The key to the scenario is whether or not enough people feel sufficient pain to turn to a third party to alleviate it. That’s not especially arcane, and it really doesn’t seem much of a stretch to me that McCain, coming after Bush, could drive the country over the pain threshold.

Whether a third party would actually emerge, and which it would be, are questions I can’t really answer since I don’t have an actual script from which to work. I’d say the Democratic Socialists would have a shot on the issues, only they’re even less assertive than Democrats. Maybe the Greens could do a little something; they’re at least players in a number of other countries.

These aren’t normal times.

Obama has signalled in every possible way short of simply announcing it that his administration will be unimaginative and intellectually corrupt; a perfect recipe to deliver the White House back to Republicans in 2012.

And, as I said, and as is really tremendously significant, the Democratic failure to punish Republicans has validated all the power-grabbing, anti-constitutional behaviors of the past eight years and assured that the next crop of executive branch Republicans will pick up where this one left off, which is somewhere we don’t know.

Obama will be facing an economy that redefines “nose dive.” He’ll have, I’ll wager, two hundred banks going down the tube inside his first six months. He’ll add hundreds of billions to the deficit in his first year through financial bailouts, and at the same time be spending more on Iraq and Afghanistan than Bush is now.

He won’t be able to deliver his pathetic little health care plan, or anything else that costs real money. He has repeatedly shown during the past few years, including since he began his presidential candidacy, that his instinct is to cut deals with the right rather than with what is laughably called the left, and we know exactly how effective and inspiring the right is in a crisis.

This is going to be seriously ugly. As I’ve said elsewhere, my support for the McCain scenario is heavily influenced by my frame of mind, which isn’t positive. But, I think my assessment of the impending Obama presidency will prove to be pretty accurate, and I want to innoculate against any absolution for what will be, in the end, a self inflicted massacre.