If he were still at the Hotline this would be more specific, but unlike so many of the California punditocracy, he knows what a wave election means.

California: As unpopular as Bush supposedly has been in California, he only lost the state by 11 points in both 2000 and 2004. So what happens with McCain in ’08? I think Obama’s margin in this state will tell us a lot about Democratic enthusiasm among the base. Anything above 15 points for Obama probably means he will have some coattails down the ballot. And frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if some two to four GOP incumbents go down, shocking  folks in Washington (Reps. Mary Bono-Mack? David Dreier?) No one is safe in this Blue state.

As we know, the latest Field Poll had Obama up by 22.  And that big a spread is going to cause some disruption.

I hear that Dana Rohrabacher dropped a last-minute mailer to Republicans, imploring them to turn out.  The latest registration numbers show that Dan Lungren is in serious, serious trouble.  This is not going to be a normal election year in California.  And it’s going to put the lie to the primary rationale for redistricting that Arnold Schwarzenegger is peddling to reporters.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said the Kremlin in Russia sees more turnover than the statehouse in Sacramento, as he made the case for Proposition 11 Thursday in a conference call.

“We have to make our politicians responsive to the people, not to the party,” Schwarzenegger said, joined by state AARP president Jeannine English and national AARP CEO Bill Novelli.

Well, the Kremlin is going to see some shakeups this year.  I don’t know if people are going to make the connection between all that turnover and the inherent fallacy that re-gerrymandering would allow for more competition, but maybe some of that late money flowing to No on Prop. 11 can make that case.  Because the facts are that the Yacht Party is on the verge of being wiped out, at the state and federal level.  And no redistricting had anything to do with it.

So I’m watching Countdown, and Olbermann brings up the delegate math in the wake of Barack Obama’s victory in Mississippi.  He teases a discussion with Chuck Todd about “changes in the delegates in Texas, one week after the voting, and changes in the delegates in California, one MONTH later!”

So I think to myself, “Self, are you about to be mentioned on Countdown?”  Because, as has been well-documented, it was changes originated on this website that led to the national media meekly changing their delegate totals to reflect reality.

So Chuck Todd comes on the show, and Olbermann asks him about California, and Todd hems and haws about there being “a lot of absentee and provisional ballots counted late” in the state, which is true, and about how some 3-1 delegate splits in various districts changed to 2-2, which is also true.  Then he said, “and so when all the votes came in, it turns out Obama netted four delegates out of these districts in the last week.” (rough transcript)

Yeah, that’s actually kind of a lie.  There has been no movement in the delegate count since CA-53 flipped to Obama on February 15.  Most of the delegate changes happened very early.  MSNBC just turned away from the counting, neglected to pay attention, and now makes the demonstrably false statement that Obama netted delegates “in the last week.”

What actually happened was that my post about the real delegate counts got picked up by the Wall Street Journal and shamed the entire national media into getting it right.  But I guess that wouldn’t sound too good on Countdown.

It’ll sound good in my email to Keith.