Here it is: my election year ritual. I name the presidential candidates and the winner on New Year’s Eve before the upcoming November election.

This year’s predictions won’t surprise. What will leave you shaking your head is how I reached my conclusions – including the influence of an old sitcom – and who I predict will be the Vice Presidential candidates.

Before the predictions, some history: I’ve done this since 1988 and have been wrong only once; Al Gore in 2000, although he won the popular vote. I can still remember with great pride friends saying to me in 1992, “the Governor of Arkansas?”

And some disclosures here: this is not my endorsement. Like Rick from Casablanca, “I stick my neck out for no one.” This is merely my educated guess on what the voting public will do on Election Day 2008.

If I’m right, it will be a lot of luck. This will be more difficult than predicting the weather on Election Day. There are too many factors that can sway the public over the next eleven months. First, there is the war in Iraq. If insurgents begin to over-run the Iraqis who are supposedly helping us and an increase in U.S. deaths occurs, then the dynamics move away from the economy, health care, and education. What happens in Pakistan and Afghanistan will alter the perceptions of voters, too. And who knows what the current White House will do.

Furthermore, politics this election cycle is like a primordial soup. Stuff’s still evolving. The GOP is a mess. The Democrats are wavering on Hillary – at least in the early primary and caucus states. And if Bloomberg runs what effect will that have? Let me predict right here and right now: Bloomberg is not our next president.

So, here we go.

The Republicans will nominate — barely — Mitt Romney. A close second will be John McCain. But McCain will not be Romney’s running mate. Instead, Mitt will pick – your jaw is about ready to drop — Mike Huckabee.

What?! Daly, are you nuts? These two hate each other. They’re carrying on like school children on a playground. Yes, that’s true. But winning at all cost is an over-riding factor in politics today that can be translated into Christian forgiveness. Plus, geographically it works. Huckabee can give Romney the south while bringing the evangelicals on board.

Meanwhile, the Democrats will nominate Hillary Clinton. This race will be close until Super Tuesday and then she wins the big states and has the nomination sewed up by mid-Spring. Many Democrats will have their doubts about Hillary and might regret not going with Barrack Obama who will be ready for the next election cycle.

However, I think the deciding factor will be women. A friend, who I consider to be educated and informed, told me that Obama bothers her because of his “Muslim upbringing.” She wouldn’t hear any arguments to the contrary.

Let me be clear. I don’t think all women – or even the majority of women – think that way. But I think Obama is fighting an uphill battle in the minds of women of all colors because he’s a man. Yes, I’m not high on the Oprah factor.

However, I think many women will quietly enter the voting booth and pull the lever for Hillary. I call it the Barney Miller Effect.

What’s that? There was an episode from the famous 1970s sitcom where a husband locks his wife in their bathroom on Election Day. She claimed false imprisonment. But the husband claims he locked her away to protect his right to vote. You see, his wife hated him so much she was going to vote for everyone the husband didn’t vote for “to cancel out his vote.”To me, it was the most memorable episode, because, I believe, it has a grain of truth – especially in 2008. I know it sounds conspiratorial. Are we preparing for a War between the Sexes? Probably not, but women are predicted to vote in larger numbers this year.

And I think many women are learning how to play the power game. It’s much more effective under the radar. So, voting for Hillary just to cancel out their husbands or boyfriends who seem to attack Hillary for what seems to be her gender isn’t so far-fetched. Hey, remember the months and years after Watergate. Could you find anyone who admitted they voted for Nixon when he won in a landslide in 1972?

My wife Teri is my best sounding board on this. She actually discovered the Barney Miller Effect from her observations and conversations with other women; my collection of useless TV knowledge merely allowed me to articulate it.

On a more serious note, lately Teri has become more aware of other slights to women in the public arena. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto bothered her, because Bhutto was partly targeted by extremists because she was a woman. And lately, Teri has corrected me and other men for describing women as either a “bitch” or “bitchy”. She says that description isn’t always fair since the corresponding description of a man with the same traits is admirably described as “tough”, “disciplined”, or a “good businessman”. Teri is not too far out of the mainstream of American women.

So, I lean toward a stealth-like, 2008 version of the 1960s bra burning that might not be unleashed until Election Day; not to mention the yearning for a return to the 1990s with Bill near the Oval Office again.

But I also predict Hillary won’t go the feminist route completely. She won’t choose Obama as a running mate. Sure, there is bad blood. But like the GOP, they will make up and be ready to join hands as the Democratic Convention ends. However, there is no way America is ready for a woman and an African-American on the same ticket.

So who will she pick? I think Hillary will run to the center and take as her running mate – another jaw dropper – Nebraska Senator Check Hagel, a Republican.

She gets the coasts; Hagel gets the Midwest and the military-hawk votes. Plus, she remembers her husband’s pick of GOP Senator William Cohen as Defense Secretary. If anything, there needs to be some healing and compromise. And sorry to say to you Republicans, it will be the Democrats who make the first conciliatory gesture.

And who wins? I predict Hillary becomes our next president.

And furthermore, I think her presidency will create such huge shifts in politics that you will see a re-alignment of the political parties as we know them today. But that’s another posting.