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If you heard it once, you heard it 70 times on Sunday. "If the Washington Redskins lose their last home game before an election, the incumbent party loses power."

To which one can only wonder how miserable is Joe Gibbs, a football coach and NASCAR participant -- the two pre-eminent predictors of rampant Republicanism. He coaches the Redskins with middling success, or in Sunday's case, middling failure against the Green Bay Packers.

He may have single-handedly changed the nature of world history ... and we say "he" because we would hate to think that the next four years have been determined by Mark Brunell.

Now Donovan McNabb, maybe.

But we digress.

Truth is, if in fact the Redskins' 28-14 defeat Sunday really does mean the Bush Family has now gone back-to-back one-and-outs, then this puts the Red Sox accomplishment in far greater perspective. As in, "What's the big damn deal here? Beat the Yankees? Hah! Try beating a sitting President, then pop off."

Which brings us to this related lunacy: According to Business Week, which is Sports Illustrated for the Got-Two-Tens-For-A-Five crowd, there is a 70 percent chance that John Kerry will win the White House because the Red Sox won the World Series and the Red Sox' dominant uniform color is red.

In other words, you got your red states, and your Red Sox, and the first thing you feel is your eyes melting down the front of your shirt. This data is too meaningless and silly not to be repeated ad nauseum as though it were actually fraught with value.

Frankly, this is troubling. When your absentee ballot counts less than the Gold Sheet, democracy has gone to hell. Or Florida, depending on who's running the voting machines.

But it isn't as troubling as the number of man, woman and undecided hours used to search for a sports predictor with the power to emanate politics.

We don't mean to denigrate our football and baseball heroes here. I mean, what's the Pew Center for the Public Trust got that Manny Ramirez doesn't? How does one presume that Tim Russert makes more sense on this stuff than Paul Maguire?

And yet, this is precisely the sort of thing that puts the Presidency in its proper perspective. Elections are essentially the Big Game At The End anyway, and political reporters are just overdressed ball writers talking to more mean-spirited and far less entertaining people.

So let's take the Redskins and Red Sox at their word (and you need to understand here that as a registered Whig, I have no dog in this hunt because I am honor bound to vote for William Henry Harrison, who's been dead since before the Red Sox even bothered to play). Let's assume that all this stuff is actually a portent of things to come. Can you imagine how insufferable Red Sox fans will be then?

Look, we understand that the Sox have pent up a lot of energy for their patrons over the years, and emptying out New Hampshire for the parade and all that. But to think they not only believe that they helped the Sox get over the hump (yes, that was Jeff Suppan renewing his season tickets just the other day) but now suspect that George W. Bush got run out of town because they renewed their temporary love affair with Derek Lowe ..., well, that's more than a stranger should have to endure.

As for the Redskins' predictor, Wisconsin has been considered a swing state for a while now, but we never considered that it might swing on an Al Harris interception.

But since it apparently has, John Kerry's got some federal funding to divert, now doesn't he? Say, $3 billion for the National Cheese Endowment here, $1.9 billion to teach dairy cows how to use the Internet there, maybe even smothering the Iraqi insurgents by wrapping them in quality toilet paper.

And Washington, D.C., has to be made the 51st state because the 'Skins took the pipe. That seems the least he can do.

And by now, we have come to expect the least from our politicians. That way, the disappointment doesn't seem so bad, and people jump out of third-story windows rather than 30-story ones.

So nice work, Pack. And a fine effort, Sox. You've turned over a government.

And this one better be good for a change.

Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com