PREDICTION: “Barring some dramatic change in the final ten days or so, Mitt Romney will win the popular vote in the 2012 presidential election,” Jim Geraghty writes — with this additional don’t get cocky-related caveat:

Now, as Al Gore will tell you, a popular-vote win and a couple of bucks will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks. But it’s also relatively rare for a candidate to win the popular vote and lose the Electoral College. And if Obama is running a few percentage points behind his 2008 levels of support in red states and blue states . . . just how much can advertising and get-out-the-vote efforts stem that tide in the purple states?

Perhaps that explains this imagery from the Obama camp. They were channeling Putin yesterday; has Team Obama moved on to Mao? Forward!

(It also dovetails perfectly with the subhead of the essay by Matthew Continetti we linked to a few moments ago: “How sarcasm and insult took over the Democratic Party.”)