Cautious (cautious!) optimism

OK, so it has become apparent from the various comments and emails from friends that I've kind of been obsessing a wee bit over the American election, and have expressed sentiments about Barack Obama that verge on the worshipful.

And what I have to say to that is ... well, ya got me. True enough.

I will however stop quite short of getting myself the Obama Cabbage Patch doll, an image of which my friend Arlene kindly sent me. And I hereby forbid anyone to get one of these for me for Christmas! My admiration for the Senator does have limits ... and besides, as you can see, the doll really bears almost no resemblance to him. In fact, if it looks like anyone at all, it's Gary Coleman. (Anyone making a Whad'you talking bout? joke in the comments will be banned from this blog.)

Incidentally, there are also Cabbage Patch dolls for Sarah Palin and John McCain:

I think the McCain doll is the most lifelike, don't you?

In other news, I'm starting to nurse some cautious optimism. (Cautious optimism! Did you hear that, Fates? CAUTIOUS! Really, hardly optimism at all! Far be it for me to tempt the wrath of the guy from high atop the thing ...). There's a lot of back-and-forthing among the various pundits of late, pointing to Obama's static numbers, and a narrowing of his lead in some polls. However, things do look much better when you look at the electoral map. While I generally tend to find the whole electoral college system kind of fukakta, I'm taking some comfort in it now. Obama needs 270 electoral votes to take the election. At the time of this posting, a tally of the states in which he has a double-digit lead in the polls gives him 254; a tally including states with a single-digit lead gives him 375. Conversely, McCain's two-digit lead states give him 118, and with the rest he has 157. Which means that, to win on Tuesday, he has to take 113 electoral votes away from states in which Obama leads. Obama on the other hand has to cinch 16 votes, which he can do if he takes Ohio, where he's currently leading by six points.

I just want to conclude by assuring the Guy High Atop The Thing that I offer these numbers as an entirely neutral curiosity and am not making predictions or suggestion that anything here means anything at all.