Can’t wait for the 60% total tax rate to his us here in California. That’ll turn us into a Red State pretty quickly…

The ball is completely in Obama’s court. He has promised us ‘peace in our time,’ and I expect nothing less.

Eager Obama partisans will however be utterly unable to refrain from such a characterization if he’s over 300 EV. If current numbers hold up, I’m comfortable with calling it a mandate especially given how many folks called 2004 a mandate for Bush. I’d guess on about a 315-350 tally.

If and when Obama wins, a few things seem pretty likely. #1, he appoints 2 or 3 scotus justices and stabilizes the liberal balance of power there. #2, any reform of social security slants strongly to the democratic approach. Any chance of Americans being able to monitor, manage and invest their own pool of set aside money is off the table. How could one think otherwise given current circumstances?

Instead, what we will see is the removal of the upper limit on SS contributions, an increase in the retirement age along a sliding scale (retire sooner, get less money per month, waiting is made to be a more attractive deal), slower growth in payouts, lower dollar payback committments to younger workers, and in general an approach which extends the solvency of the program over the intermediate term so that we’ll be right back at it again in another 10 or 20 years with the same problem. We’ll also see democrats and probably Obama himself preserve the pretense that social security has a “trust fund” which means that the program is solvent for much longer than it is in reality.

One thing I hope we get is policies in regard to new programs which are deeply disappointing to the most eager of liberals. If Obama can do math like he suggests (I’ll go through the budget line-by-line!), This is inevitable. No free college educations. A tiny token pilot program for domestic national service. No big increases in federal aid for education. No ponies.

However, one thing some pundits have been talking about is that even in the case of an Obama loss, the political landscape is changing, and the GOP is terrified about the next twenty years – not just the next four or eight.

I do wonder if what we’re seeing here is a sort of changing of the guard, as young voters – who were raised in a somewhat less prejudiced society than their parents and especially their grandparents – come into their own and are demanding more than what they’ve seen so far.

I expect that, if Obama does win, we’ll see a lot of rhetoric from the socially conservative right about a loss of values and a culture of permissiveness & moral relativity. We’re seeing a lot of that rhetoric *now*, but the difference will be that fewer people will pay attention to it.

In terms of what policies Obama will be able to enact, I think a lot will be determined by the course of the economic downturn. He’ll have a sympathetic (though not terribly effective) Congress, but the public will probably balk at some of the initiatives Obama is proposing if its collective wallet is ailing.