In my family, we have a tradition of making written predictions every Christmas. It started when my father used to write down in a little notebook his guess for when the spring peepers (frogs) would start making sounds from the ponds behind our house. Then it grew, and we'd sit around making predictions about family and about politics. One year we predicted my sister would have a boyfriend, and she did.
We lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, so even though our house was in a semi-rural part of what is now an absurdly overdeveloped concrete jungle, we subscribed to the Washington Post, and politics was huge. At Christmas 1973, when I was nine, we made predictions about what would happen to Nixon (nobody was right). The 1976 presidential elections were a big deal, and we made predictions for both the primaries and the general. In 1979, my dad correctly predicted Reagan's win, and we tried to make predictions for the decade of the 1980s. My grandfather even predicted his own death during that decade, but was wrong (he got it right the next time).
This year, my brother made a prediction that both of us want to see proved wrong.
My brother's predictions were often the most interesting. Christmas 1990 he predicted, vividly, that "the soviet union would cease to exist and be replaced by a loose confederation of independent states", which happened exactly a year later.
This year, my brother made a prediction that both of us want to see proved wrong. He predicted that Clinton would win the Democratic nomination, and that McCain would win the Republican nomination, and that McCain would beat Hillary in the general.
He doesn't want this to be true, mind you. But he reasoned that on the Republican side, the establishment loathes Huckabee, Guiliani is tanking, and the shine is coming off the Ken doll. Republicans may not like McCain, but they may realize that he's the only one of their candidates who's not ridiculous. On the Democratic side (this was Christmas, of course, well before Iowa) he's supporting Edwards but felt the betting money was on Hillary.
The thing is, it could happen. The media's crush on McCain and animosity towards Clinton seem to be undeterred, and it strikes me as the one primary competition that could lead to a GOP win in November. I've been undecided, but see Hillary as the one leading candidate in our camp who would not generate a lot of enthusiasm in the general, and McCain as the one in theirs who would.
That's not to take anything away from the Hillary supporters out there. I see your enthusiasm. I just don't know it would rub off from others onto Clinton in the general. I'll be voting super tuesday (absentee from overseas) and don't know yet for whom. But I sure want it to be for the next president.