Without California, Democrats literally cannot win back the White House.

--Rick Jacobs, Huffington Post, August 9, 2007

Among the bits of conventional wisdom that may be demolished this year is that Democrats must win California to win the White House.

Take a look at the latest electoral maps, for example at MyDD or electoral-vote.com.

Currently Obama wins the White House (with 279 electoral votes) even if he doesn't win a single state outside the Eastern and Central time zones!

Of course, I'm posting this merely because it's a little kick in the shin of conventional wisdom...I'm not making any predictions here...

But just in case: I will now go outside, turn around three times, and spit.

I work on the Hill and have friends in both parties.

I can tell you a few things without much doubt:

1. The Democrats expect a blowout.

2. The Republicans mostly expect a blowout (this is born out of a combination of their distaste for McCain and their fear of Obama's political skills and teflon).

3. The McCain campaign is clueless, inept, overconfident, and in a bubble - a bubble they created when they transformed their campaign from an establishment campaign into a low budget insurgent's campaign.

The McCain people have scorn for Obama as a nominee and as a person. They overstate what they accomplished in the primary (basically, McCain won by attrition).

There's more...

All-

I'm a little worried about some of the conventional wisdom heading into the General Election. Here are the things we need to push against, because if they become Conventional Wisdom, they will damage the Obama brand.

There's more...

You have to love the Republicans.  They say they are the 'real men', yet when Senator James Webb doesn't bow down to The Idiot in Chief, they get all sensitive.

We've also all seen The Manchild in Chief act 'hurt' and weak when he doesn't get his way.

Let's look at a couple other issues to see how tough, 'tough guy' Republicans really are:

Terror?  Every Muslim around the world frightens them and sends them scurrying under a table.

Gays?  "Tough guy" Republicans can't handle them.  They want to be protected from homosexuals.

It seems pretty clear to me, 'tough guy' Republicans are the biggest wimps on the planet.  

There's more...

Just two days after posting its last assessment of the House races, the Cook Political Report issued a sweeping set of changes.  The new list put 59 Republican seats in jeopardy including 3 listed as Lean Democratic, 25 listed as Tossup, 15 as Lean Republican and 16 as Likely Republican.  

The number of Tossup seats surged from 18 on October 4 to 25 on October 6.  Six seats were upgraded from Lean Republican: FL-13 (Open, was Katharine Harris), MN-6 (open), PA-7 (Weldon), PA-10 (Sherwood),WA-8 (Reichert) and WI-8 (open).  Tom Reynolds went from Solid Republican to Tossup in NY-26.

There's more...