Interesting headline on a McClatchy article published Sunday: “Daring to utter the 'L' word: Obama on track to a landslide."

In the piece, reporter Steven Thomma writes:

Barring a dramatic change in the political landscape over the next three weeks, Democrats appear headed toward a decisive victory on Election Day ... The victory would send Barack Obama to the White House and give him larger Democratic majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate -- and perhaps a filibuster-proof margin there.

That could mark a historic realignment of the country's politics on a scale with 1932 or 1980, when the out party was given power it held for a generation, and used it to transform government's role in American society.

Thomma has some guts making this sort of prediction. Personally, I always try to avoid looking into the future like this, because even with just a few weeks left in the election, anything can happen.

Of course, by the same token, there's good reason to believe that what Thomma predicts will come true. To see that, one need only look at another recent article, this one in the New York Times, about the worry inside the GOP over John McCain's current campaign woes. The Times quotes Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman who was a prominent supporter of McCain's in 2000 but supported Mitt Romney during this year's primaries, as saying, “The main thing [McCain] needs to do is focus on a single message -- a single, concise or clear-cut message, and stick with that over the next 30 days, regardless of what happens.

“He’s had a lot of attack lines. But it’s time to choose.”

The paper also cites Saul Anuzis, who chairs the Republican Party in Michigan. McCain recently decamped from that state, giving up after months of trying to swing it from the Democratic column. (It went for John Kerry in 2004.)  “I think you’re seeing a turning point,” Anuzis told the Times. “You’re starting to feel real frustration because we are running out of time. Our message, the campaign’s message, isn’t connecting.”