Race to the White House

[HGervais]

Give'em Hell, Joe

[J.M. Vargas]

But Mark Halperin asks a fun one: "When was the last U.S. presidential election the Republican Party won without a Nixon or a Bush on the ticket?"

Did you know without looking?

I took the time to think it over and yes, I knew it without seeing (swear to 'Alex Mack' it's the truth! ). Remembered Nixon was IKE's VP, and that before him we had Truman and several consecutive FDR terms. I was shocked that you'd have to go back to Mr. Depression himself to get out of the Tricky Dick, Dole and Bush triad of GOP ticket domination.

[J.M. Vargas]

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14805.html

The Republican National Committee appears to have spent more than $150,000 to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family since her surprise pick by John McCain in late August.

According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74.

The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.

The RNC also spent $4,716.49 on hair and makeup through September after reporting no such costs in August.

[TemporalWisdom]

This has a lot to do with why I support Obama.

[HGervais]

Less than 2 weeks out....predictions....Obama wins by oh say, 6% I'm guessing Dems will pick up 19 seats in the House and 8 seats in the Senate. Anyone else? Winner gets a big honking no-prize or better yet, winner gets to make the last post in this thread before it is finally, formally & thankfully shut down.

[HGervais]

Opie, Andy, Richie & the Fonz come out for Obama

[TemporalWisdom]

Will Farrell as Dubya.

[TemporalWisdom]

An interesting look at the story of McCain's campaign.

[TemporalWisdom]

Cracked.com on the ghost of mudslinging past.

[HGervais]

I saw this: According to Michael McDonald's terrific website, there are three states in which early voting has already exceeded its totals from 2004. These are Georgia, where early voting is already at 180 percent of its 2004 total, Louisiana (169 percent), and North Carolina (129 percent), over at Nate Silver's excellent 538 website and then I saw over Andrew Sullivan's that Georgia's early voting total is already 36% higher than their total voter turnout in 2004. Pollsters may have drastically undercounted black support for Obama.

[HGervais]

This Obama ad is a real body blow. Less is truly more.

[Gobear]

From 236.com:
SIX ELECTION DAY WET DREAMS FOR DEMOCRATS
Taking Florida. There's no denying it. It's the one that got away. The one they should have had but it got ripped out of their hands. Winning Florida would be like finally getting a second chance with that woman you were impotent with, just to prove that it really was a fluke! For eight years Dems have been screaming "this kind of thing never happens to us" but no one's believed them. Not until now?

Having Florida and Ohio both. The twins! Very hot. But Ohio would really just be icing on the cake. If Dems get Florida, they wanna take their time with it. Really savor every minute of the win, give Florida their undivided attention, let it know what it's been missing all these years. But hey, no one's gonna kick Ohio out of bed for eating cookies.

Sneaking Away with Arizona. Winning Arizona is the ultimate "F You" fantasy. It's akin to winning the big game and going home with the other team's head cheerleader while their quarterback just has to stand there and watch.

Scoring big, "Reagan-Mondale" style. Except the Dems are Reagan. It's okay if this makes you feel uncomfortable because it's pretty much a rape fantasy. It's Democrats wanting to hold America down by the arms and just paint the whole thing blue. Some Democrats are creepy like that. Takes all kinds.

Karl Rove in handcuffs. There's an element of bondage to it, but Karl Rove getting arrested is actually one of the more popular elements to all types of Democratic wet dreams. He eventually just pops into the scenario wearing a pair of handcuffs. No matter what they're dreaming about, Karl Rove doing a perp walk usually ends up being the money shot.

Just plain old, missionary style 270. Look, when you've gone without for a long time, you don't need any big fancy scenarios to get off. For many Dems, they just wanna get to 270 electoral votes. Before they break out the leather and the whip cream, they really just wanna end their dry streak.

[Ptolemy]

I really liked this link from CNN:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/30/greene-if-you-can%e2%80%99t-or-can-say-anything-nice/#more-27291

[J.M. Vargas]

The Murdoch smear machine in full effect:


OBAMA 2012: FOUR YEARS LATER A LOOK BACK AT HIS PRESIDENCY
By JONAH GOLDBERG

It's hard to believe that just four years ago, some were talking about Barack Obama as a national savior, a secular redeemer, a "light worker." Even more shocking, President Obama lost the nomination of his own party to none other than Hillary Clinton. How did we get here?

There are no shortage of recriminatory theories for President Obama's precipitous fall from would-be messiah, to near pariah. Discussions with leaders within the Democratic Party, including prominent former members of the Obama administration, give a kaleidoscopic picture of missed opportunities, wrong turns and embarrassing blunders.

The first mistake many cite was actually made before Obama was even elected: the selection of Joseph Biden as his vice president. During the campaign, all eyes were on John McCain's running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. But even then there were signs of the troubles to come (ironically, Biden's biggest "gaffe" - about Obama being tested early in his presidency - proved eerily prescient).

Still, nothing prepared the country for some of former Vice President Biden's comments while in office. Early on, when he told the Russian foreign minister he'd "rather punch a nun in the throat" than cooperate on an Iranian nuclear deal, the Obama administration knew they had a problem on their hands.

The strange comments and behavior kept coming: at an international summit on child poverty, he accused the Dalai Lama of issuing a "brain fart," he phoned Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts at home and called him a "[re]tard in short pants," and of course the several stories - clearly leaked by aides to the president - of Mr. Biden sitting in the president's chair in the Oval Office and being more than reluctant to get out when asked to do so by the president.

The last straw was Biden's complaint, emphatically offered at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, that he would have more influence over foreign policy if he were black. His staff's effort to dismiss the incident as a joke - at the normally comedic event - fell short largely because Biden shouted "I am not joking!" two dozens times in speech that lasted less than 10 minutes. The fact that Biden had not been invited to speak at the dinner in the first place only added to the controversy.

Ultimately, the embarrassment became too much and Mr. Biden became the first vice president to resign from office since Spiro Agnew.

The subsequent battle over Obama's replacement sapped his presidency of much of its energy. Indeed, many credit Hillary Clinton's decision to run against Obama to her anger at being passed over twice for the vice presidency. The failure of two of Obama's ostensibly bipartisan picks - New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords - because they were too "rightwing" only made him seem weak compared to the firebrand liberal 111th congress. Charges that the Obama presidency was really a Trojan Horse for a Pelosi prime ministership only grew louder when he was forced to accept Henry Waxman as his vice president.

Indeed, the overconfidence of Congressional Democrats posed another major challenge to the Obama presidency. During the 2008 election, Obama's conservative critics had long complained that the then-freshman senator had little to no record of standing up the leftwing base of his party in part, they argued, because he himself was much more leftwing than he had let on.

Whatever the truth of that, what is not contested is that the Congressional Progressive Caucus - the largest partisan bloc in the Congress when Mr. Obama was elected - believed that the new president was "one of us" according to many sources contacted for this article.

The CPC, colloquially known as the "big swinging caucus" after an unfortunate joke by then-Republican Minority Leader John Boehner after a scandal involving Rep. Barney Frank (see side story), pushed Barack Obama on a wide array of fronts: they demanded very large cuts in the military budget, a sweeping government expansion into the role of healthcare, and in a move that experts agree caused the Wall Street Panic of 2010, they persuaded Mr. Obama to make the government's partial ownership of the remaining "Big Five" banks permanent. Representatives Frank and Charlie Rangel argued that the stakes, bought by the Bush treasury department, in the banks provided, in Frank's words, a "once in a lifetime opportunity to inject some social justice into the capitalist system." Or as Senator Jesse Jackson Jr. said, "if we've got them by the b - - - s already, why let go?"

Americans also don't like it when White House press secretary Keith Olbermann tells them that complaining about higher taxes is "racist."

A general consensus among political observers is that Obama's essential problem was that he was oversold and too naive and arrogant to realize he wasn't as his most devoted fans believed. A senior Democrat on Capitol Hill marveled: "In 2008, this guy promised to send everyone to college, vastly increase foreign aid, create a 'civilian national security force' that was just a well-funded as the U.S. military, his wife said he'd fix our 'broken souls,' and he said he'd make the oceans stop rising, all without increasing the deficit. The amazing thing is he thought it was all true. He makes Jimmy Carter look like he should be on Mt. Rushmore."

Another advisor compared Obama to Max Bialystock, the con man from the Mel Brooks' film "The Producers." In the movie, Bialystock sells 100% ownership of the play to dozens of investors. "Barack Obama sold 100% shares in his presidency to every constituency imaginable and they all thought they were at the front of the line after inauguration day."

Meanwhile, in a sign of the bitterness within the Democratic Party these days, former vice president Joe Biden has not endorsed a candidate. But he did say that President Obama could be a great leader in his second term "if he would only learn that the square circle grows moss only when the fat man bathes in dirty moonlight."

Jonah Goldberg is the author of "Redistribute This! A Conservative Manifesto" (2012).

[HGervais]

Smart piece of Op-ed writing from Frank Rich in today's New York Times:

November 2, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
By FRANK RICH

AND so: just how far have we come?

As a rough gauge last week, I watched a movie I hadn’t seen since it came out when I was a teenager in 1967. Back then “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” was Hollywood’s idea of a stirring call for racial justice. The premise: A young white woman falls madly in love with a black man while visiting the University of Hawaii and brings him home to San Francisco to get her parents’ blessing. Dad, a crusading newspaper publisher, and Mom, a modern art dealer, are wealthy white liberals — Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, no less — so surely there can be no problem. Complications ensue before everyone does the right thing.

Though the film was a box-office smash and received 10 Oscar nominations, even four decades ago it was widely ridiculed as dated by liberal critics. The hero, played by the first black Hollywood superstar, Sidney Poitier, was seen as too perfect and too “white” — an impossibly handsome doctor with Johns Hopkins and Yale on his résumé and a Nobel-worthy career fighting tropical diseases in Africa for the World Health Organization. What couple would not want him as a son-in-law? “He’s so calm and sure of everything,” says his fiancée. “He doesn’t have any tensions in him.” She is confident that every single one of their biracial children will grow up to “be president of the United States and they’ll all have colorful administrations.”

What a strange movie to confront in 2008. As the world knows, Barack Obama’s own white mother and African father met at the University of Hawaii. In “Dreams From My Father,” he even imagines the awkward dinner where his mother introduced her liberal-ish parents to her intended in 1959. But what’s most startling about this archaic film is the sole element in it that proves inadvertently contemporary. Faced with a black man in the mold of the Poitier character — one who appears “so calm” and without “tensions” — white liberals can make utter fools of themselves. When Joe Biden spoke of Obama being “clean” and “articulate,” he might have been recycling Spencer Tracy’s lines of 41 years ago.

Biden’s gaffe, though particularly naked, prefigured a larger pattern in the extraordinary election campaign that has brought an African-American to the brink of the presidency. Our political and news media establishments — fixated for months on tracking down every unreconstructed bigot in blue-collar America — have their own conspicuous racial myopia, with its own set of stereotypes and clichés. They consistently underestimated Obama’s candidacy because they often saw him as a stand-in for the two-dimensional character Poitier had to shoulder in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” It’s why so many got this election wrong so often.

There were countless ruminations, in print and on television, asking the same two rhetorical questions: “Is He Black Enough?” and “Is He Tough Enough?” The implied answer to both was usually, “No.” The brown-skinned child of biracial parents wasn’t really “black” and wouldn’t appeal to black voters who were overwhelmingly loyal to the wife of America’s first “black” president. And as a former constitutional law professor, Obama was undoubtedly too lofty an intellectual to be a political street fighter, too much of a wuss to land a punch in a debate, too ethereal to connect to “real” Americans. He was Adlai Stevenson, Michael Dukakis or Bill Bradley in dark face — no populist pugilist like John Edwards.

The list of mistaken prognostications that grew from these flawed premises is long. As primary season began, we were repeatedly told that Hillary Clinton’s campaign was the most battle-tested and disciplined, with an invincible organization and an unbeatable donors’ network. Poor Obama had to settle for the ineffectual passion of the starry-eyed, Internet-fixated college kids who failed to elect Howard Dean in 2004. When Clinton lost in Iowa, no matter; Obama could never breach the “firewalls” that would wrap up her nomination by Super Tuesday. Neither the Clinton campaign nor the many who bought its spin noticed the take-no-prisoners political insurgency that Obama had built throughout the caucus states and that serves him to this day.

Once Obama wrested the nomination from Clinton by surpassing her in organization, cash and black votes, he was still often seen as too wimpy to take on the Republicans. This prognosis was codified by Karl Rove, whose punditry for The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek has been second only to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert as a reliable source of laughs this year. Rove called Obama “lazy,” and over the summer he predicted that his fund-raising had peaked in February and that he’d have a “serious problem” winning over Hispanics. Well, Obama was lazy like a fox, and is leading John McCain among Hispanics by 2 to 1. Obama has also pulled ahead among white women despite the widespread predictions that he’d never bring furious Hillary supporters into the fold.

But certainly the single most revelatory moment of the campaign — about the political establishment, not Obama — arrived in June when he reversed his position on taking public financing. This was a huge flip-flop (if no bigger than McCain’s on the Bush tax cuts). But the reaction was priceless. Suddenly the political world discovered that far from being some exotic hothouse flower, Obama was a pol from Chicago. Up until then it rarely occurred to anyone that he had to be a ruthless competitor, not merely a sweet-talking orator, to reach the top of a political machine even rougher than the Clinton machine he had brought down. Whether that makes him more black or more white remains unresolved.

Early in the campaign, the black commentator Tavis Smiley took a lot of heat when he questioned all the rhetoric, much of it from white liberals, about Obama being “post-racial.” Smiley pointed out that there is “no such thing in America as race transcendence.” He is right of course. America can no sooner disown its racial legacy, starting with the original sin of slavery, than it can disown its flag; it’s built into our DNA. Obama acknowledged as much in his landmark speech on race in Philadelphia in March.

Yet much has changed for the better since the era of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” thanks to the epic battles of the civil-rights movement that have made the Obama phenomenon possible. As Mark Harris reminds us in his recent book about late 1960s Hollywood, “Pictures at a Revolution,” it was not until the year of the movie’s release that the Warren Court handed down the Loving decision overturning laws that forbade interracial marriage in 16 states; in the film’s final cut there’s still an outdated line referring to the possibility that the young couple’s nuptials could be illegal (as Obama’s parents’ marriage would have been in, say, Virginia). In that same year of 1967, L.B.J.’s secretary of state, Dean Rusk, offered his resignation when his daughter, a Stanford student, announced her engagement to a black Georgetown grad working at NASA. (Johnson didn’t accept it.)

Obama’s message and genealogy alike embody what has changed in the decades since. When he speaks of red and blue America being seamlessly woven into the United States of America, it is always shorthand for the reconciliation of black and white and brown and yellow America as well. Demographically, that’s where America is heading in the new century, and that will be its destiny no matter who wins the election this year.

Still, the country isn’t there yet, and should Obama be elected, America will not be cleansed of its racial history or conflicts. It will still have a virtually all-white party as one of its two most powerful political organizations. There will still be white liberals who look at Obama and can’t quite figure out what to make of his complex mixture of idealism and hard-knuckled political cunning, of his twin identities of international sojourner and conventional middle-class overachiever.

After some 20 months, we’re all still getting used to Obama and still, for that matter, trying to read his sometimes ambiguous takes on both economic and foreign affairs. What we have learned definitively about him so far — and what may most account for his victory, should he achieve it — is that he had both the brains and the muscle to outsmart, outmaneuver and outlast some of the smartest people in the country, starting with the Clintons. We know that he ran a brilliant campaign that remained sane and kept to its initial plan even when his Republican opponent and his own allies were panicking all around him. We know that that plan was based on the premise that Americans actually are sick of the divisive wedge issues that have defined the past couple of decades, of which race is the most divisive of all.

Obama doesn’t transcend race. He isn’t post-race. He is the latest chapter in the ever-unfurling American racial saga. It is an astonishing chapter. For most Americans, it seems as if Obama first came to dinner only yesterday. Should he win the White House on Tuesday, many will cheer and more than a few will cry as history moves inexorably forward.

But we are a people as practical as we are dreamy. We’ll soon remember that the country is in a deep ditch, and that we turned to the black guy not only because we hoped he would lift us up but because he looked like the strongest leader to dig us out.

[TemporalWisdom]

A good piece by Jon Cohen.


Our Polls Are on the Mark. I Think.

By Jon Cohen
Sunday, November 2, 2008; Page B02


January, you may recall, was a rough month for the pollsters. All the polls showed Sen. Barack Obama poised to follow up his big win in the Iowa caucuses with a knockout blow to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the New Hampshire primary. But he lost, sending the 13 firms that did public pre-election polls there scrambling for explanations.

Could polling be similarly embarrassed this month, misjudging the last chapter of this epic presidential election? Thoughts of the Granite State jolt me and my fellow pollsters awake in the dead of night during these final days.

Sen. John McCain certainly says that the polls are misleading, arguing that most surveys have "consistently shown me much further behind than we actually are," as he put it last Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." Of course, blaming the polls is standard operating practice for trailing candidates, their partisans and contrarians everywhere. And of course, we won't make the same mistakes that led George Gallup to declare that Thomas Dewey had Harry Truman beat in 1948: We won't use outdated sampling techniques, and we won't assume that the race is over and stop polling. Nor is our polling window as absurdly small as the four nights between Iowa and New Hampshire. Even so, could McCain be onto something? In the latest Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll of likely voters, Obama has a nine-point lead, larger than Dewey's five-point margin in the late October Gallup poll in 1948. Other reputable national polls this year show similar or even larger Obama leads. But could we still make big mistakes? Can the polls be trusted?

As the polling director of The Washington Post, I get that question just about every day, even in less intense periods than this. Some question the scientific basis of polling, refusing to believe that interviews with hundreds or thousands of randomly selected respondents could accurately represent the opinions of many millions. Others see basic bias (refreshingly, these accusations come from all sides) or point out new wrinkles, such as the growing number of adults in the United States who have only cellular phones that pollsters mostly don't call. Added to the mix this year is a lingering skepticism about the accuracy of polling contests between white and black candidates -- doubts that persist despite decades of data suggesting that these polls perform no worse than others -- and heightened concerns about the way we define "likely voters."

I don't consider any of these fatal or even very serious problems, but that doesn't mean I'm immune to pollster's paranoia. We could all be wrong -- at least theoretically.

Simply put, we may be wrong about who is likely to vote on Tuesday. One of the trickiest parts of political polling is determining which of the people interviewed in pre-election surveys will really vote. It's relatively easy for us to identify such sharply delineated groups as the population of all adults living in the United States or even all registered voters, but the pool of actual voters is a group that exists at a single point in time, on Election Day (plus those casting ballots early and by mail).

Even a few days away from an election, that group remains an unknown population. Not everyone who says that they will vote will actually do so, in part because when asked about their intentions, people want to sound like good citizens. So pollsters develop models to whittle down their samples to account for people's tendency to overstate these things.

These "likely voter models" vary widely from pollster to pollster. This year, the Gallup Organization is publishing two models. Its "traditional" model factors in respondents' reports of whether they voted in previous elections to determine who is a "likely" voter. But Gallup's new, "expanded" model drops this requirement, putting more young and minority voters into the "likely voter" category.

In Washington Post-ABC polling, we ask a series of questions about whether and how people plan to vote, whether they have voted before and basic knowledge about the voting process. We then feed all this information into a range of models, corresponding to different levels of turnout. We report a single model, but only after assessing the quality and impact of all of them. Likely voter modeling is a craft, bolstered by science.

I'm also often asked about the rising use of cellphones. The number of people ditching their home telephones has spiked in recent years, with the highest percentages among young adults and nonwhites. Does this affect the polls? Probably not -- or at least not yet. The exclusion of cellphone users appears to have no more than a minimal effect on the results. But even if these voters turn out to have been systematically underrepresented in this year's polls, that would actually mean that Obama had an even larger lead, because these voters overwhelmingly back him over McCain. And both the Gallup and Washington Post-ABC tracking polls interview complementary samples of voters who have only cellphones to make sure that we're not missing something. (Few state polls include cellphone interviews.)

Others who doubt this year's polls raise the question of a "Bradley effect." This syndrome gets its name from the bid by Tom Bradley, then the African American mayor of Los Angeles, to become governor of California in 1982. He headed into Election Day with a big seven-point lead in the last publicly released poll, only to lose narrowly. Some attributed this startling result to a quiet form of racism that revealed itself only in the voting booth, and the 1982 case has been trotted out ever since to cast doubt on the accuracy of pre-election polls in contests between white and black candidates.

But there is good reason to doubt that racism was the cause of Bradley's defeat, and decades of polling in other campaigns with black candidates should mute some of the skepticism. No "Bradley effect" has shown up for years, and a new analysis by one Harvard University researcher, Daniel Hopkins, shows that any such effect that existed in African American politicians' contests in the late 1980s and early 1990s has now disappeared.

There is also the possibility of a pre-election "bandwagon effect." Post-election surveys frequently overstate support for the winner, and with 70 percent of respondents in a recent Gallup poll saying that Obama is headed for victory on Tuesday, perhaps voters are beginning to overstate the likelihood that they'll vote for him. (There's no precedent for something like this happening, but hey, it's been a weird year.)

I worry more about a basic concern: whether we are getting a truly random sample of opinion. Pollsters bank on the fundamental notion that the people who answer our calls are similar to those who don't, and we have reams of data justifying those assumptions. But what if the people who pause to take a pollster's question are significantly different from those who don't?

After all, fewer and fewer people have been taking our calls over the years. The Pew Research Center, which has done extensive research into declining survey-response rates, has found that poorer, less educated whites -- who tend to hold somewhat less positive views toward African Americans -- are also harder to get on the phone than those who have higher incomes and more formal education. My fellow pollsters and I give this a pretty academic name, "differential nonresponse," but it's a live, practical concern.

Despite my list of worries, a few things remain clear to me: Not all polls are created equal. We've been bombarded with polls that fell far short of the methodological rigor required for a good survey. If you mix in bad polls with the good ones, as happens all over the Web, you just may get dodgy results.

I also remind myself that humility is built into my field's DNA. The mathematics of the "random sample" on which all polling is based says that five times out of 100, we will be badly off the mark. Call it the pollster's law of averages.

But these seem to be topics for another day. The polls appear to be in general agreement that Obama is ahead; the only question is by how much. And this time, the pollsters' findings are being reinforced by the work of two other groups of campaign obsessives: the political scientists who use predictive models drawn from past election results to predict the next one (the one professor whose forecast had McCain headed for victory has "adjusted" his model), and the reporters out there knocking on doors and interviewing voters.

That reassures me because it suggests that 2008 is not like 1980, a year in which some late polls showed a close race between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. But shoe-leather reporting -- such as the 50-state roundup, led by David S. Broder, that The Post published the Sunday before the election -- found that Reagan was surging. Today, all the indicators -- not just the polls -- suggest that Obama is the candidate with momentum. If that changes over the final days, quality polls will still be the single best gauge of why things shifted.

Of course, if the trustworthy polls continue showing Obama ahead and McCain wins, it would be a monumental failure for political scientists, reporters and pollsters alike -- an indictment worse than New Hampshire, worse even than 1948. I think the quality pollsters have done a good, professional job this year. I don't think we'll get bitten. Even so, I'll be a little worried until it's all over. I'm not sure what kind of night I'll have on Tuesday. But I'm sure I'm going to have a nervous one on Monday.

[TemporalWisdom]

The campaigns are all in a frenzy to bring it on home, and the media is in a frenzy covering every minute detail.

I really hope Obama turns out to be a truly great President. While that would be good on its own, it'd also guarantee no contest for the Democratic nomination in 2012. If we're really lucky, he'll be so wildly popular and the Republican nominee so unremarkable that the general election will be a foregone conclusion...and we can put off more of this craziness for a whole seven years.

Uh, predictions. Hmm. Obama with 348 Electoral votes and 54% of the popular vote. Democrats pick up 28 seats in the House and 9 in the Senate.

[Neal Masri]

Obama with 348 Electoral votes and 54% of the popular vote.

My prediction: Obama 52% of popular vote. 286 Electoral votes. I have the feeling it will be much closer. I can't see O taking Florida or Ohio.

[Gobear]

Obama with 348 Electoral votes and 54% of the popular vote.

My prediction: Obama 52% of popular vote. 286 Electoral votes. I have the feeling it will be much closer. I can't see O taking Florida or Ohio.

The latest polls still have Obama beating McCain in both states. 538.com projects an Obama Electoral College landslide, 340 to 198.

[Neal Masri]

Obama with 348 Electoral votes and 54% of the popular vote.

My prediction: Obama 52% of popular vote. 286 Electoral votes. I have the feeling it will be much closer. I can't see O taking Florida or Ohio.

The latest polls still have Obama beating McCain in both states. 538.com projects an Obama Electoral College landslide, 340 to 198.

I hope so. That way I can have a celebratory drink and go to bed at a decent hour.

[Dunnyman]

OK, loyal Jury Room folks, tomorrow is the BIG day, and damnit, it doesn't matter WHO you cast your vote for! In a few more days we honor the men and women who put their lives on the line (and often gave them) to give us that right, and it's a slap in the face to every single one of them if you DON'T exercise your right to vote! I think they ought to move Veteran's Day to remind us before an election of what these people did for us, and we might get better turnouts. If you want to vote for McCain, fine, Obama, fine, Barr, fine, just get your ass down to the polling place and DO IT. Your boss CANNOT stop you from going, and there are groups on both sides who can get you a ride if you need one. It doesn't matter if you're 100% convinced your candidate will carry your state, or if you think he doesn't stand a chance, let's let all of the USA speak, and honor those who fought for our right to do so!!!!
VOTE!

[Neal Masri]

Boy, November 4th sure sounded far off when this thread was started in October of 2007....

[Neal Masri]

Had to add this (though I imagine a lot of you are regular readers of Sully). Andrew Sullivan knocks it out of the park in his closing argument for Obama.

[HGervais]

So wow....a poll out locally says McCain & Obama are in a statisical dead heat with McCain up by 3 points with a margin of error of 4%. Early turn-out has been huge and if it's enough to swing the state to Obama....well, wow. My head says tomorrow is going to be tight but my gut keeps telling me we are maybe looking at a landslide.
On a personal note, I want to thank everyone for keeping this thread going. Yes there have been posts where emotions got the better of some people, myself very much included, but for the most part the civility of this thread speaks well of all of us. Tomorrow's election is important but so is dialogue between people. Politics doesn't have to be nasty. We all love our country and we all want what is best for it...we just disagree on what the best course may be. As long as we remember that as all want basically the same things there is no need for things to get ugly. Love you guys.
So to echo Dunny, please get out there and vote. Florida was decided by what, 573 votes in 2000? Your vote matters. Take the time and do your civic duty. Thanks everyone.

[Ptolemy]

Uh, predictions. Hmm. Obama with 348 Electoral votes and 54% of the popular vote. Democrats pick up 28 seats in the House and 9 in the Senate.

Okay Bob, er -- Drew, I'll play...

Obama with 349 Electoral votes, 55% of the popular vote. Democrats pick up 29 seats in the house and 10 in the Senate.

[TemporalWisdom]

OK, loyal Jury Room folks, tomorrow is the BIG day, and damnit, it doesn't matter WHO you cast your vote for! In a few more days we honor the men and women who put their lives on the line (and often gave them) to give us that right, and it's a slap in the face to every single one of them if you DON'T exercise your right to vote! I think they ought to move Veteran's Day to remind us before an election of what these people did for us, and we might get better turnouts. If you want to vote for McCain, fine, Obama, fine, Barr, fine, just get your ass down to the polling place and DO IT. Your boss CANNOT stop you from going, and there are groups on both sides who can get you a ride if you need one. It doesn't matter if you're 100% convinced your candidate will carry your state, or if you think he doesn't stand a chance, let's let all of the USA speak, and honor those who fought for our right to do so!!!!
VOTE!

Greg, our brave soldiers also put their lives on the line to give us the right not to vote.

Yes there have been posts where emotions got the better of some people, myself very much included, but for the most part the civility of this thread speaks well of all of us.

Uh, predictions. Hmm. Obama with 348 Electoral votes and 54% of the popular vote. Democrats pick up 28 seats in the House and 9 in the Senate.

Obama with 349 Electoral votes, 55% of the popular vote. Democrats pick up 29 seats in the house and 10 in the Senate.

Harold, would it be cool if I advised Bruce to go perform sexual intercourse upon his own person? And isn't it about time for a middle finger smilie?

[HGervais]

Hey if you aren't playing to win, why play at all?

[TemporalWisdom]

Hey if you aren't playing to win, why play at all?

This is why they don't give The Price is Right contestants chairs that aren't bolted down.

[Parklife]

ahhh yes.... finally. by this time tomorrow night we'll have a pretty good idea of where things are going or we'll have another all night-er.

For some reason, I think it's going to be a lot closer than some are predicting. While it's true that Obama is leading in the polls and in most of the important states, the margin of error in those states essentially covers his lead. And if there is one thing that history has told us, the republican base shows up to vote en mass while the democrats talk a great game but have issues getting the voters to the booth. Until we actually see all those extra registered voters showing up, I'm just not convinced they have enough to make it a landslide vote wise.

And for all the talk about 'getting out the vote', the US will likely have less than 60% of it's eligible voters actually do so.

predictions...

Obama wins with less than 300 electoral college votes... He wins with a small majority of the popular vote...

And while I've been engrossed with the Presidential election and the local propositions, I've completely ignored any congressional races so I can't give any insight that might actually mean anything.

[HGervais]

Here at last. I'm curious to hear any stories of people's voting experiences today. What were the lines like? The mood? Feel free to talk about them. I'm on my way now and I have a silly grin on my face. So much hope & possibility on election day. I really do love this country.

[Belmondo]

Here at last. I'm curious to hear any stories of people's voting experiences today. What were the lines like? The mood? Feel free to talk about them. I'm on my way now and I have a silly grin on my face. So much hope & possibility on election day. I really do love this country.

Voted at about 9:30am here on Cape Cod. The line was short and there was no problem. Heard that my precinct had long lines at 7am with people voting before they went to work.

I love this country too, and this time my choices are all democrats and all winners. A new day has dawned.

[HGervais]

Just back. The voting place I go to is the spot for two precincts since Katrina, the "A" poll was quick and easy. It took my mom & I about 10 minutes to realize there was no line where we needed to vote. The line for the "B" spot was easily an hour long. Speaking with the people working the polls they said turn-out was huge, they said they thought it might hit 80% and it was filled with people they had never seen before. The crowd was probably 60% black and the mood of the crowd was pretty good. Voted for Obama, voted for John Kennedy, the Republican nominee for the Senate and for the candidate not named Dollar Bill Jefferson in the House race.

[HGervais]

I don't what it is about this post over at TPM Blogs but I read it and wept.

I Didn't Vote For Obama Today
November 4, 2008, 9:37AM

I have a confession to make.

I did not vote for Barack Obama today.

I've openly supported Obama since March. But I didn't vote for him today.

I wanted to vote for Ronald Woods. He was my algebra teacher at Clark Junior High in East St. Louis, IL. He died 15 years ago when his truck skidded head-first into a utility pole. He spent many a day teaching us many things besides the Pythagorean Theorem. He taught us about Medgar Evers, Ralph Abernathy, John Lewis and many other civil rights figures who get lost in the shadow cast by Martin Luther King, Jr.

But I didn't vote for Mr. Woods.

I wanted to vote for Willie Mae Cross. She owned and operated Crossroads Preparatory Academy for almost 30 years, educating and empowering thousands of kids before her death in 2003. I was her first student. She gave me my first job, teaching chess and math concepts to kids in grades K-4 in her summer program. She was always there for advice, cheer and consolation. Ms. Cross, in her own way, taught me more about walking in faith than anyone else I ever knew.

But I didn't vote for Ms. Cross.

I wanted to vote for Arthur Mells Jackson, Sr. and Jr. Jackson Senior was a Latin professor. He has a gifted school named for him in my hometown. Jackson Junior was the pre-eminent physician in my hometown for over 30 years. He has a heliport named for him at a hospital in my hometown. They were my great-grandfather and great-uncle, respectively.

But I didn't vote for Prof. Jackson or Dr. Jackson.

I wanted to vote for A.B. Palmer. She was a leading civil rights figure in Shreveport, Louisiana, where my mother grew up and where I still have dozens of family members. She was a strong-willed woman who earned the grudging respect of the town's leaders because she never, ever backed down from anyone and always gave better than she got. She lived to the ripe old age of 99, and has a community center named for her in Shreveport.

But I didn't vote for Mrs. Palmer.

I wanted to vote for these people, who did not live to see a day where a Black man would appear on their ballots on a crisp November morning.

In the end, though, I realized that I could not vote for them any more than I could vote for Obama himself.

So who did I vote for?

No one.

I didn't vote. Not for President, anyway.

Oh, I went to the voting booth. I signed, was given my stub, and was walked over to a voting machine. I cast votes for statewide races and a state referendum on water and sewer improvements.

I stood there, and I thought about all of these people, who influenced my life so greatly. But I didn't vote for who would be the 44th President of the United States.

When my ballot was complete, except for the top line, I finally decided who I was going to vote for - and then decided to let him vote for me. I reached down, picked him up, and told him to find Obama's name on the screen and touch it.

And so it came to pass that Alexander Reed, age 5, read the voting screen, found the right candidate, touched his name, and actually cast a vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Oh, the vote will be recorded as mine. But I didn't cast it.

Then again, the person who actually pressed the Obama box and the red "vote" button was the person I was really voting for all along.

It made the months of donating, phonebanking, canvassing, door hanger distributing, sign posting, blogging, arguing and persuading so much sweeter.

So, no, I didn't vote for Barack Obama. I voted for a boy who now has every reason to believe he, too, can grow up to be anything he wants...even President.

[Gobear]

Wow, that was powerful.


Mr G and I voted this morning at our polling station, which is inside a Lutheran church (it burns, it burns! ) We went at 10, so we managed to miss the crush of early morning voters. My coworkers from DC and Maryland told me they had 2-hour waits! Virginia is phasing out touch screen voting, so this morning we had a choice of paper or electric; surprisingly, there was no line for the paper ballots. Given how notoriously error-prone the touch screens are I thought the paper ballots would have been more popular. I voted for Obama/Biden, Mark Warner for Senate (he's a Blue Dog Democrat, but he was an excellent governor, and he will serve Virginia well in the Senate), and Jim Moran for Congress (he's batshit crazy, but he's a reliably liberal Representative). I also voted YES to Fairfax County's bond for improving our parks.

[BenShultz]

I was worried that I'd have to walk to the polling station in a downpour, but thankfully it petered off by the time I went out. The wait was far shorter than I had anticipated, and I voted for Obama/Biden. I'm so glad that this election was the first I was able to vote in.

[Parklife]

My polling place is 1/2 block from my front door so I headed over there shortly after the polls opened at 7:00. The wait was about an hour but the line didn't really seem that long. There was only 1 touch-screen voting booth and 5 or 6 paper ballot booths. I chose the touch-screen as everyone before me seemed to pick paper ballot.

The mood was difficult to read, it was early and people pretty much kept to themselves.

Random things that stood out to me:

1. I watched the local news starting at 6am. Traffic was way down throughout the Bay Area seemingly because people were staying close to home to vote at their precinct.

2. watching the news when I came back from voting, they cut to UC Berkeley (8:30 or so). The polling place looked dead. They interviewed the precinct captain and he said turnout was lower than expected but surmised that this was because they have precinct throughout the campus. I would have expected UC Berkeley to be hopping.

3. One of my neighbors came up to me in line and said "If 'you-know-who' gets elected, they'll probably change our flag... and our constitution". *groan*

4. A business man walked around the corner and saw the line.... he stood there looking for 2 minutes or so and I figured he was debating whether to join the line or go to work. He ultimately decided to get in line.

5. Starbucks is offering a free coffee to anyone that asks for one today. Ben and Jerry's has free scoops of ice cream from 5-8pm tonight.

[BenShultz]

5. Starbucks is offering a free coffee to anyone that asks for one today. Ben and Jerry's has free scoops of ice cream from 5-8pm tonight.

And Krispy Kreme is handing out free doughnuts. Sadly, I'm not a big coffee fan and there's no Ben and Jerry's or Krispy Kremes anywhere in my area.

[BrettCullum]

I did the early voting thing because I work far from home, and getting to my voting place would be hard (in Texas early voters can go anywhere, but election day is determined near where you live).

Funny thing was I voted on Halloween. A couple of years back a DMV employee put in my date of birth wrong, and it led to all hell getting it fixed. The voting officials caught that the year was wrong in the voter database still, and they made me sign all these affadavits and paperwork... ugh! But I got to vote.

At first I thought what a good job they are doing to catch that minor discrepancy, but then I realized they were letting people vote in costume! I wonder how they knew The Creature From the Black Lagoon voting next to me was who they said he was...

We only have these electronic voting booths with click wheels. It's like voting with my iPod which I guess is poetic since most of my campaign information came from Podcasts and in line I even listened to a few while waiting.

Today in our office we have several people in Obama t-shirts. I wore my "PARIS HILTON FOR PRESIDENT" shirt just to be an ass.

[Parklife]

At first I thought what a good job they are doing to catch that minor discrepancy, but then I realized they were letting people vote in costume! I wonder how they knew The Creature From the Black Lagoon voting next to me was who they said he was...

I've never been asked for identification when voting... just my address and asked to verify my name. So, they never really know if I am who I say I am.

[BrettCullum]

At first I thought what a good job they are doing to catch that minor discrepancy, but then I realized they were letting people vote in costume! I wonder how they knew The Creature From the Black Lagoon voting next to me was who they said he was...

I've never been asked for identification when voting... just my address and asked to verify my name. So, they never really know if I am who I say I am.

That is INSANE! In Texas they actually swipe your driver's license and compare all DMV records with voters registration. They are cracking down hard this year and really trying to fight voter fraud. Well, other than letting people in costume vote...

[IChiWawa]

Never had to wait to vote, it's a remote spot surrounded by ranches.

Not voting for either loser. Even though Obama has promised to buy votes with other citizen's tax money, there is just no way I see McCain being a fit president.

As historic as it is that it's likely a mixed-race man will be president-elect by morning, I also realize that voting for (or against) someone based on that fact is a betrayal of everything ever done in the name of racial equality.

May the best man win.

[TemporalWisdom]

At first I thought what a good job they are doing to catch that minor discrepancy, but then I realized they were letting people vote in costume! I wonder how they knew The Creature From the Black Lagoon voting next to me was who they said he was...

I've never been asked for identification when voting... just my address and asked to verify my name. So, they never really know if I am who I say I am.

That is INSANE! In Texas they actually swipe your driver's license and compare all DMV records with voters registration. They are cracking down hard this year and really trying to fight voter fraud. Well, other than letting people in costume vote...

In Maryland they have you say your address and date of birth, and then check your license. The lady had real trouble with my name -- Wise. I spelled it out and she didn't catch it, I told her it was like the adjective and still she didn't understand until she read it off my license. Nobody ever believes my last name could be a simple adjective from the English language.

Voted for Obama for President. No Senate seats up in Maryland this year. I voted for Roscoe Bartlett (R) for re-election to the House, in the interest of balanced government. There were two justices -- no opponents, just a question for each, on whether to allow them to continue. I knew nothing about them, so I just voted "yes." Voted for someone named Fish for the Board of Education, just because the name was funny. I voted for an amendment to allow early voting in Maryland and for another to allow slot machines.

Not crowded at all. I live in a rural area, so....

[Ptolemy]

I voted last Thursday. Line was plenty long. It took me about an hour. All the people I saw were in good spirits.

I didn't vote for anybody based on the color of their skin. I didn't vote against anybody based on the color of their skin either. People vote for and against things for different reasons - my reasons are no better than anyone elses and neither are yours. The beauty is that for whatever reason - the vote gets counted.

[Dunnyman]

Voted good and early at 7:30, but the best part was our little precinct usually has around 5000 votes or so, at 8:15 when I left, we'd already tallied 900+!!! Turnout statewide has been massive here and in many places, and damnit that's what it's all about! Get out there and have your say!
I was told I couldn't wear my Obama buttons because of the rules, which was cool 'cause it is the law, but the lady was really nasty about it, and told me to remove ALL of my buttons, I refused to remove my "George Bush-The Best Argument for Canadian Citizenship", and she was going to get really snotty about it (it was pretty obvious who she was pulling for) when her boss stated that as Bush was "not a candidate for any Federal, State, or Municipal office" and nor could he "receive any office due to the death of the incumbent" the button violated NO RULES, and I was more than welcome to wear it. Then the cool lady winked at me...

[HGervais]

As historic as it is that it's likely a mixed-race man will be president-elect by morning, I also realize that voting for (or against) someone based on that fact is a betrayal of everything ever done in the name of racial equality.

There it is. After months of pouring over new reports, blogs, policy papers, debates and my own gut reaction to both men & how they ran their respective campaigns, I voted for guy who I saw as head & shoulders above the other. That he was also the first non-white candidate did'nt factor into the equation at all. It was the difference between Obama & Clinton. Clinton being a woman was very much a part of her campaign when it suited her. Race only became an issue in Obama's case when the Clintons & McCain made it one. So today I voted for the best person for the job, the historical aspect is just gravy.

May the best man win.

Let's hope so.

[Gobear]

For Harold:

Obama Zydeco: "Oui, On peut!"

[HGervais]

Quick random thoughts.....The nets have called PA for Obama and New Hampshire has also gone for Obama. McCain has based much of his path to the White House on those two states. Remeber all that bs talk of McCain taking those shunned Hillary supporters? At this point those same females are breaking 81% to 19% for Obama. If he loses Florida and/of Ohio, I don't see how he wins. So far a net pick-up in the Senate for the Dems of +3.
If Obama/Biden wins there are Democratic governors in both to replace them with Democrats while if McCain manages to pull it out there is a Democratic governor in Arizona and a Republican governor in Alaska, so there could be an additional pick-up for the Dems. It's getting to be nail-biting time.
*Edit*9:25 EST and NBC just called Ohio for Obama.

[Boba Fett]

Well, as of this moment Obama has 199 electoral votes; providing he holds Ohio and New Mexico and as predicted, takes the west coast, he's won this thing.

[azul017]

I voted a few weeks ago via absentee ballot. I wasn't going to be home on Election Day (and I wasn't going to change my state eligibility vote to Virginia), so I sent in for one, filled it out and sent it back. E-mailed the guy responsible last week and he said it's in and accounted for.

But man, is this election a memorable one. But I don't think the winner should be declared quite yet, not until the results from Virginia and Florida are in.

[Gobear]

I'm a petty, small-minded man, so let me say,


SUCK IT, FUTURE MAN!