In 8 years, this woman is going to be elected Vice President:


Who is she?
Kay Hagan, who, last night, won the Democratic primary for the Senate race this fall in North Carolina against Elizabeth Dole.
I'd never heard of her before today, but I like what I see.  She understands the importance of alternative fuels and taking care of the environment; she believes in the importance of high tech and saving jobs.  She's an impassioned and articulate speaker.  She's likeable.   Neither shrill or strident.  Not bitchy at all.
She has positions which are immensely reasonable: encourage more people to become teachers, balance the government budget, and undertake a responsible withdrawal from Iraq (the fact that her husband was a Viet Nam vet and she has two nephews on active duty now will help win her friends in military circles).
She's also got a sense of humor: Her website features an image of Dorothy's Ruby Slippers.  The message: Send Liddy Dole back to Kansas with Bob.  How'd she get to be a Senator for North Carolina anyway?  She's not really from here and doesn't really give a crap about NC.  And, unlike Kay, she doesn't even have a husband with the residency to vote for her! 
Kay will follow the popular tactic this year of associating Dole with Bush every chance she gets (Dole toed Bush's line to the tune of 49/50 votes in 2002, Kay will remind everyone). She'll link Dole to the war.
And, with Democrats voting in record numbers this fall, she will be swept into power with a bunch of other Dems.

And by 2016 she'll be a rising star on the Democratic landscape. 

One of the major effects of the 2008 Presidential campaign, no matter how it ends, will be that having a woman and/or a minority on a major party ticket will not just be a novelty, but a necessity.  The old conventional wisdom was that you needed geographical diversity.  (In 1960 and 1988, for example, the Dem tickets had both a northerner from Massachusetts and a southerner from Texan.)  The new conventional wisdom is that future tickets will need racial and/or gender diversity.  (On the Democratic side, I mean.  The Republican party will be run by white men until they run out of white men, which will be never.)

If Obama loses this fall, then Hillary runs in 2012, and all Kay Hagan bets are off. 
But I think Obama will win this fall, partially because every time the country tanks, we throw away the leading party (one major exception being 2004).  Plus Old Man McCain is sounding more and more like Montgomery Burns, with his anachronistic references to things that don't exist anymore - Czechoslovakia, the League of Nations, the 20th Century.  No, Obama wins this year.  Then, in 2012, if the country is doing well, I doubt that even Clintonian hubris will make her run against an incumbent from her own party - as Ted Kennedy did, disastrously for all involved, against Carter in 1980.  Clinton will especially be convinced not to run if the Democrats engineer her into the governorship of New York, which they may do as a consolation prize.

By 2016 Hillary will simply be too old.  She'll be 61 on election day this year (did you know that?).  In 2016, she'll be 69.  If McCain's too old now, if Reagan was starting to slip into Alzheimer's in his second term, then Hillary also will be too old.  (She knows that the Dems' best chance is this year, and that's why she's running so desperately.)

The Democrats will need a woman or a minority in 2016.  Hillary's old and out by then.  Kay Hagan, she's the one.  And who knows?  Maybe after 8 years as VP - and here I'm really going out on a limb, esp. since she hasn't even beaten Dole yet - maybe, just maybe, in 2024, Kay Hagan will be elected the first female President of the United States.

Hey - I said it was a crazy prediction, didn't I?