The White House announced today that Obama will give his State of The Union address on January 27, saving Lost fanatics a lot of heartache.
Meanwhile, Nate Silver, at FiveThirtyEight.com, who correctly predicted all the Senate contests last cycle, says that Scott Brown is a 3 to 1 favorite going into tomorrow’s election against Martha Coakley.
Coakley’s odds are substantially worse than they appeared to be 24 hours ago, when there were fewer credible polls to evaluate and there appeared to be some chance that her numbers were bottoming out and perhaps reversing. However, the ARG and Research 2000 polls both show clear and recent trends against her. Indeed the model, which was optimized for regular rather than special elections, may be too slow to incorporate new information and may understate the magnitude of the trend toward Brown.
All of which could lead Obama’s speechwriters to rip up their draft SOTU remarks, making Obama’s speech before a joint session at the end of the month slightly more like an episode of Lost–by which I mean, suspenseful and dramatic and about a guy who suddenly finds himself stranded on a Senate island, surrounded by a hostile filibustering Republicans.