Excitement, or maybe nerves, is building:
I’ll admit it. I just can’t concentrate. How many times can I check 538, pollster, or real clear politics? Hundreds of times a day. I arrived at my office at 8AM with the best of intensions. It’s 10:50. I can’t get anything done. I don’t have any high hopes for tomorrow’s productivity either. Who else is an anxious wreck? Anyone calm?
Martin Kettle looks at why Democrats are stuck in the subjunctive:
What is really happening, I think, is that Obama is going to win, and the Democrats are going to do spectacularly well in the Senate and House races too. But the mood here is like a cup final where your team is ahead with a few minutes to go. Those last few minutes seem to take forever. So near and yet so far. You overreact to every little event on the pitch as the time drags on. You scream manically at the referee to blow the whistle. Right now, Democrats are in that position. They just want it to be over now. But deep down, they don’t really think that they will throw this one away. They just want the whistle to blow so they can cast off the subjunctive and start celebrating.
The last great white hope (sorry!) for McCain may be the Bradley effect, but Thomas Noyes thinks it’s non-existent, while Stephen Guess discusses the terminological inexactitude surrounding the “socialist” charge, and its ideological implications.
Looking beyond election day, Gary Sauer-Thompson thinks the Republicans will be reduced to a Southern and Western rump. In this context, it’ll be interesting to see if Connecticut Republican Christopher Shays loses his seat. Shays is the last GOP House member left in New England, and the only survivor from the wipeout of what remained of the once influential liberal and moderate Republicans of the North-East after the 2006 election. But the South is changing too, and Sasha Abramsky examines how the GOP’s lock on the region could be broken tomorrow. Firedoglake assesses the prospects for a Senate super-majority in the South, which is the battleground for some of the last close seats to take the Democrats close to a filibuster proof majority of 60. That majority would include Joe Lieberman, though he’s not flavour of the month among the Senate Dems (or anyone else bar John McCain, probably).
And if Sarah Palin wants to be the GOP’s standard bearer after a McCain defeat, it might be worth having a squizzy at her bizarre religious affiliations and why she’s just outed herself as a Klingon. One thing is for sure – the Republicans and the noise machine won’t take defeat lying down.
Related post: What to watch and what to expect.
Update: Some interesting links from Xeni at Boing Boing, including an election FAQ.
James Ridgeway at Comment is Free looks at the structural barriers to change Obama will face (including those within the Democratic party).
Update: An interesting post from Jon Perr on the “character war” waged against Democrats.
Obama’s grandmother dies. The man’s in tears, and who could blame him?
Hanging around the Obama supporter blogs is like being kept prisoner at a Woody Allen festival. I don’t think I’ve ever seen as much unjustified angst, insecurity and nervousness.
FFS, these people really do need to harden up, for their own sake if no one else’s.
Since it’s Melbourne Cup day, here is a horse racing metaphot. Obama will win with a leg in the air.
And hardness is going be needed in coming years. The American Right isn’t going to take this defeat lieing down. There’s going to be a once in two-generation opportunity to rehape American society, but it will a real battle. Just have a look at the right wing blogs. These people are nuts, really nuts. Obama is the White House will unhinge them totally. And we’re not just talking about fringe dwellers who tap away on their key boards from their shacks in the Idaho wilderness. A lot of them have real influence.
But there can be no vacillating. These people have to be defeated: totally, sbsolutely, permanently, uncomprisingly, unconditionally.
Bring it on.
Your opening quote reminds me of how I felt at about this time last year – that defeat of Howard was inevitable, but what if something went wrong and the evil little fucker snuck through after all?
They still haven’t picked someone? Sheesh.
Obama – 342, all the Kerry states plus IA, CO, NM, OH, FL, VA, MT and Omaha CD
McCain – 196 – I can see IN, NC and MO slipping from his grasp but I think he might just hold onto them.
For me, the last big delicious question for this campaign – will McCain lose his home state of Arizona, just like Howard lost Bennelong.
“will McCain lose his home state of Arizona”
It will be close but as Bill Clinton should have said to Monica Lewinsky, no cigar.
“It will be close but as Bill Clinton should have said to Monica Lewinsky, no cigar.”
Look at that Grace, more “groin” talk.
Heh
Watching all of this, especially the ineffable moment with his poor old gran, an authentic example of the type of person that Sarah Palin eulogises about, but not in this case, am put in recollection of the movie “Deer Hunter”.
Many hope this will be the end not just of Bush but the entire Reagan era.
Deer Hunter asked in the American nation could move on from its loss of innocence without rancour, but Reagan proved not so. Thirty years later…
Why do people keep rabbiting on about the Bradley Effect when clearly we wouldn’t even have heard of Obama if he was white?
I think the interesting thing for the Democrats will be if they are able to resist overreach. With Pelosi, reid and Obama I doubt it although I think Obama probably recognises the importance of remaining a centrist politically even if philosophically he wishes to veer further to the left.
It will be interesting to see for instance just how long he takes to withdraw troops from Iraq. He can get down to a rump of say 50k to 80k in 16 months but no less. That won’t satisfy the Dailykos crowd.
In terms of anxiety you guys on the left are not alone I can’t even watch debates anymore.
Some of those links horrified me – especially those on Sarah Palin, and some exhilarated me. And yes, it does feel like Kevin 07 all over again. I’m slowly getting scared Obama won’t win. Its hard to tell from overe here. And good on that young Aussie TV star who took out American citizenship so she could vote for Obama. Maybe she’ll give a Boyer lecture one day. (Stopped myself trolling off on Obama.
Have to go to a Socialist Alliance meeting tomorrow night, but will be able to watch most of the election coverage with like minds over pasta.
Will Obama give Bush a presidential pardon?
He should give it on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
“I like Ike”.
How do I keep putting stuff on the wrong thread.
“Ike” was response to Mark’s comment, next door.
Homer votes:
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=1aBaX9GPSaQ
In a motel, (with the laptop and a 3G stick) in relatively far western NSW, similar in some ways to Alabama–contemplating the trepidation and fears for the world that I have if Obama loses, compared to the fears and trepidation of two clients before the District Court, one who will be slotted, (the question for how long), and the other, whether or not his appeal gets up.
It’s a reminder that each person’s worldview can be so different but I’d like to think, and I think I’m maybe correct that my two clients know far more about the world than McCain’s average southern voter!
gObama!
And the race has started! First Votes In As New Hampshire Town Picks Barack Obama.
Down and Out, no doubt you’ve seen this:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/is-dixville-notch-predictive.html
Last US election I was in Manila at a climate change meeting and my US colleagues were hitting CNN in between talks catching the trends. In Oz, we had just had an election and I remember it started really well for Labor and then turned sour. On that basis I (disappointedly) called the US race while Kerry had the New England votes, looked good, and while the west was still polling.
It won’t be the same this time.
Land. Slide.
And good for the planet, we hope, tho’ as never as good as we would like (Isn’t that right, Kevin?)
I came across a wikipedia site that claimed that in the 2000 republican primaries republican groups launched a series of slurs against McCain:
- that he was gay
- that his wife was a drug-addict
- that his adopted Bangladeshi daughter was actually black
- that he had an uncontrollable temper
- that he cheated on his wife.
God, he must have hated his party for that.
Suddenly, for the first time, McCain’s campaign is starting to make sense to me. I think I understand the selection of a mean, shrill and stupid whack job for VP. And the lame slurs about Ayers and Wright. And that creepily obsequious use of ‘my friends’ in the second debate. And his apparent bladder problem in the third. The ridiculous decision to cancel Letterman then attend a different TV interview down the road, on the palpably false grounds that he had to hurry back to Washington to save the country. The crazy campaigning in long-lost Pennsylvania. And the endless and ultimately risable focus on Joe the Bogan.
Yep, I think you got ‘em Johnny. Revenge, a dish best-served cold. Suck it up Repugs.
Yes, I have seen it, Kim. But it was 5:30 in the afternoon today, and quick back-of-the-envelope calculation showed that it was also 12:30 on the morning of the 4th, North American Eastern Time. “Voting must have started somewhere”, I thought. Looky here at teh Google – first results already in. Let’s tell the good folk at LP.” At the time, I didn’t really care if McCain or Obama had won the unincorporated village of Dixville Notch. It was a result. It’s also interesting that this normally Republican hamlet had gone for Obama – the last few elections had gone for Bush senior and junior and Dole.
But as for extrapolating this sample of 21 to New Hampshire (let alone the US) – forget it. It’s got a margin of error that Possum would piss on. Still, as Nate said at 538: “Still, you’d rather be up 15-6 than down, wouldn’t you?”
Absolutely, Down and Out!
Well, let’s all hope that wall to wall US Democrats (President, House, Senate, umpty-ump states) will deliver the same speedy, sensible and effective outcomes as Oz now does with its wall to wall Labor folk. (Quiet, Hortense, we do not talk about the NT intervention, computers in classrooms or surgery queues. And while flinging pelf at pensioners may not be sensible it is certainly speedy. And effective – electorally.)
Perhaps the current shift in opinion has something to do with the stellar results that a Republican President, House and Senate obtained from 2002-2006?
Update: An interesting post from Jon Perr on the “character war” waged against Democrats.