It’s late October.  It’s 3 a.m. There’s a phone ringing…

This sounds oddly familiar.

Right in the twilight of October, while we’re warming up to Winter’s fate, Obama and McCain will try to make the case: a vote for their ticket will be a vote to keep this country in perpetual Spring, the literary season of ebullience, and out of a Bushian season of perpetual folly.

It’s October and this thing is completely up for grabs. My predictions are only that, predictions. But I did buy my crystal ball at Staples. So that was easy.

The 527s will be around this election. You remember the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth? They were a 527, named for the section of the tax code that allows them to exist.

Lunatic fringe groups like these will liken McCain to Bush on every point, and smear Obama as a loony lefty. This will go on. By October, these attacks will be meaningless. Judging by the length of this 16-month campaign, by October 2008 the guilt-by-association attacks won’t stick. The difference in the candidates’ visions will matter more than a reverend’s endorsement.

Obama will catch a lot of heat over his willingness to meet with foreign leaders. The McCain forces will do whatever it takes to distort Obama’s point and make voters choose fear rather than nuance. And while credible criticisms exist, the Weekly Standard and the old guard will drown them out.

Iraq will dominate headlines as Iraqis go to the polls to vote in parliamentary elections scheduled for Oct. 1. The Iraqi election will test security forces on the ground, and the alleged success of the surge. But if Iraqis continue to vote along sectarian lines, leading Democrats and some rebel Republicans will doubt that peace is possible.

What does peace in Iraq even mean? We may never have an answer as coverage will be tailored around the election in the same fashion as the sworn testimony of the top American general and diplomat in Iraq were in April.

By October, McCain’s near perfect record on abortion will be well known. He’ll continue to distance himself from Bush, hedging the painful truth that he’s voted with the president 95 percent since 2004, lending credence to a Lil’ Bush episode where Lil’ McCain is brainwashed and tortured (by Don Rumsfeld no less).

Just follow the money. McCain’s reliance on the National Republican Committee demonstrates that as president, he’ll be more like them than vice versa. While he parades around the country as a maverick—the gas in the Straight Talk Express, and probably the bus itself—will be paid for by a party that was at odds with McCain over his immigration and campaign finance legislation– two decisions that cemented his reputation as a maverick.

The Democratic civil war in Florida and Michigan will be over. Hell, it’s over already. In Florida, McCain is up by nine in the Real Clear Politics poll averages, but Obama forces think they can put the state in play. And Michigan, like Missouri or Nevada, is totally up for grabs.

Part of putting Florida in play requires Obama to negate his Appalachia problem.

Older voters are ‘it’ in this region with food, family, and flag as issues. Senior citizens traditionally rock the vote in general elections, and some analysts pin the 2004 loss on John Kerry’s inability to mobilize the youth vote. Young voters will find no better candidate than Obama. For every senior that votes, mark my words, two under-30s will vote Obama.

And by October 2008, we’ll have accepted that not all white people are the same. Clinton won 67 percent of the white vote in West Virginia, America’s third whitest state. And Obama won 60 percent of the white vote in Vermont, the nation’s second-whitest state, in early March.

Obama’s working class problem, which is instrumental to Clinton’s case that she’s more electable, is limited to rural populations in the industrial belt, and non-college graduates in Appalachia—or in the language of Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy: Northern ethnics and Southern Protestants.

By October 2008, Obama will have introduced himself, and values, to these voters, some of whom believe him to be a Muslim even after the Rev. Jeremiah Wright saga. The Obama campaign was criticized for loosely competing in West Virginia and Kentucky. It was the right move in the primary, but the Obama forces know there’s work to do, and they’ll be doing it in the months up to, and during, October.

Republicans will continue to link Democratic Congressional candidates to Obama’s. Recent House elections in Illinois, Louisiana, and Mississippi show that the national GOP will throw everything it has into these contests…and still lose. And lose in districts that swung for Bush by at least 55 percent four years ago. The national party is retooling. And has plenty to work with given the surplus of Democratic regicide.

Given the excessive noise about the Democratic nomination, Republicans will defend their platform, party, and ideas as, ‘better than the Democrat tax and spending godless surrendering elitism’.

So that leaves us where: If Obama manages to not be murdered at an NRA convention, if he wins the nomination—if he picks a strong running mate (my picks are Jim Webb, or Chuck Hagel, but I don’t think Chucky-boy would accept it) Obama will not only carry traditional blue turf like Pennsylvania, California, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Iowa, but also win in traditionally red states like North Carolina, Virginia and Colorado.

And I think Obama will win at least 56 percent of the popular vote. Chris Nelson made me write this, so hold him accountable in October 2008 when this is all wrong, and George W. Bush has suspended the election because of the ongoing war with Iran and Russia.