Obama is so confident of victory that he’s already selected the color of the new drapes and upholstery in the Oval Office, and his chief retainers are busy fighting over the best offices in the West Wing. As the New York Times reports: “(Leon) Podesta (head of Obama’s transition team)... has already written a draft Inaugural Address for Mr. Obama.”

Washington Wire describes McCain’s response:

John McCain slammed Barack Obama Saturday for being overconfident about his lead in the polls and predicted election night would feature a Dewey-Truman scenario.

“What America needs now is someone who will finish the race before starting the victory lap,” McCain said to the crowd of several thousand at a rally here. “Someone who will fight to the end, not for himself but for his country.”

In remarks dripping with sarcasm and disdain, the Republican presidential candidate said brought up a story from the New York Times that said former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta has already penned a copy of Obama’s inaugural address.

“I’m not making it up,” McCain said. “An awful lot of voters are still undecided but he’s decided for them that well, why wait, it’s time to move forward with his first inaugural address.”

Obama spokesman Bill Burton quickly refuted the attack. “While this charge is completely false and there is no draft of an inaugural address for Senator Obama, the last thing we need is a candidate like John McCain who just plans on re-reading George Bush’s,” he said.

But McCain had more zingers, fresh off the presses—with his own kind of startling confidence: “When I pull this thing off, I have a request for my opponent, I want him to save that manuscript of his inaugural address and donate it to the Smithsonian so they can put it right next to the Chicago paper that says ‘ Dewey defeats Truman’!”

The reference was to the 1948 presidential race, where Thomas Dewey ran against Harry Truman. The Chicago Daily Tribune–now known as the Chicago Tribune–ran a banner headline proclaiming Dewey’s victory. Several hundred copies were printed before the mistake was realized.

But McCain didn’t stop there. “There’s 10 days left in this election, maybe Barack Obama will even have his first state of the union address ready before you head to the polls,” McCain quipped. “You know, but I guess I’m a little old fashioned about these things. I’d prefer to let the voters weigh in before presuming the outcome.”

Reuters:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s big speech on Thursday night will be delivered from an elaborate columned stage resembling a miniature Greek temple.

The stage, similar to structures used for rock concerts, has been set up at the 50-yard-line, the midpoint of Invesco Field, the stadium where the Denver Broncos’ National Football League team plays.

Some 80,000 supporters will see Obama appear from between plywood columns painted off-white, reminiscent of Washington’s Capitol building or even the White House, to accept the party’s nomination for president.

He will stride out to a raised platform to a podium that can be raised from beneath the floor.

The show should provide a striking image for the millions of Americans watching on television as Obama delivers a speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination.

Politicians in past elections have typically spoken from the convention site itself, but the Obama campaign liked the idea of having their man speak to a larger, stadium-sized crowd not far from where the Democratic National Convention is being held, at the Denver pro basketball arena.

Maybe he’s running for emperor.

Photocommentary here. Heh.

Pejman: Will Zeus be the next Democratic nominee?

Paul Weyrich reacts to the liberal media’s treatment of Barack Obama as “designated President,” and notes that going over to Europe and playing president has not really done his poll numbers a lot of good.

Not yet elected president, hell, he hasn’t even been nominated yet. And since he lost the democrat party popular vote to Hillary, absent universal media support and some peculiar manuevers by that democrat rules committee, he wouldn’t even be being nominated.

It was an unusually warm January day in Washington as President-elect Barack Hussein Obama took the oath of office administered by longtime Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. Stevens already had administered the oath of office to Vice President-elect Evan Bayh, of Indiana, who had been picked by Obama because he was perceived to be a middle-of-the-road man. Recent reporting has revealed that Bayh shares most of Obama’s radical views on issues. The packed Capitol Plaza waited with eager anticipation as now President Obama was about to deliver a rhetorical masterpiece, for which he had become famous.

Have trouble recalling how Obama had bested Senator John Sidney McCain, III? Was it the Electoral College which elected Obama or the popular vote or both? No one seems to remember.

No one seems to remember because there was no election. It began with the presumptive nominee’s trip to the Middle East and Europe. The Obama campaign began referring to the candidate as if he already were President. That, while politically risky, is certainly understandable. What is not understandable is how many in the media went along with what the campaign fed them. They began to treat the Senator from Illinois as if he already had been elected President. These are media types who believe that perception is reality. If they can convince the electorate that Senator Obama already is President the election will become a mere formality. In fact, the election is a sort of tolerated nuisance in their eyes.

It might have worked but for the contempt the electorate has for the media. I saw at least half a dozen interviews on cables over the air networks. In every case voters said, “He is behaving as if he were already elected.” Most said, “That isn’t right.” What shocked the reporters, who were stuck hanging around with McCain as he campaigned in small-town America while their anchors reported live from Obama’s trip, was how the voters got it. A number identified themselves as Democrats. One even said he was an Obama supporter. The tracking polls confirmed what these voters told the reporters. The campaign believed this trip would give Obama a big bump, putting Senator Obama permanently ahead in what has been up to now a surprisingly tight race with Senator McCain. It didn’t turn out that way. In every tracking poll Senator Obama actually lost support. He had opened a six-point lead at the beginning of the trip. Depending on which tracking poll one prefers, Obama’s lead decreased to either four, three or two points. Individual states were even more dramatic. In no state did his support increase. In some states where he had gone ahead substantially his support either reversed the trend or is now behind. They include Colorado, Minnesota and Michigan, among others.

There are lessons here for both campaigns and the media. Campaigns must be respectful of the America voter. Campaigns which put their candidate ahead of the candidate’s actual position run the risk of appearing arrogant. It would take something cataclysmic for both Obama and McCain not to receive their party’s nomination. Yet the voters want to see that it really happens.

Hey! wait a minute. What do you know? It’s not actually over.

The LA Times reports that Obama’s poll numbers are not rising, Clinton supporters are not rallying to elect him, a majority of Americans find him elitist or exotic.

Can it be that he’s in trouble?

Even as his turn on the global stage hit an emotional peak Thursday with a speech before a cheering crowd of more than 200,000 in Germany, Barack Obama faced new evidence of stubborn election challenges back home.

Fresh polls show that he has been unable to convert weeks of extensive media coverage into a widened lead. And some prominent Democrats whose support could boost his campaign are still not enthusiastic about his candidacy.

Several new surveys show that Obama is in a tight race or even losing ground to Republican John McCain, both nationally and in two important swing states, Colorado and Minnesota. One new poll offered a possible explanation for his troubles: A minority of voters see Obama as a familiar figure with whom they can identify.

Republicans are moving to exploit this vulnerability, trying to encourage unease among voters by building the impression that Obama’s overseas trip and other actions show he has a sense of entitlement that suggests he believes the White House is already his.

In Ohio on Thursday, McCain hit that theme: “I’d love to give a speech in Germany . . . but I’d much prefer to do it as president of the United States, rather than as a candidate for the office of presidency.”

Obama also faces discontent from some of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most ardent supporters, who are put off by what they describe as a campaign marked by hubris and a style dedicated to televised extravaganzas.

Read the whole thing.

Not to worry, he can always run for president of Europe.

Barack Obama waves goodbye to the Illinois State Senate

Barack Obama didn’t even win a majority of the votes cast in the democrat party primaries. His party’s convention has yet to occur, and he has yet to be nominated.

Barack Obama has to be most ludicrously underqualified presidential candidate of all time. An insignificant state legislator, representing an inner city minority safe seat from a one party city, with no record of legislative accomplishment whatsoever, he lucked into the US Senate, courtesy of an angry divorce scandal. He then gets to give a token speech at the 2004 democrat convention, proves he can read effectively from a teleprompter, and entirely on that basis becomes a presidential candidate.

Since being elected to the Senate, he’s been running for the presidency, so he has even less of a record of accomplishment in the US Senate than he compiled in the Illinois State Senate where he was remarkable only for the number of occasions he voted “Present:” 129.

But, as Marc Ambinder reports, Barack Obama is so confident of winning that he is already planning for his presidency.

With less than six months to go before he would be sworn in as the nation’s 44th president, Sen. Barack Obama has directed his aides to begin planning for the transition.

“Barack is well aware of the complexity and the organizational challenge involved in the transition process and he has tasked s small group to begin thinking through the process,” a senior campaign adviser said. “Barack has made his expectations clear about what he wants from such a process, how he wants it to move forward, and the establishment and execution of his timeline is proceeding apace.”

Last month, the Post’s Chris Cillizza reported that campaign advisers were sounding out John Podesta, a former White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and currently the president of the Center for American Progress, for his advice.

An aide confirms that Podesta will probably be asked to head the transition team, which would take over from the campaign if Obama wins in November, and would be tasked with ensuring a smooth handover of power.

Willem-Adolphe Bouguereau, Democrat Who Stabbed Hillary Pursued By the Furies, 1862, Chrysler Museum of Art

Well, here you are. You’ve got a really obscure guy with an exotic and ultra-left background that you’re running for president… because he talks so good. My, oh my. I’m just a Republican myself, and what do I know? But it sure looks like a risky move to me. I mean, what are you democrats going to do if some bad stuff on this virtually unknown guy with no meaningful record of any kind should happen to come out during the course of the months and months and months yet to go until November? Did you really think no one will be looking ?

I find all this kind of surprising. George W. Bush hands you guys an “Elect One President Free” card, and you all go nuts, and do your level best to find some way to blow it. Does your party really have a death wish?

And, btw, tell me democrats, whatever happened to all that “every vote must count” jazz we heard so much about in 2000? Hillary did win the popular vote, you know, by more than 300,000. And your own Rules Committee gave Barack Hussein a bunch of votes from Michigan, a primary in which he never even ran, by pure fiat, voiding the expressed will of the voters of that state. They also halved the votes of Florida (where every dimpled chad, as we all know, is sacred) along with Michigan’s to improve B. Hussein’s margin and to lower Hillary’s count. Was that democratic? So where are David Boies and the rest of the democrat party’s valiant fighters for everybody’s franchise? Is there possibly some inconsistency here?

I don’t mean to pry into your party’s internal operations, but it sure looks to me as if your bosses and backroom operators screwed Hillary over and strong armed her (the wimp!) right out of the race, greasing the skids to benefit Obama.

Watching all this, I feel like the chorus in one of the Greek plays. I feel this overwhelming urge to chant: “You guys are going to so get it in November.And you are so going to deserve it.”