As I go to bed tonight, Nate Silver gives the president a better than 85% chance of being reelected even though he isn’t giving him Florida’s electoral votes. That’s a good thing because Florida Gov. Rick Scott is acting like a Jim Crow governor and I am absolutely disgusted and embarrassed for our country. The outright theft of Florida is being attempted in broad daylight, right in front of our eyes. And what is going on in Ohio isn’t much better.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Shadiness in Ohio going on too.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/171011/eleventh-hour-gop-voter-suppression-could-swing-ohio#
Fuck these bastards. I’m sick of their bullshit. And I look forward to crushing them on Tuesday, and then for the next two decades.
That means two things. The Democrats need to work for the people, not the plutocrats. Two, Democrats need to go on the offensive. Like Sherman through Georgia.
Plunderbund, an Ohio website, reports today that in Ohio
“President Obama has a slightly larger lead over Mitt Romney today than he did at this point in 2008. Let’s say that again: the polls today say that President Obama is doing slightly better now than he was doing against McCain-Palin.”
http://www.plunderbund.com/2012/11/04/pollwatch-obama-enters-final-days-stronger-in-ohio-than-2008/
2, 4, 4, 6, 5, 3
Those are Obama’s leads in the 6 most recent polls for OH according to Steve Singiser.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/04/1155304/-Daily-Kos-Elections-Polling-Wrap-The-Sunday-evenin
g-semi-final-edition
By most indications, Obama has the momentum. I think we’re going to win Ohio.
Election fraud and election suppression are nasty, ugly and unfortunately very real. But I think we have enough of a buffer to safely keep Ohio.
I think you are right.
What pisses me off is that a lot of the media has been reporting for weeks that it’s a statistical dead heat in Ohio. Which is simply not true.
I have never seen more clearly the distortion of a story over such a long period of time, basically to sell political ads in the era of Citizens United. There has not been one point in this campaign when reputable poll aggregators have not been projecting a likely Obama victory.
Bottom line – President Obama can win without OH and/or FL.
While unscrupulous, anti-democracy Repiglicants delude themselves that they can steal the election, the president is poised to take VA’s 13 EVs and/or (possibly) NC’s 15 EVs.
NC’s democratic governor and SOS have not impeded record same day registration and early voting in their state. So far suppression efforts in VA have been minimal compared to FL and OH.
If the president loses FL and OH, he still wins if he takes VA, NV, IA, WI, and NM. He doesn’t even need CO and NH to get 270.
The Romneybot is t-o-a-s-t!
Speaking of Nate Silver, lots of conservatives, including George Will, are giving Romney a landslide. So many of these Republicans are predicting a Romney landslide, yet they are all saying, “If Nate Silver isn’t 99% correct, then he is forever discredited.” Can we say the same to these twits on November 7th?
So where are those UN observers? Or do they only show up on election day when the skullduggery has already been skulldugged?
There are no UN observers involved. Right-wing media is trying to create the impression that OSCE is UN affiliated or sponsored. It is not!
It has observer status in the UN General Assembly (with no voting rights) like dozens of other international organizations and a few non-member states.
I happen to know the head of the OSCE mission for this year’s election.
The US is simply abiding by its obligations as a member state of OSCE when it invites observers to its federal elections.
Don’t help the wingnuts spread a false meme!
I posted a diary to expand on this. Right wing media is trying to discredit the election observation process and it is worthwhile to push back on the false meme.
If O loses it will be because he lost that big lead he had with Benghazi and the first debate and never had time to get ahead again.
That means he will have lost the election personally.
Not his team.
Not dissident liberals.
Himself.
But at the same time we will likely be able to blame successful vote suppression, since it looks like there will be that in several close states.
Had he won the first debate he would be in much better shape.
Had the GOP not done its best to suppress votes he would be in much better shape.
You sound oh so concerned.
Had the GOP not done its best to suppress votes he would be in much better shape.
No matter how I tilt my head I can’t figure out how this is Obama’s fault, personally.
OK…everybody here seems to be into prediction. I wanna play, too.
Here are mine:
This is going to be the messiest election/post-election in living memory.
No matter who loses…if and when of course there is actually a decision…the losers will cry holy hell over:
1-Vote fraud
2-Bad weather
3-Super PACS
and
4-The media
The clamor will be so great that effective governance will be next to impossible for weeks or months. (We have little enough now.) The economy will take a further set of hits as a result, and another one or two more serious natural disasters…storms, earthquakes, forest fires, etc… will put even more of a tailspin on the situation.
Buckle up and hunker down, folks…it’s just getting started. This ongoing political and economic chaos? It’s just the new normal.
Get used to it.
This spring?
Watch.
Tahrir Square comes to America.
Watch.
The current situation is unsustainable. A RatPub/DemRat stalemate while the people suffer. It will either change or the whole machine will fall apart. The old order is headed for the tarpits while the new order still doesn’t have its act together.
W. B. Yeats pinned it almost 100 years ago:
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
May you be born(e) into interesting times.
Watch.
AG
Why don’t you focus on something less abstract?
Less abstract? Less abstract than what, Booman? Some unsubstantiated story about a Christian woman who’s not gonna vote for Obama for all the wrong reasons?
Lissen up, man. There was nothing “abstract” about the way the media non-personed the only presidential candidate who was actually talking about an attempt to change the ongoing downward spiral of this country. Right or wrong? That wasn’t why Ron Paul was bumped out of contention while ignorant asses like Romney, Bachmann, Santorum, the pizza guy and the rest were promoted in the media. He was disappeared because what he was saying just might work, and that was way too risky for the PermaGov controllers to accept.
Abstract?
Is Obama’s continuance of the PermaWar security state “abstract?”
Ask the drone victims.
Is his acceptance of the corporate economic status quo “abstract?”
Jesus, man. Look at his fucking economic advisors!!! The best and the brightest of the worst and the crookedest.
Please.
I got yer “abstract,” right here!!!
And here:
And here as well:
Wake the fuck up.
The PermaGov is about as “abstract” as a kick in the balls.
WTFU.
You been had.
Again.
Win, lose or draw, you been had.
Unbelievable.
Back to the election prattle.
Luckily for you political addicts, this one will continue for months.
Unbelievable.
AG
If Romney wins, it is unlikely that he’ll have gotten enough electoral votes to have won without Florida, and it’s unlikely that he’ll have received enough votes in Florida to have won there without voter suppression. So, what happens then?
I think we all go back to sleep, is what happens. People will say, it’s because the economy was lousy, or because Obama lost the debate, or whatever, and they’ll accept the result.
Voter suppression has been going on for a very long time. The only time anything was ever done about it was in 1876, when Tilden’s apparent election was overturned because of voter suppression in, of course, Florida. And, ironically, to this day, it is that election which is most widely believed to have been a stolen presidential election, even more than 1960 or 2000.
If the Republicans blame their defeat on Sandy or the biased media, that seems pretty normal. I don’t see people rioting in the street because of that. It gives them something to froth at the mouth about. That’s about it.
If a GOP victory is blamed on the SuperPACs, that would actually be a step forward in people’s awareness of how awful the Citizens United decision was and how significantly it shaped the political landscape. I don’t see people taking to the streets though.
If you think 1876 was a blow against corruption, the path of the history of the South as a result of the premature re-establishment of “home rule” should dissuade you. The compromise to get Hayes elected laid the foundation for the emergence of Jim Crow laws just as Nixon’s Southern Strategy laid the foundation for the total takeover of the GOP by bigots.
TarHeel, you know the history of this a lot better than I do, so I’m not going to argue this. However, I don’t think you can claim that a Tilden election would have put any obstacles in the way of a Jim Crow South.
The issue isn’t Hayes v. Tilden, it’s the compromise itself. Essentially, the election was half-stolen; the South got what they wanted even though Tilden was not elected. Even with that, South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana went for Hayes.
Tilden and Gore … sad for both of them.
Hayes, however, deserves more praise than history generally gives him. He promised to “govern from the center” and to serve only one term, and did both of those things. Even then he never outlived the term “His Fraudulency”.
Contrast that to the behavior of the 21st century electoral Fraudster, Bush.
The “mouthing” will start if the sociopolitical infrastructure continues to disintegrate, JLG. Further economic woes? The inability to take care of a population that is increasingly at risk from global warming-induced emergencies? (A global warming that is itself largely a function of the old order’s reptiile-like resistance to change, I might add.) A seriously successful terror attack rather than another of the FBI/CIA-managed publicity stunts? (Could happen. We do have a few enemies, after all.) First some mouthing, then some doing, I think.
Egyptians were “mouthing” at the train wreck that was Egypt for a long while before they took to the streets. It’s going to have to get a whole lot worse before something drastic happens here, but it looks to me like it is getting worse. Not better, worse. Obama came in on a “Hope” platform. Remember? Where is that hope now? Gone in the midst of internecine power squabbles. His platform this time around? “Survive.” Bet on it.
This presidential campaign was a fiasco from start to finish, and a close decision one way or another…which is the one result upon which all prognosticators appear to agree…will only serve to exacerbate the political gridlock in Washington.
Eventually things will have to come to a head.
Bet on that as well.
We cannot stumble along forever like this.
Watch.
AG
With all the reporting going on about the significant demographic shift that has been taking place during these last four years, should the President pull out a victory on Tuesday I wouldn’t be surprised if some elements of the GOP don’t start trying to revive the Three Fifths Compromise for any non-white voter.
It would fit perfectly with the Tea Party’s “Don’t Tread On Me” theme.
It seems the Romney campaign intends to win Pennsylvania by holding rallies, locking ’em in, and not letting them out until the vote for Romney.
So the plan is: Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, Nevada, and Florida gets him to 273 without Ohio. Head fake for the Husted fix?
<<So the plan is: Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, Nevada, and Florida gets him to 273 without Ohio.>>
That seems like way more than you need to get to 273. If Romney wins PA, NC, VA, and FL, he has 268. He needs one more vote for a tie, so winning any other state, or even that congressional district in Maine, would be enough for him.
Thanks for the correction. I was trying to remember Nate Silver’s analysis off the top of my head. The point was not the number but the method of corraling the vote.
I think it’s very interesting, and disturbing, that conservative analysts who should know better, like Michael Barone and George Will, are forecasting a >300 EV Romney victory.
I don’t expect this to come to pass. But what I do expect is that the less savvy people on the conservative side will be shocked by an Obama victory, since it is counter to the “Romney has the momentum” narrative they have been hearing from their side.
They will be very inclined to believe that Obama “stole” the election. Which makes me wonder if the BS predictions from Barone and Will and the like are intentional…a way of preliminarily delegitimizing any Obama mandate.
Or a phony issue for impeachment. Take back the House.
That has been the Karl Rove playbook since way back in Texas. Pre-emptively acuse the other side of exactly the dirty tricks your side is using to influence the outcome.
I can’t relax until it’s over. In the meantime, we have this personal anecdote from Josh Marshall to keep this sickeningly tense:
Label it excessive concern if you like, but we really have no guarantees with electronic voting and tabulation, and all the wrong people are in charge of the process.
Not sure what this is supposed to mean. Just seems like the characteristic Republican head fake. The only card they have left is bogus confidence intended to drive a narrative and confuse and discourage voters, not reflect reality.
Oh, and reminder: “Wall Street heavyweights” = morans.
ETA: And isn’t it even more telling that Obama is now (slightly) ahead in the national polls and consistently ahead in swing state polls and these folks are still insisting it’s locked up for Romney?
That’s what makes it so creepy. This isn’t bluster from the Romney camp, this is from interested parties on the sidelines who should reasonably be expected to know which way the wind is blowing.
Once upon a time not that long ago, exit polling used to be considered a fairly accurate predictor of election outcomes. Starting in 2000, and in the intervening years, that has ceased to be the case.
Today, amid all the talk of “unskewing the polls” and the like, it’s just possible that conventional polling is being set up to take a similar nosedive in perceived credibility. You could look at all the agitation against Nate Silver as a preemptive strike along those lines: “we tol’ you he was wrong!”
I’m not sounding any alarm bells, just stating for the record that I personally won’t be able to exhale comfortably until after the returns come in. We have the most sophisticated vote-generating system and ground game in history vs the most sophisticated and ruthless election thieves in history.
How exactly is Chris Christie’s email and fax voting for areas affected by Sandy going to work?
The election is going ahead and who know how many people in Staten Island, Rockaway and on the Jersey shore will not be given the opportunity to because of lack of electricity, transport, whatever. Christie’s solution involves email and fax—he might as well take the e out of email and send fax to the antique store. This is a national problem because, no matter how the electoral votes turn out, a substantial number of USA-ians will have been disenfranchised by circumstances outside everyone’s control. These questions are being asked outside the US but not, evidently, inside.
The reason that nobody cares if some people in New York or New Jersey are disenfranchised is that they have been disenfranchised all along, together with the folks in Texas and Kansas and California and Wyoming and every other state where the result of the election is not in doubt. Sure, you can vote in Texas and your vote will be counted, but it’s not going to effect the outcome of the presidential election. The electoral system that we have effectively disenfranchises well over 50% of the electorate.
oops… “<it>affect</it> the outcome of the presidential election” was meant.
OK, I should hit the preview button from now on.
You’re right, in that sense it won’t affect the electoral college results. Nevertheless it is peculiar that the situation seems not to attract attention/criticism. USA-ians are so good at paying lip-service to democracy. From the European perspective the country’s not a democracy at all. Add India, Brazil and lots of other countries too.
Mayor Carlos Gimenez said part of the reason the county elections headquarters temporarily shut down Sunday with a crowd waiting outside to vote was because he had not authorized the additional hours.
Honestly, how hard is it to game out different scenarios ahead of time and make contingency plans for those so you can respond quickly and effectively to the circumstance you do actually encounter? It’s not like elections sneak up on you. I know it seems silly, but maybe you start with what you experienced the previous general election and use that as your starting point for what might happen this time.
Of course, unless you WANT things to be a disaster.
Rachel Maddow did superb segments on this last night.
She was on fire, and the segments were enraging.