to the International Criminal Court means they are unlikely to support it. Bush may think he can go in cowboy style alone, but I don't think he can pull it off without a complete disaster, militarily and electorally.

And the bottom line is that Bush is a Political Liar and that is what kills candidates. He made too many cynical promises in 2000 with his "compassionate conservatism" talk that he had no intention of fulfilling--- and the voters will punish him for that as that becomes clearer. He has no intention (or money), despite promises, for really dealing with the health care crisis, decent funding for schools, or for maintaining social security stability. And despite nice rhetoric, he has been running a regulatory policy that is in many ways more anti-environment and anti-labor than Reagan.
...One of my contrarian views is that Clinton was one of the most honest politicians, when we mean the substantive honesty with the American people as opposed to the petty personal failings. As I've often observed, people hated Clinton for the promises he kept, liberals for keeping his promise to support welfare reform, NAFTA and the death penalty, conservatives for his taxing the wealthy and supporting abortion and gay rights. The reason he survived the Lewinsky scandal is to the end, people believed his main promise that politically he was trying to fight for their interests.
...If Bush can't get solid belief that he is looking out for them today -- by 63% to 34% they believe he is looking out for corporate interests over theirs - he will be toast by 2004. Unlike Reagan, who honestly (and sometimes effectively) made the rhetorical case for why tax cuts for the wealthy and why gutting environmental regulations was a good thing - Bush has just opportunistically lied about who benefits from his tax cuts and lied about the intent of his regulatory policies. Hypocrisy will catch up with him.