Final electoral college prediction for next Tuesday: Obama, 303-235

Here's my best final guess as to how the presidential election will play out on Tuesday. Some states are close enough that we might not know even then:

As you can see, these predictions are unchanged from my assessment just a couple weeks ago. Some of the swing states have seen maddeningly tight races, but the fundamentals still favor Obama — namely, burgeoning Latino populations in Nevada and Colorado, an increasing Democratic stronghold in northern Virginia, and relatively consistent polls showing the president ahead in Ohio.

I ceded North Carolina and Florida to Romney. I'm not overly confident about it — either or both could still go to Team Blue by a threadbare margin — but there are a couple reasons why I decided to color them red.

Citizens United and the corrupting influence of money in elections

On Friday, I came across this disquieting headline about how Obama, Romney, and their respective political parties are on track to raise more than $1 billion apiece in this election season, making it the most expensive presidential campaign in U.S. history.

Of course, that amount doesn't even include the astronomical sums spent by super PACs and other independent committees. Such groups have entirely reshaped how elections are conducted and decided in this country — and not for the better. The campaigns themselves now have to raise similarly exorbitant amounts just to keep up with these shady outside influences.

Personally, I didn't need an article from CNBC to tell me the extent to which Big Money has infused itself into our democracy. I receive up to a dozen emails per day (sometimes even more than that) asking me for donations.

Here's a rather pointed example from just last week:

An obnoxious email like this one leaves little doubt as to why Americans feel increasing disillusionment toward politics. The message couldn't be clearer: In political campaigns, ideas don't matter anymore. Only money does.

Or, put another way, ideas only matter to the extent that they're backed up by money to make them viable. In essence, they're bought by the highest bidder.

Not too much to talk about here, except bayonets and horses

The final presidential debate of the campaign season has almost never been known to substantially change the dynamic of the race. It's simply too late in the game for that to happen, unless one of the candidates says something truly outrageous.

Tonight's foreign policy discussion in Boca Raton, Florida, is likely to follow suit. Obama came out strong — thankfully — and Romney at times looked foolish for agreeing so much with the president and basically repeating what he had just said, using different words.

If anything, the latest debate confirms what most Obama supporters already knew: Romney's campaign obituary would have already been written by now, if the president had simply been, ahem, present in Denver the first time around.

But what's done is done. As I noted before, incumbents historically do a lousy job during the first face-to-face meeting with their challengers, only to redeem themselves in subsequent tests.

Ultimately, what the first debate probably accomplished was to bring Obama's lead back to earth after Romney had an exceptionally terrible end to September. It's clear that the president's advantage in the polls at the beginning of this month was inflated and largely attributable to the release of the devastating "47 percent" video.

Now, we're back to where we've been for almost the entire 2012 campaign season, with Obama and Romney running neck-and-neck in the national polls, but also with the president having a much easier path to 270 electoral votes than his rival does.

Barring any late October surprises, that's likely where the narrative of the race will remain until its merciful conclusion in two weeks.

Voting restrictions an affront to American democracy

This is a piece of paper that no American citizen should
ever take for granted.

Late last week, I received my long-awaited 2012 general election ballot. Washington state votes entirely by mail, which is good to the extent that it facilitates a higher turnout among people who are too lazy to actually go to a polling location on Election Day.

Personally, I'd drive to the other side of the state to cast my ballot if I had to. There's a sense of empowerment that always comes with doing so. I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to participate in this, the linchpin of American democracy.

Even worse than apathy, though, is the recent coordinated spate of legislation and tactics aimed at infringing upon the most sacred of rights we have as American citizens.

Not surprisingly, the bulk of these voter-suppression efforts are taking place in swing states whose collective wealth of electoral votes will determine the next president of the United States.

Most recently, in Ohio, the Supreme Court declined to uphold Republican-backed restrictions on early voting in that state, which would have stipulated that only military voters could cast ballots in the last three days before Election Day. The rationale given was that officials needed time to "prepare" for November 6, as though they had somehow struggled with that in previous election years.

It should come as a surprise to no one that military voters — the one voting bloc exempt from the restriction — heavily favor the political party that championed the court-rebuffed policy.

States to watch closely in the next three weeks

Are you getting sick of me writing just about politics on here? Me, too. I'd love to write about something — anything — else. But if I do so between now and November 6, I'll feel like I'm ignoring an elephant in the room (or donkey, depending on your political persuasion).

Did I mention that I cannot wait for November 6?

Three more weeks. Three more excruciating weeks.

Anyway, here are the latest updates.

Malarkey pretty much sums it up

Has anyone else noticed how white Joe Biden's
teeth are? I certainly did, after seeing them on
full display Thursday night.

Vice-presidential debates are very rarely memorable or significant to the outcome of an election. Thursday night's clash between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan appears to confirm this.

To be sure, it was entertaining television, due in large part to Biden's dismissive grins, derisive chuckles, and interesting use of the word "malarkey."

But if viewers will remember the vice president's bare-knuckle antics over the substance of the debate itself — and they almost certainly will — then it's not apt to be a game-changer.

Polls appear to issue a split decision on the evening. CNN gave a very slight edge to Ryan, while other outlets like CBS News gave the advantage to Biden.

Put together, these numbers make sense. If you're a Republican who already supported Ryan, you undoubtedly loathed Biden even more by the end of the night, particularly with his seemingly cavalier demeanor toward his "friend" from Wisconsin (who, incidentally, is easily young enough to be his son).

If you're a Democrat, on the other hand, you must have been exuberant that Joe Biden was unleashing the aggression and landing the punches that were devastatingly absent from Obama's performance in the first debate. After all, Thursday night marked the first time in a face-to-face meeting between the opposing candidates where zingers like the "47 percent" remarks were even mentioned by Team Blue.

And if you're an independent — or otherwise uncommitted — then you easily could have made either conclusion about the debate. Perhaps you thought Biden was rude, disruptive, and unpresidential. Or perhaps you thought Ryan was trying too hard not to be any of those things and got run over because of it.

Want to know where Obama is at? Let's take a trip back to 1984

In the preceding post, I didn't mince words about how poorly I thought Obama fared in the first presidential debate in Denver on Wednesday night. Neither did anyone else, really.

Having had time to cool down and give it some thought, however, I want to offer some additional perspective on the matter — not to mention a more balanced, thoughtful approach to analyzing where the president's electoral prospects now stand.

The GOP loves to talk about their patron saint, Ronald Reagan, The One Who Cannot Be Faulted (and, tellingly, the one who most likely wouldn't even be able to make it through a primary in today's Republican Party because he'd be considered too moderate).

In this instance, I'm happy to oblige, because the Gipper had an experience back in October 1984 similar to what Obama had just last week — and if history doesn't necessarily reveal the future, it is, at the very least, instructive.

Obama choked

If you're Barack Obama, this isn't the headline you want to see
immediately following the debate — on CNN.

There's really no way to sugar-coat this, and the cat's already out of the bag. Obama delivered a fairly dismal performance in the first presidential debate. As the saying goes, you can't bring a knife to a gunfight — but if Romney came to the Mile-High City with a cannon, the president arrived with plastic cutlery.

From the outset, it was painfully obvious what strategy each candidate was equipped with as he walked onto the stage.

For Romney, it was a do-or-die moment, and he did. Ever since the "47 percent" bombshell — which amazingly wasn't mentioned, even indirectly — his campaign has been in steady decline. Polls released on Wednesday had him down by as many as 8 points in Ohio, a must-win state, and 11 in Wisconsin, where sexy Paul Ryan is from. With almost exactly a month left until Election Day, he needed a game-changer immediately, or the president would likely coast through the month of October and perhaps celebrate an electoral college blowout on November 6.

Romney's advisers undoubtedly told him to come out swinging immediately and unrelentingly — he really had no choice and nothing to lose, except the election — and that's exactly what he did. It may have been the first piece of sound advice they've ever given him.