13 month old baby, broke the looking glass

Matt has an important post for those of who believe in things we don't understand, and well, are suffering:

Something funny happened in 2004 where a lot of progressives convinced themselves near the end that John Kerry was likely to win the election even though he was narrowly behind in the polls. Then a lot of people have gone and misremembered that as thinking that Kerry was likely to win because he was ahead in the polls, which he wasn't. Thus, many are left unable to believe that Obama's lead in the polls makes his victory likely....

The theory behind "Kerry's gonna win" was that undecideds were likely to break heavily for the challenger -- heavily enough to make up his small gap in the polls. That wasn't a crazy thing to believe, but it clearly had a whiff of wishful thinking about it. At the moment, though, Obama just has a big lead.

It's amazing how we've shifted the blame for our 04 heartbreak over to the polls. It's true the exit polls blew it. But the actual polls called it pretty right--and the gap between Obama and McCain is much larger than the gap between Bush and Kerry. One commenter in Matt's thread makes a great point--the GOP and the Dems have swapped places. This year, there is a class of righties dreaming of a tightening. much as so many of us imagined Kerry clossing in '04. We simply could not believe that the country would re-elect Bush. Now, I don't think a lot of them can believe that the country is going to elect a black dude named Barack Hussien Obama from the South Side of Chicago. And, I guess, neither can many of us. No matter, all this handwringing just gives me a an excuse to hit you with the old school Stevie Wonder.