Doonesbury calls it for Obama

Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury strip for Nov. 5, the morning after the election, celebrates an Obama victory.

The prediction in cartoon form is making some newspaper editors nervous because they will have to put the comics to bed before the final voting outcome is known. Trudeau's syndicate, Universal Press, is providing papers with a substitute rerun strip if they choose to forego the Obama victory version.

Trudeau acknowledges that he's taking a risk, but he thinks it's a relatively small one, given the latest polling numbers. "The way I see it, if Obama wins, I'm in the flow and commenting on an extraordinary phenomenon," Trudeau said in an e-mail to the AP. "If he loses, there'll be such a national uproar that a blown call in a comic strip won't be much noticed. Besides, I'll be the one with the egg on my face -- not the editors."

More details at boston.com's Political Intelligence, at Daily Cartoonist and further quotes from Trudeau about his thinking at Comic Riffs.