The way things look today, we'll be up later waiting to see if Democrats were able to hit the magic 60 in the Senate than to see who won the White House.

This isn't to say that the race for the White House is over, just that it's no longer in John McCain's hands. If this thing turns around in the next 14 days, it'll be because of an outside event over which neither candidate has any control. There's nothing that McCain can do himself to change the trajectory of the race.

To be sure, we should expect Barack Obama's lead over McCain to tighten. For example, McCain is still drastically underperforming President Bush among white men. Even if he doesn't win them 62 percent to 37 percent, as Bush did in '04, it's hard to believe that he'll stay mired in the low 50s, as he is now. Obama, however, is no longer underperforming among white unmarried women, as he was for much of the fall. In early September, Obama was getting 42-48 percent of their votes in the Diageo/Hotline tracking polls, significantly below Al Gore's 57 percent and John Kerry's 55 percent. As of Oct. 18, Obama was getting 55 percent of this vote.

The current political climate makes almost every House district unsafe for the GOP.

But as we've known all along, running strong in national polls only tells us part of the story. The battleground states are where the race is won and lost. And for the last three weeks, Obama's been steadily building his lead in the states Diageo/Hotline has deemed battlegrounds (Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin). During the first polling period of September (2-9), McCain and Obama were tied among voters in these states. By the next week, Sept. 10-16, Obama was ahead by 3 points. But as the bottom dropped out of the stock market, McCain's numbers followed. As of Oct. 8-14, Obama had a whopping 15-point lead, 51 percent to 36 percent.

You easterners with early bedtimes will be happy to know that most of the action this year is taking place east of the Mississippi. If Obama wins Virginia, Florida or Ohio, he'll win the election. Of course, given the controversy raging in those three states over voter registration irregularities, lawyers may keep us up into the wee hours of Nov. 5.

The same goes for the Senate. If Democrats don't beat Republicans Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), Roger Wicker (Miss.), Mitch McConnell (Ky.) or Susan Collins (Maine), they won't make it to 60. At this point, Chambliss and Wicker look the most vulnerable.

Even if they do win at least one of these races, it's not over until we find out what happened to Sen. Ted Stevens in Alaska, and the polls there don't close until midnight EST. It's entirely possible that Stevens could lose his case and still win re-election. While he's been on trial, he's actually seen an uptick in his polling. The most recent Research 2000/DailyKos poll there showed Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich up just 2 points, 48-46 percent. Last month, the same poll gave Begich a 6-point lead, 50-44 percent.

The action on the House side is not nearly as dramatic; there's no "magic" number there. But the combination of a tremendous tailwind and a huge cash advantage (as of Oct. 8, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had spent $33 million to just $4 million for the National Republican Congressional Committee in independent expenditures) means Democrats can potentially expand their 18-seat margin by 20-25 seats.

A few months ago, that looked almost impossible. After all, most of the low-hanging fruit -- vulnerable incumbents sitting in Democratic-leaning districts -- had been picked in the last two elections. Yet the current political climate makes almost every district unsafe for the GOP. Currently, the Diageo/Hotline generic ballot tracking shows Democrats with a 6-point lead. DailyKos has it at 13 points. Let's split the difference and say it's 9.5, just a shade over RealClearPolitics' average as of Oct. 15. If that's the case, a rough rule of thumb would be that any district where Bush took 60 percent of the vote or less would be vulnerable.

To be sure, that's a very rough guide. After all, there are some Republicans like Jim Gerlach (Pa.-06) and Mark Kirk (Ill.-10), who look very well positioned despite the marginal lean of their district. The reason that they -- or, say, Christopher Shays, R-Conn. -- may win is that they've been able to carve out an identity as something other than a "generic" incumbent or candidate. Those who have been getting by with help from the Republican lean of the district or a weak opponent are the ones finding themselves in serious trouble today.

The difference between Democrats picking up 10-12 seats (as was predicted earlier this year) and 20-25 seats is more than just psychological. It would give Democrats majorities like they had in the '80s and '90s, in turn giving Speaker Nancy Pelosi much more flexibility in letting members take "a walk" on tough votes.

It also builds a bigger bulwark for 2010. From 1962 until 1994, a president's first mid-term election was usually disastrous for his party, with an average loss of 23 seats. Of course, Bush broke that spell in 2002 when his party gained eight seats. Even so, if we assume 23 seats this year, then Democrats building their margin to 40 or more is a very big insurance policy for a long-term hold on the majority -- and one more thing keeping Republicans up late on Election Night.