Presidential horserace shaping up

The New York Times offers an absorbing election widget. Starting from the link, you can generate your own electoral forecast by dragging states from the Obama circle to the Romney circle (or vice versa) and see how Presidential candidates reach an electoral college majority.

Here's my current take on the race:

Mine is not quite the same as the Times' -- and it is no more meaningful than blowing smoke. I'm pretty certain the election will be close. I'm a moderately informed reader of polls and prognostications and I have some hunches about how various states will turn out, but my enjoyment of this is akin to treating politics as a spectator sport.

And of course politics is not a sport, but the frame that determines how we live. The Washington Monthly's Ed Kilgore described our future if we get a Republican sweep in the November:

Yeah, Social Security and Medicare were fun while they lasted, kind of like handshake deals and dollar lunch specials and home visits by doctors. But no one could seriously think they’d work in this day and age, right? So shredding the safety net in order to give “job creators” lower tax rates and labor costs and more flexible, nimble business structures conducive to the knowledge-based global economy blah blah is what’s obviously necessary to keep up with never-ending change. And we sure don’t need any sclerotic, industrial-age unions around to resist change, particularly in the public sector, which needs to be the handmaiden of the fast-paced blah blah entrepreneurs who are peeking around corners to adapt our nation to its future global leadership role while the rest of us poor dumb cattle mosey along blindly, dependent on their bold genius, right?

Ghastly vision, isn't it? Kilgore is not an intemperate pundit, but the current Republicans seem worthy of caustic comment.

Maybe I'll revisit the widget in September and see if the prospect looks differently then.

On the road today; probably no more blogging ...