Ok, let’s face it: this election is over. We’ve got polls out today which show President Bush in the lead in New Jersey, trailing by four in Illinois, and down by just six in New York. Other recent polls have showed the race tied even in Maine. Unless we see divine intervention of some sort, John Kerry is going to lose and, in all probability, drag Democrats around the country down with him.

To understand this, we need to compare these polls with state polls from 2000. At this time four years ago, Zogby had the race in Illinois at 50% for Gore to 35% for Bush (versus 49%-45% Kerry today). In late August of 2000 (after both conventions) Missouri was 45%-40% for Gore (the latest Gallup poll has Bush up 55%-41%). New York, in 2000, was 60% Gore to 31% Bush in a Quinnipiac poll. Today the same poll has the race 47% to 41%. Ohio polls from this time show Gore up by 2% (42%-40%), while the latest Strategic Vision poll shows Bush up by 12% (52%-40%).

Now, there may be some tightening in the race, but I just don’t see how John Kerry can move from where he stands now to a win. I don’t think that Bush will win New York or Illinois (or ultimately come within ten points in either), but I’d ask those Democrats who would claim that these polls are meaningless what they would say if there were polls out there today showing Kerry in the lead in North Carolina, within four points in Alabama, and behind by six in Utah.

It would be technically possible for Kerry to come back if Kerry had both an extremely strong debate performance and a first rate campaign team. However, he clearly does not have the latter and it appears doubtful if he will have the former. While it remains possible that Kerry will knock out Bush in the debates, it seems much more likely at this point (based on the performance of both candidates) that a well-practiced and highly disciplined Bush will face off against a rambling, overly-nuanced, and confused John Kerry.

None of this should be interpreted as a call for overconfidence. What we must do now is to pour it on and continue the fight with renewed energy. The weakness of the Kerry campaign allows us to shift from fighting a bitter battle to hold the line into a massive offensive with the goal of destroying as much of the Democratic Party. To put it another way, the last few weeks of the campaign have been our Inchon, a decisive and complete breakthrough which can only be reversed by some sort of massive intervention of outside events.

However, we cannot let this be cause for overconfidence. As the circumstances have changed, so our goals must change. Instead of simply seeking to hold on to what we have, we now have a chance to conquer new ground and drive our enemies back along a broad front.

The Bush campaign must watch the polls carefully. If, by October 15th, Bush is still winning by ten points and ahead by a hundred electoral votes, resources ought to be shifted to down-ballot races where possible. Both Nixon in 1972 and Reagan in 1984 made the exact same mistake: they wasted valuable time and cash attempting to win a fifty-state sweep rather than getting more Republicans elected as Governors, Senators, and Congressmen.

At this point, it’s more or less a certainty that the Republicans will keep (and probably strengthen) their control of the House. So it’s the Senate that really matters. As things stand today there are fifty-two Republicans and forty-eight Democrats in the Senate. The magic number where the GOP can do pretty much whatever it wants is sixty Senators. So, how do we get up to that number?

Well, to begin with, we’re down one: Illinois is long gone, Barak Osama (err… Obama) will be the next Senator from that state. The other vulnerable seats presently held by Republicans are in Alaska, Colorado, and Oklahoma. Frankly, at this point, I think the only one which may still be endangered on Election Day is Colorado and even that should flip into a hold by November. So, in all probability, we start from a base of fifty-one seats.

The open seats in Georgia and South Carolina are both probably a lock for Republicans. The other Southern seats in Florida, North Carolina, and Louisiana all lean towards the Republicans, but are likely to be close. Since Louisiana is certain to be a run-off campaigning there can probably be put off until after the main elections. If the President is far enough ahead, he’ll probably definitely want to make a stop or two in North Carolina to help Richard Burr, who is locked in a tough fight with former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles. In a Bush win, I suspect we can count on winning four of these five seats. So that puts us up to fifty-five.

An obvious candidate for the fifty-sixth seat is South Dakota, where polls show challenger John Thune now leading Senator Majority Leader Tom Daschle. If the President has the time he’ll definitely want to stop here, because there’s a close race for the state’s long House seat going on as well. In order to ensure victory, I’d also strongly recommend the deployment of a brigade of GOP lawyers to the state’s Indian reservations.

Seat number fifty-seven would come out of the great state of Washington, where George Nethercutt is running an extremely strong race against incumbent Democrat Patti Murray. I live within the Seattle broadcast market and travel regularly in Northern Washington State so I can tell you first-hand that Nethercutt is running a very strong challenge to the largely useless and invisible Senator Murray. It’s an uphill fight to be sure, but it’s also a possible one. Remember, Nethercutt got elected to Congress in the first place by defeating the Speaker of the House.

The fifty-eighth seat could be delivered by former California Secretary of State Bill Jones. While recent polls show Jones far behind incumbent Barbara Boxer, Senator Boxer’s re-elect rating remains low. If ultra-popular Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger were to hit the trail in support of Jones, I think it’s possible that he might win it in a squeaker, especially if he’s helped by a Bush tide (and the fact that a Bush victory would be clear well before the polls closed in California, thus depressing Democratic turnout in the state).

A fifty-ninth seat could be delivered by a Republican victory in Wisconsin which, while a long-shot at the moment, could probably be achieved if the President were to hit the road in support of nominee Tim Michels. Feingold is far from exceedingly popular and may well be vulnerable.

If Bush manages to win a forty-state landslide on November 2nd, it may well be that Republican hopes for a filibuster-proof majority will hinge upon a run-off in Louisiana. As to that, having been burned by previous Louisiana run-offs, I venture no prediction.

This is all, of course, the best case scenario: but it is an increasingly possible one. The Democratic campaign is not just losing, but its collapsing. Just this afternoon I saw James Carville, who is working for the Kerry campaign at the moment, subtly trying to distance himself from the campaign on CNN (in a “they need to listen to me” sort of way).

All of this will be greatly intensified by the fact that a large chunk of the Democratic Party never liked Senator Kerry very much anyways and, thus, will be eager to turn on him as he continues to trail. Already you can see it in the leaks coming out of the campaign. The Democrats have all convinced themselves that Bush is easily beatable (and this perception will survive the election), and so none will wish to be blamed for the loss of the election.

And I don’t expect the average Democratic activist to take the right lesson from this. Their (near-certain) response will be to howl “we should have nominated Howard Dean” (and, I’ll add, I think it’s more likely that Dr. Howard Brush Dean III will run in 2008 than not). As they did in 2002, the lesson they take from this will not be that the American people reject their liberalism, but that it was inadequately explained.

The surest sign that Kerry is about to lose badly will be when the most partisan Democrats (such as those at the Daily Kos and Democratic Underground) start to spend a great deal of time talking about the “invisible voters” who are going to show up at the polls and rescue them just like they were going to carry Howard Dean to victory in the primaries and in the general election.

We are winning, but effort is still needed. Our assault is seemingly in the process of forcing the Democrats to retreat to their home islands, but the work is not done yet. As we advance further they will fight for every inch of ground with ever-increasing viciousness and ferocity. What we must begin now is the drive towards the Hiroshima and Nagasaki of this war. Remember: victory is not won when the enemy is merely injured. It is won only when it is destroyed.