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I think pan is voicing a great concern of mine....whoever is the next president will likely be overtaken by events that the Bush presidency seems to have made inevitable...Iraq war "blowback"...a "bad end" if we withdraw slowly, quickly, or not at all, continued $700 billion annual national debt increases....either via Obama's increased domestic spending on new programs or on attempts to ease the pain of long recession on already strapped, but currently still employed families....later....as unemployment grows.

Of coarse...there will be some attacks in the next few years....on US soil, the law of averages dictates it. The media and republicans, under an Obama presidency scenario, will call whatever it is, "terrorism", stress that all was peaceful, "in the homeland" during the post 9/11 Bush years, and unceasingly drive home the point that "we got hit", because Obama is "soft on terrorism".

These attacks are, under the law of averages, most probable and predictable....why not let McCain be the figurehead when they happen, NEXT?

Like it or not, under pan's way of looking at things, if McCain wins, it's a longterm win for democrats, and if Obama wins, democrats will feel like immediate winners....although the "be careful what you wish for" scenario will probably be the next shoe to drop on the dems.....

The federal government will also attempt to stem the waive of local government bankruptcies....it's coming....growing home foreclosure rates, coupled with declining property values, will diminish property tax collections, just as recession driven demands for increased social services, rise.

Bank failures will destroy the meager reserves in the FDIC deposit insurance fund, and the federal government will borrow to keep paying deposit insurance claims.

Combine all of this chronic borrowing with a trade deficit that isn't going away....it may decline from $800 billion annually now, to $500 billion as we import less oil and discretionary consumer products, due to recession, and you have a recipe for long recession with no interest rate relief. The dollar may not fall further, because, as demand drops, we should experience catastrophic deflation....the Fed's worse fear. All debt will increase in "value", in the sense of the difficulty in making debt payments in a deflationary environment, vs. owing and paying on a fixed amount of money that is decreasing in value in an inflationary environment....

I think pan is saying...and if he is....I agree that the democrats best long term scenario is to gain bigger margins in the senate and the house, but leave the presidency, this time....to John McCain....let him be this era's "Jimmy Carter style", "patsy"...for the blowback caused by the last eight years, just as Carter ended up being the "patsy" for the Johnson/Nixon/Ford/Vietnam "blowback".

The only other probable scenario is two years of complete democratic party control under Obama and the next congress....painted because of the Iraq war and the economy and deficit as a period of dismal democratic management failure....followed by republican mid-term gains in the legislature in 2010, followed by long republican dominance...a repeat of 2002 to 2006, from 2012 onward....

Oh yeah....if you aren't under the influence of the "Obama vibe"...some are calling him a "light worker"....ala Martin Luther King....
....it isn't hard to agree that he has shown extremely poor judgment in his relationship with Rezko, most especially the house "deal"....and the way he tried at first to deflect what actually happened, and in his relationship with the former weather underground couple, and...although it is minor, it speaks to and is linked to the other two misjudgments.... the two nutcase pastors he vouched for.

Because Obama has been campaigning for the presidency almost since his speech at the 2004 democratic convention, he is perceived....it is stressed by the opposition....as having much less than four years experience as a US senator. So what have you got? A well meaning, charasmatic young guy whose greatest executive management experience is in managing his senate staff and the staff of a perpetual campaign....and his vice-president search committee just imploded, because of the man Obama picked to coordinate it had a shitty ethical compromise in his past....

So, charitably....Obama is light on executive management experience, light on senate, in person, legislative experience, and he's an iffy judge of character, motive, and ability of others...... great !

Do I have your timeline about right, pan?