And after Dem leaders already called for slashing the military budget by 25%? Surprise!

A phalanx of liberal think tanks and interest groups - anticipating a Democratic victory on Tuesday - are mobilizing to push Sen. Barack Obama to the left of his campaign positions. In recent weeks, groups have held conferences, drafted policy papers and lobbied campaign advisers in the hope of influencing what they believe would be the most receptive administration to the political left since Jimmy Carter. The Obama campaign declined to comment about pressure from liberal policy groups.Left-leaning activists are trying to replicate the surge of conservative interest groups under the Reagan administration that shaped Republican politics for the next three decades, staking out positions well to the left of how Sen. Obama has tried to define himself near the political center.

I'm not sure that "pulling" Obama to the left is going to be much of a problem. Obama has to be the only candidate in history who has people voting for him because they hope that he's lying to them. Gay rights advocates know quite well that Obama is explicitly against gay marriage but write that he "actually has no problem with gay marriage". Ostensibly pro-Israel American Jews know quite well that Obama surrounds himself with anti-Israel radicals but fall back on a vast array of awful pretexts. Mickey Kaus knows quite well that Obama and McCain are indistinguishable on amnesty and that Obama is an orthodox liberal on schools but he spins imaginative scenarios where Obama won't do what he has the inclination and the power to do. Christopher Hitchens knows quite well that Obama is "vapid and gutless" but holds out hope that Obama/Biden "show some signs of being able and willing to profit from experience."

There is no space for democratic deliberation when every argument is answered with "yeah, but he doesn't really mean that." My prediction: Obama landslide, 53-47 nationally. The election is a referendum on Obama so most undecideds break his way, but many of them don't show up to the polls. State-by-state: PUMAs come home in PA, the drip drip drip of ACORN's nonexistent voters, enthusiastic nonstate voters, hungry homeless voters, and exploited mentally handicapped voters swing OH and NV, "disappeared" military ballots fail to save VA, and McCain just gets beat in FL. Final tally: 338-200.

First polls close at 4pm, VA and OH are both called by 5:30pm, FL by 6:00pm, and I'm passed out by 6:10pm. Good times. Maybe by the time I wake up Obama will be ready to answer the few questions reporters are actually willing to ask him. But probably not.