National Review’s Kerry Spot says the Bush campaign’s internal polls show that W has a solid lead in Florida, outside the margin of error. Some public polls differ, but I am inclined to agree with the Bushies that Florida is probably going to end up in their camp. The trend has seemed to be in that direction.

More disturbingly, Michigan now clearly appears to be unexpectedly in play. This is very bad. Kerry obviously must win Michigan (and Pennsylvania, though that seems to be less of a problem).

If Kerry holds MI and PA, the race comes down to Ohio — or at least, that’s the conventional wisdom. Everybody says that if Kerry wins Ohio, he wins the election, and if Kerry loses Ohio, he loses the election. The second part of that equation is almost certainly true (unless he pulls an upset in Florida), but as to the first part, well… I did some math, and even if Kerry wins MI, PA and OH, Bush can still win the election if he wins a) two out of three in Wisconsin/Iowa/Minnesota; or b) Iowa, New Hampshire and New Mexico (though Option B would leave him with only 270 EVs and thus vulnerable to a Richie Robb defection throwing the election to Congress). Note that “Oregon” can also be substituted for “Iowa” with the same results, and “Hawaii” can be substituted for “New Hampshire,” though both of those seem somewhat less likely.

The most plausible of these scenarios is probably Iowa and Wisconsin both going red. How much would that suck — Kerry wins Ohio, but Bush becomes the first Republican ever to win a presidential election without the Buckeye State because Kerry can’t hold onto two Midwestern blue states.

Even so, Ohio is clearly the #1 state to watch. And with the youth vote especially unpredictable, watch out for the Ohio State University factor. Electoral-vote.com writes: “Let’s call Ohio a tie. Which way it goes will almost assuredly depend on the turnout Tuesday, especially among younger voters. Could OSU elect the next president? It is not out of the question.” Hey, they do have like 40,000 students, right? Let’s hope they’re feeling “blue,” so to speak. And motivated to actually freakin’ vote.

P.S. Can Kerry, if he wins Ohio but loses Florida, prevail without Michigan? Yes, but in addition to holding Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon and Hawaii, he’d have to pick off New Hampshire and one additional red state: Nevada? West Virginia? Arkansas? None of those look very likely right now. Or else he’d need the Colorado referendum to pass, and be upheld by the courts. Again, unlikely. Or, if the referendum fails but he wins Colorado, that would do the trick even without New Hampshire. But, yet again, that seems unlikely.

Is it too late for me to move across the border to Michgian? I’m only a few miles away… :)

I just uploaded a gallery of newspaper front pages from around Red Sox Nation (and a few from New York). A few favorites:

More here. Also, front pages from after Game 7 of the ALCS here.

Sorry for the loooong downtime. The server was down for more than four hours. Crappety crap crap.

The Curse of the Bambino is over!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But now we have to stop and think . . .

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@messaging.sprintpcs.comI’m in the line to get basketball tickets, which is impressively long.

My roommate Chris got back from the law school a little while ago. (His Legal Writing memo is due tomorrow.) He said there were 50 or so people watching the end of the game in the student lounge. Among them was Rob, the aforementioned Sox fan who lives in our apartment complex. According to Chris, Rob appeared extremely tense until the very last out was recorded — “I really think he honestly believed they were going to lose, even when there were two outs,” Chris said — but then, a split-second after the game ended, Rob basically exploded, yelling something to the effect of: “OH MY F***ING GOD!!!! WE F***ING WON THE F***ING WORLD SERIES!!!!!” He then reportedly sprinted across the lounge, jumped on top of the tables, leapt from table to table with astonishing speed, and ran out into the hallway, hooting and screaming all the way.

Heh. I wish I’d been there to see it.

(Incidentally, yes, I am staying up all night. I have to be at the football stadium in an hour to buy my basketball season tickets, so I figure I might as well. In the mean time, I’m reading Contracts. Well, I was reading Contracts, until Chris came home. Speaking of which… I gotta back to work!)

P.S. Along the same lines as Rob’s reaction is this blog post:

At 11:40 pm, the Boston Red Sox were crowned Champions of Baseball for the first time since 1918. … I just cna;lksafj’vkv’ain lkaevn’f ndbal;KSwr[gioWN< m cmX L"KN"VILBkms ,M,ASnlkmdx'boja'k ,.NZS"Kens'iUO0GJLBMVLCM
BL;mlkmdjvmfcjkdytr7t03lfdns7ewio

Hehe.

Good roundup of Sox blog links here.

Last time the Yankees won the World Series: 2000

Last time the Red Sox won the World Series: 2004

:)

Official Red Sox championship gear is, of course, now available from MLB.com.

Personally, I like this cap and this unofficial t-shirt, but I suppose I should control myself since I just spent upwards of $60 on Red Sox gear last week… :)

Say what you will about the New York Times’s news coverage, but they have some great photographers. Slide shows of the Red Sox victory here and here. Two of my favorites below:

The Boston Globe has slideshows too, here and here and here.

Oh, and here are the Globe’s four most recent Sox front pages. Still waiting for the new one. In the mean time, here’s the Boston Herald’s front page this morning:

Then there’s the New York Daily News sports page, which you gotta admit, is pretty funny:

From the Boston Globe:

At last.

As first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz snagged the final out, citizens of Red Sox Nation convulsed. They wept. They exhaled. They exalted. Smiles blossomed. Hugging erupted. Curses were dismissed, longing was satisfied, and memories made.

Euphoria, joy, or madness — call it what you will. After 86 years, Red Sox Nation got deliverance.

In South Boston, fireworks lit the sky as revelers spilled into the streets amid a cacophony of car horns. In Jamaica Plain, grown men fell to their knees.

The streets around Fenway Park clogged with young people; intimate celebrations unfolded in pubs, on triple-decker porches, in bodegas, and in thousands of living rooms in this victory-starved region.

It was collective catharsis, millions riveted by nine men playing a boy’s game: from the South End to the North End, Provincetown to the Berkshires, Connecticut to Maine, and all the far-flung outposts of New England.

As the victorious images from St. Louis beamed onto televisions, crackled on radios, and lit up computer screens, fans here, in a million different ways, screamed aloud: at last.

“I’ve cheered them on for 80 years, for 90 years. But I’m telling you, in all my years, this team was the most exciting one,” said Leonard Iannarone, 93, of Winthrop, who was 7 when the Sox last won the championship. “What they did in this playoff series makes me forget everything else.”

Also:

New England danced under an eclipse-reddened moon early today, toasting a baseball championship whose elusiveness since World War I had become a regional badge of futility, worn by four generations.

”I’ve seen man walk on the moon. I’ve seen the space shuttle break up in the sky. I’ve seen great tragedy,” said David Kruh of Reading, who wrote the stage musical ”The Curse of the Bambino,” about the travails of the Red Sox. ”And now, we have this moment of unadulterated joy. . . . This experience will never happen again.”

And New England, where baseball is king, will never be the same.

A region so used to fretting, frustration, and second-guessing is going to need to rethink what it now means to be a Red Sox fan.

Here’s a movie of my reaction to the Red Sox win (224 KB).

Lots and lots more photos after the jump.

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Heh: