John McCain: The Comeback Very Old Kid

Hold onto your seats, people, because this election is far from over.

Just listen to what nonpartisan Rick Davis — John McCain's campaign manager — had to say about this unprecedentedly close squeaker of a horse race…

"We are witnessing, I believe, probably one of the greatest comebacks that you've seen since John McCain won the primary," his campaign manager, Rick Davis, said in a conference call with reporters, adding that when it came to the electoral votes needed for victory, "We believe, with the combination of our base states and the states we've been able to put into play this week, we can achieve 270."

How did they possibly manage to do it? In 24 short hours, they shut Obama's lead down to a statistical insignificance! Amazing! Just look at these trend lines for the nation…

That's only a one centimeter lead! One centimeter! I measured it!

But, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute! Let's calm ourselves down. National polls don't really matter. Elections are won state-by-state. Let's take a look at how the Electoral College is shaping up this final weekend…

Oh my God! Oh my God! According to electoral-vote.com and the most recent polling, Barack Obama only stands to gain 83 more electoral votes than he needs to reach 270. That's razor thin! Not even as big a lead as Ronald Reagan had over Walter Mondale in '84. God, I have more than 83 books on my bookshelf, and I don't even have one of those huge wall-to-wall bookshelves like they have in libraries. I mean, that is not a comfortable lead by any stretch of the imagination.

Okay, I'm hyperventilating now. Let's check with FiveThirtyEight.com and see — given all possible scenarios — what the chances are that Barack Obama can pull this one out, because, I gotta tell you, I'm getting really, really nervous…

Jesus God! The sky is falling! The sky is falling! He's only favored to win in 97.2 percent of all vote simulations?! 97.2 percent?! That's not even a hundred!!

Some basic math will tell you that 97.2 is 172.8 less than the 270 electoral votes Barack Obama needs to win the presidency. If you round that up to an arbitrary number, you can see that John McCain has a 175 percent chance of winning on Tuesday! So, he's a shoo-in.

I don't know how you did it, Rick Davis, but you did it. I didn't think it was possible, but numbers don't lie.

To all you Obama supporters out there, I can only say that even though your vote is practically worthless in the face of cold hard math, you should still go out there and vote. Even though I can't possibly conceive of it, maybe there's some possible way that Obama can pull off a miracle.

Go vote!