George:

My old friend Herbert Pell used to say, "Don't be afraid to predict. If you're proved wrong, no one will remember. If you're proved right, your reputation is made."

So I'm predicting the outcome of this election. Here are some signs and portents, based on careful reading of entrails and a damp finger to the wind.

Item: Gallup charted Kerry's rise from 13 points behind to dead-even. If that's not momentum, what is?
Item: Pennsylvanians -- let alone Ohioans -- are hurting for jobs.
Item: Seniors (who all vote) are worried about Social Security and medical costs.
Item: Floridians are wet and bedraggled, and uncomfortable voters have a tendency to vote against incumbents.
Item: Throngs of Native Americans (or Indians, as they prefer to call themselves) will be voting for the first time and tend towards the Democratic.
Item: Cell-phone users are not polled. The majority of those are the young and the restless, who will give the Democrat the edge.
Item: Nader's crowds are pitifully sparse -- he's lonely.
Item: The Iraq war that Bush began is going so wrong, especially now with the theft of those explosives, that voters are wondering to what new catastrophe a reelected Bush would take us.
Item: With the illness of the Chief Justice and the possibility of another ultra-right Court nominee, pro-choice Americans (the vast majority) are looking nervously at the survival chances of Roe v. Wade.
Item: In a presidential year when gas prices (and other energy prices) are higher than the year before, the incumbent tends to lose.
Item: (I've almost finished): Even though it's widely believed that in a presidential year, if the National League wins the Series the Democrat wins the White house (remember, the American League Yankees have already bitten the dust) -- this year, even if Boston wins the pennant it may carry Kerry on its triumphant coattails.
Item: Finally (really), finally, my candidate is a head taller than their candidate.

Love,

Carolyn Sillver (electronic mail, October 26, 2004)