Like a poker player who pushes all his chips into the centre of the table - betting everything on the outcome of one hand - the Democratic Alliance may have raised the stakes too high in the run-up to Election 2004.
It may be that it will be difficult for their leader just to walk away without facing the music being fiddled in the aftermath of a pretty ordinary showing, despite the pre-election hype.
Through much of Thursday the DA's initially flatteringly high national vote tally ran down like a cheap clock, settling at 12 percent to 13 percent.
The Democratic Party won 9,5 percent of the national vote in 1999.
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The Coalition For Change is lagging far behind the old Nats and the old IFP And the egg on their faces was exacerbated by the pre-election predictions.
After all, it was Tony Leon who said the Coalition For Change - the DA and the Inkatha Freedom Party - would win 30 percent of the vote, enabling them to seriously challenge the ANC. (His political wunderkind, Ryan Coetzee, changed this "prediction" to between 25 percent and 30 percent a day or two before the election).
It was, after all, Leon who said they would rule two provinces in coalition - the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal - and that they would hold the balance of power in the Northern Cape.
The reality is that with Leon as leader of the opposition, the ANC under President Thabo Mbeki is stronger than ever.
The Western Cape is lost to the DA and although the party is the official opposition in several of the nine provinces, they remain exactly that - a small opposition.
Mbeki shaded Leon during election campaigning and political analysts have described the DA leader as looking "awkward" when it came to dealing with ordinary people during the campaign.
The DA may have managed to herd former New National Party supporters into its ranks, but made little or no inroads into the ANC's support base in Election 2004.
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