On the outside, looking in. (Photo by Carolyn Kaster/AP)

I wrote a couple weeks ago on the growing evidence that not only is Obama going to win, he’s going to win big. The evidence was there, and a few pundits were making the same predictions (though more muted, because as pundits they fear being wrong). Today, however, it seems the prediction of a McCain loss is a sure bet… just take a gander at these varied samples from around the web:

Bill Kristol, token conservative columnist for the New York Times:

The McCain campaign, once merely problematic, is now close to being out-and-out dysfunctional. Its combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic. If the race continues over the next three weeks to be a conventional one, McCain is doomed.

He may be anyway. Bush is unpopular. The media is hostile. The financial meltdown has made things tougher. Maybe the situation is hopeless — and if it is, then nothing McCain or his campaign does matters.

Ex-Clintonite Lanny Davis, in Politico’s Arena:

this election is over. Obama is on the right side of most issues supported by most voters, especially economic, and Senator McCain cannot delete his erratic behavior when the credit crunch crisis hit, fatally undermining his key strengths on experience and steadiness in crisis. …

Given this Schmidt-driven politically tone-deaf Atwater-model strategy–if not changed–what is a certain Obama win on Nov 4 will be a blow-out – perhaps close to the Ronald Reagan landslide over Walter Mondale in 1984.

Former Reagan campaign manager Ed Rollins:

We have seen two major campaigns this year that could be described as internally divided — Sen. Hillary Clinton’s losing primary campaign and now Sen. John McCain’s general election effort.

And while chaos and disarray reigned supreme in Sen. Barack Obama’s opponents’ campaigns, the steady, disciplined and strategically driven Obama campaign marches forward toward likely victory. …

And no one seems to be in charge, least of all the candidate. The end result is a campaign suffering from “schizophrenia.”

John McCain is saying one thing on the stump, his running mate another. But the worst sin is that his advertising campaign is incoherent and putting out multiple and inconsistent messages. …

With one debate remaining and less than three weeks of campaigning left, John McCain’s 10-year quest to be president is coming to a close and — as of today — a dreadful one.

This once looked presumptuous... now it's looking like a pretty sure bet.

Despite how close the presidential race has been (yes, past tense, you’ll see why in a moment), for months I’ve been predicting a Obama victory, quite often with the words “I don’t see how the guy can lose.” I know, I know… Racism still exists, sure, and plenty of people still buy the notion that Republicans are the only people who can manage the military. But it’s just seemed, to me, a stretch that Americans by and large are going to vote for a man who’s so old and so utterly Washington (despite his somewhat plausible increasingly hollow claims to the contrary) when they have a chance to vote for another whose image, at least, is diametrically opposite of the lowest-approval-ratings-since-the-Nixon-era President Bush. Intellectual instead of bumbling? Check. Digests information instead of relying on an empty gut? Check. Fresh-faced and full of vigor instead of grey-haired and increasingly harried? Check.

So far, however, I’ve been mostly in the wilderness on this. So imagine my surprise to find that Daniel Larison over at The American Conservative — a man who’s voting Baldwin, no less, and has very little nice to say about Obama — has predicted the same today.

Now that it is becoming increasingly clear that McCain is going to lose in a blowout (and here I must acknowledge that I never imagined this would happen and assumed the electorate would remain evenly divided), what will be the aftermath within the GOP?

(His answer, by the way, is worth reading in full.)

Doom and gloom, say you McCainiacs reading this? I’m sorry to have to tell you this… well, I’ll just let today’s electoral count from Politico tell the tale:

(See also The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder, “ObamaPollSplosion: He Breaks 50 Everywhere”)