A new analysis sees the GOP losing seats in the U.S. House in November. A month ago I would have bought into that analysis without reservation. Today, I'm not so sure.

The reason? McCain continues to gain strength in the national polls, and there is more evidence that the divisive Democratic contest could lead to defections in November, with a significant percentage of voters now saying that if their guy, or gal, doesn't win the nomination, they will vote for McCain. This is true despite the fact that all three candidates had a bad week. Things aren't looking much better with the apparent collapse of talks aimed at getting re-votes in Florida and Michigan. Douglas Schoen thinks that Howard Dean needs to broker a grand bargain of some kind, or else the Democrats risk alienating voters in those two big, swing states. At Politico, Ben Smith wonders if Clinton end the process ahead in the popular vote and, thus, make the argument to the superdelegates that she should be the nominee. I find it difficult to contain my glee as I watch this thing unfold, primarily because the Democrats are being hoisted on their own petard in more than one area. The party that plays racial and identity politics, essentially bolstering the differences between interest groups to mobilize their political energy, is being riven by those differences. The party that used anger over how the votes were counted (or not counted) in Florida in 2000 to mobilize that energy are now left with the possibility that Florida's Democratic primary votes won't count. Amazing.

Charles Krauthammer calls Obama's speech "a brilliant fraud". Wesley Pruden says the speech was a disaster. I still think it was a well crafted speech, but it won't matter. The videos of Reverend Wright's most inflammatory comments will continue to live on via the Internet, and will no doubt make their way into TV commercials during the Fall campaign (crafted by outside groups, not the McCain campaign directly). Videos of other radical Black ministers will also surface. It will be impossible for anyone to believe that a man as obviously intelligent as Barack Obama did not know or understand the true nature of these radical beliefs (like the one that says American government scientists, White men all, created the HIV virus to wipe out the Black race). That he knew of such beliefs, and the fact that the founder of his church, and his own personal pastor, spread these beliefs to his congregants (and to a wider audience via the sale of video and audio tapes of his sermons), while it will not make a difference to the White, Liberal intelligentsia (who excuse these wild theories as the natural reaction of a people who have been so long oppressed by the evil White man), it will impact the voting behavior of some middle and working class White folks, who tend to take a less nuanced view of such things.

Amity Shlaes writes about the ghosts of 1929.

The New York Times has this piece on how the economic slump is moving from Wall St. to Main St. (I guess trickle down theory works, after all).