Washington Post reporter Jeffrey Birnbaum, a perceptive tracker of lobbyists, had a savvy commentary on Marketplace, the public radio show, a few days ago. In discussing the ever-creeping alternative minimum tax--which Representative Charlie Rangel, the Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means committee, alternative minimum taxwants to take care of--Birnbaum noted:

No one says so out loud but Republicans are not as eager to fix the alternative minimum tax as Democrats are. A nice bit of irony, don't you think?

Why are tax-cuts-lovin' GOPers not inclined to deal with the AMT, which each year hits millions more of middle- and upper-middle-income taxpayers? Well, guess what? It's politics. Birnbaum explains:

The people who'd be hit hardest, it turns out, live in blue states. California, for instance, would have 1.7 million more AMT payers this year. New York would have a million more. New Jersey would have 750,000 more and Massachusetts would have 500,000....Red states don't tend have as many people looking at an AMT tax increase as blue states do.

Can you believe that Republicans would not act against this ever-expanding tax because it mostly affects people in Democratic areas? Shocking, I know.

But Birnbaum's commentary made me wonder if the Dems could get the last laugh on this front, as expensive as it might be. I looked up the geographic impact of the AMT for 2005 (the last year I found figures for). Here are the top seven AMT-struck states and the percentage of tax returns subject to the AMT.

1. New Jersey 6.82 percent
2 New York 6.0 percent
3. Connecticut 5.9 percent
4. Washington, DC 5.19 percent
5. Maryland 5.02 percent
6. California 4.86 percent
7. Massachusetts 4.74 percent

These states are all well above the 3.01 percent average. And, yes, they are all blue states. But what state is next on the list? Virginia--with 3.49 percent. And Virginia, once proudly red, is heading toward purple these days. George W. Bush beat John Kerry by a healthy 8-point spread in 2004, but since then Virginia lost a Republican senator (George "Macaca" Allen), and former Governor Mark Warner, a Democrat, is poised to capture the seat of retiring Republican Senator John Warner next year. (Mark Warner looks so strong that Representative Tom Davis, a Republican, chickened out of the race.) With Mark Warner topping the statewide list of candidates in 2008, Virginia could be within reach of the Democratic nominee (whomever that might be).

No doubt, it would be close. In 2006, James Webb beat Allen by a mere 7000 votes--less than 1 percent. But that means a small number of Virginians mugged by the AMT (and, consequently, pissed off by the AMT) could make a big difference. That is, if the AMT is not truly dealt with by April 15 and the Democratic nominee hammers GOPers for blocking a fix. (Remember the percentages listed above are going to be bigger for 2007.)

Assuming the rest of the electoral map doesn't change from 2004, capturing Virginia's 13 electoral votes would not put a Democrat over the top in 2008. But there's more: Ohio is No. 12 on the AMT list. In 2004, Bush claimed the state with a 118,000 vote lead, about 2 percent. Since then, the state Republican Party has imploded, due to various corruption scandals that have thrown GOPers out of office and, in some cases, into jail. It's not too hard to imagine a damn tight race there in 2008. If a couple of thousand angry AMT victims in Ohio decide to vote D instead of R, that could help the Democrat bag the election-tipping Buckeye State.

Sure, there'll be a lot of other factors that determine what happens in Ohio and Virginia. But the so-called ticking time-bomb of the AMT could end up detonating beneath the Republicans.