Which means that if Obama is elected the Bush administration constituted a third horrible event on the order of those previous two, which seems about right.

Is Obama the third exception? I question that, in spite of his charm and rhetorical skill.

Of course, then we’re stuck with McCain . . .

(1) I think there are reasons why both McCain and Obama can expect most of the current defectors to rally around the candidates, for many of the same reasons, but I think there are some asymmetries which favor Obama in this regard. The Democratic dissentors don’t seem to loath him the way many of the Republican dissenters loath McCain; moreover, as you and some of your commenters pointed out in a previous post, the fact that the Democratic race is still ongoing in a way that the Republican race is not may be artificially hurting Obama’s numbers among Dems.

(2) I can see three reasons for the “surprising” defections among liberals. One, the voters may be more aware than you think of his real foreign policy views; on the one hand, his fans like that policy just fine, as I have argued elsewhere, on the other hand, many anti-interventionists on the left may be skeptical of his candidacy for that same reason. Moreover, while he has a more liberal voting record than Clinton, he has, on most issues, run slightly to Clinton’s right during the campaign. Finally, of course, the very “work together,” post partisan rhetoric that moderates love (at least currently) is hated by many on the left. However, absent a credible (e.g., not Nader) anit-war third party candidate, most of these people will likely come back to Obama.

(3) Finally, somewhat orthogonally to this post, but on the larger topic of who is likely to win this fall, I’m increasingly convinced that Obama has the edge. McCain will put his foot in his mouth on a regular basis during the campaign, and it will start to hurt him (arguably it already has). I also tend to think that McCain will have a somewhat harder time of walking the tightrope between mollifying the base and not alienating moderates. Finally, Obama does have some unusually enthusiastic constituencies, which can reasonably be expected to turn out in unusually high numbers. The only such constituency enjoyed by McCain is the press (granted, significant in its own way).

(4) On the other hand, I think you have to conclude that at least some of the Democratic defections are based upon race (perhaps at least partially explaining the elderly defectors?), and it’s easy to see those people voting for McCain.