Now that the players are chosen, it’s time for a look at this fall’s race, especially now there is another, supposedly definitive, birthtime available for Barack Obama. The time is from an allegedly real birth certificate published by DailyKos.com and yields 21 Aquarius rising, exactly where Neptune will be on Election Day. If it’s true, those voting Democratic will certainly be voting for a perceived mystery (or personal projection), no matter how clear Obama tries to make his specific positions. Something you can believe in, indeed, will be the bottom line.

And, if you do a composite with the USA, its Ascendant is on the very degree Jupiter tenants on Election Day, which along with the other pluses we mentioned in our last article could make this a landslide, as McCain fights an uphill battle against Saturn (which compared with his party’s public perception may be the least of his problems). The Saturn-driven election paradigm may well have switched to the Jupiter model, from where the winner goes to the bloodies but unbowed to where the figure who inspires the most wins. Add to that the transiting Saturn-Uranus opposition at the time and it really is new against old, change against the status quo, and a devil people know (and mostly dislike) against a pig in a poke (or pie in the sky?) that has great but undetermined potential.

Finally, as we have mentioned before, this is also a big sky pattern change that’s all about which side you are on, the long-awaited entry of Saturn inside a bowl with the outer planets, indicating the establishment beginning to help instead of hinder progress. So, all in all, an event worth waiting for.

But what will America and the world get out of it, and what exactly do they deserve? That is often more important in judging an outcome than the favored or unfavored planets of the contestants. Indeed, the charts of nations are traditionally the most important factor, and only after that their leaders, as the order works from the top down. After all, the coming transit of Pluto to the USA Ascendant was so debilitating in 2000 that the country didn’t get the president elected by the majority, then got devastatingly attacked, and subsequently became burdened with war and debt beyond all reason or expectation. No look at the charts of either Bush or Gore would have told you that — although Democrats might say that under such afflictions the worst man would win against all odds, including actual election numbers.

So what’s coming up for the country, regardless of the election? The dark days it has been through are not yet over, but the worst of it may have passed. Leaving the U.S. To crawl out of a hole dug by unwise leadership (and equally blind followership). This will take some time, as after a short-term hopeful change we head toward a decade of progressed Moon running a slow race with transiting Saturn, which may be a hard slog, but it will be mostly over by the time of the country’s first Pluto return in 2022.

In the shorter term, Neptune will be on the national Moon for most of the next president’s first term, and then both Uranus and Neptune will have changed signs by the next four-year term which, with Pluto by then having sunk its teeth into Capricorn, will mean a whole new ballgame. What people will only be hoping for and believing in this election cycle will turn into all bets laid out and cards face up on the table by the time much-vaunted 2012 rolls around. And you thought this one was exciting…

And, landslide or no, between the cup and the lip there are plenty of opportunities for a slip between now and the inauguration. July 10th sees the Mars-Saturn conjunction, this time in Virgo — the last one signaled the breakout of war in Lebanon, and if the last Mars-Uranus conjunction over the Middle East is true to form, that’s the region where it will happen again. The skies over the Democratic convention are a disaster, so expect some gratuitous conflict there, even if all seems to be settled in that most contentious of parties. And, the Moon is void-of-course most of Election Day, a situation that makes for unexpected results and rollups. And, the Moon is also VOC in its last degree at the moment of swearing-in on Inauguration Day, when Mercury is retrograde and is not just conjunct the Sun, or even combust, but Cazimi (within the actual orb of the Sun’s width, another indication of extremity). And, last but certainly not least, there is one final, ominous, Pluto-led scythe in the sky right after that, echoing the last, bloody blasts of 1972 in Vietnam before U.S. withdrawal. Throughout the election season and after, there will be plenty of excitement every time you turn on the news…