Has McCain actually already LOST?(Yes he has)

[Pablo Sanchez]

Goddamnit. I actually thought Schwarzenegger wasn't too bad for a Republican until this.

The extent to which Schwarzenegger is a good guy is sometimes exaggerated simply because the bar has fallen so low. He's basically an old-school George H.W. Bush style Republican, which means that he is a conservative but will do his best to run California, and is willing to compromise when unavoidable. Because he doesn't lie constantly and totally fuck the shit out of everything, he comes off better than the "Mayberry Machiavellis" who run the GOP right now. But that doesn't really make him good people.

Anyway, his equivocation is a political calculation, running the middle ground between honesty ("Palin is not competent") and the blatant falsehood that is the official party line. He simply can't say that either of the two people at the top of his party's ticket is a bad choice because it would burn some bridges. If McCain loses, after the election he'll be free to say what he really thinks.

[Anguirus]

It would be rather hypocritical for Schwarzenegger to blast Palin on the experience front anyway. Given his own experience, what do you expect him to say?

[CmdrWilkens]

If Obama wins Indiana by 1 point, let alone 10 points (!), I will join RI for a sock-eating party. There is no way the economy is bad enough to flip this state by thirteen points when it's been deep red since 1964. The fact Obama is trailing McCain by a mere 3-5% shows how poorly McCain's doing, but if Obama scrapes out a win here, he won't need it because he'll have turned all the other swing states deep blue.

Well Colorado was Bush +4.6% and is looking right now at anywhere from 5 to 7 points Obama for a swing of 9-11.5 points. Missouri was Bush +7 and that is now polling Obama +1 to 3 for a swing of 8-10 points.
virginia went for Bush by 8.2% and is now an Obama 5 to 7 point lead for a swing of 13 to 15 points


Within that context, and especially with the proximity of the Chicago machine, Indiana flipping is far from impossible. A 10% win in indiana is probably unrealistic though but not by that much since Survey USA has it as Obama +4 and PPP with a +2.

[Surlethe]

If Obama wins Indiana by 1 point, let alone 10 points (!), I will join RI for a sock-eating party. There is no way the economy is bad enough to flip this state by thirteen points when it's been deep red since 1964. The fact Obama is trailing McCain by a mere 3-5% shows how poorly McCain's doing, but if Obama scrapes out a win here, he won't need it because he'll have turned all the other swing states deep blue.

Well Colorado was Bush +4.6% and is looking right now at anywhere from 5 to 7 points Obama for a swing of 9-11.5 points. Missouri was Bush +7 and that is now polling Obama +1 to 3 for a swing of 8-10 points.
virginia went for Bush by 8.2% and is now an Obama 5 to 7 point lead for a swing of 13 to 15 points

Indiana has been significantly redder than those states; electoral-vote.com shows it going for Bush 60%-39%: a full 21% point difference. Flipping to Obama +1, let alone Obama +10, is a correspondingly significantly greater swing -- 22 points, or 31 points, respectively.

Edit: Hovering over the map at electoral-vote, Indiana's Bush margins are more similar to Mississippi's, Tennessee's, or Alabama's than Virginia's, West Virginia's, Colorado's, or Missouri's. This is a state that has been consistently more Republican than Georgia; even though different dynamics are in play because of Indiana's industrial (or, I should say, post-industrial) economy, flipping Indiana is, for Obama, more like flipping MI, TN, or GA than flipping VA, WV, CO, MO, or any other swing state.

Within that context, and especially with the proximity of the Chicago machine, Indiana flipping is far from impossible. A 10% win in indiana is probably unrealistic though but not by that much since Survey USA has it as Obama +4 and PPP with a +2.

It's not impossible, but I do hasten to note that within the last month, Research2000 has it as an exact tie, Rasmussen put it at McCain +7, SurveyUSA had McCain +3, and CNN, McCain +2 (data frome fivethirtyeight.com). I do admit that at the time of my writing, I was unaware of the newest SurveyUSA and PPP polls; all I knew about was the absurd +10 poll from Big Ten. It does appear IN is trending toward Obama right now. But a significant Obama win is still a far bigger achievement here, I contend, than in CO, VA, or MO.

Caveat: Things can change in ten days.

[apocolypse]

Well holy shit. EV.com just gave Indiana a light blue shade.

[Solauren]

So, how does one prepare socks for comsumption anyway?

[Pulp Hero]

I believe boiling and the adding of salt and small amounts of sugar is the traditional method.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

FiveThirtyEight had Indiana light blue earlier in the campaign, too. And wasn't there just a discussion on "The numbers just changed! Victory/failure is guaranteed!"?

Don't get the socks out just yet.

[apocolypse]

FiveThirtyEight had Indiana light blue earlier in the campaign, too. And wasn't there just a discussion on "The numbers just changed! Victory/failure is guaranteed!"?

Don't get the socks out just yet.

Oh no, it's quite easily a fluke or some such and entirely possible IN goes red on election day. I'm just surprised a color anything other than deep red at any given time.

[Turin]

This is a slightly irrelevant aside, but this last exchange has me thinking. Is there any particular reason the Republicans are "red" and the Democrats are "blue?" I mean, both are conservative but the Dems are supposed to me more liberal. Why aren't the Dems "red," which is what I would expect to see anywhere else in the world?

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

From my understanding, it used to be haphazard with different stations assigning the colours differently even within the same election. It wasn't until the 2000s elections when people started paying a lot of attention to the electoral maps, bringing them into the public consciousness, and red for Republicans/blue for Democrats was being used at that time.

[General Zod]

This is a slightly irrelevant aside, but this last exchange has me thinking. Is there any particular reason the Republicans are "red" and the Democrats are "blue?" I mean, both are conservative but the Dems are supposed to me more liberal. Why aren't the Dems "red," which is what I would expect to see anywhere else in the world?

Wiki link

According to The Washington Post, the terms Red states and blue states were coined by Tim Russert.[12][13] This term refers to those states of the United States of America whose residents predominantly vote for the Republican Party or Democratic Party presidential candidates, respectively. It began to emerge in mainstream political discussion following the 2000 presidential election.

[CmdrWilkens]

Well Colorado was Bush +4.6% and is looking right now at anywhere from 5 to 7 points Obama for a swing of 9-11.5 points. Missouri was Bush +7 and that is now polling Obama +1 to 3 for a swing of 8-10 points.
Virginia went for Bush by 8.2% and is now an Obama 5 to 7 point lead for a swing of 13 to 15 points

Indiana has been significantly redder than those states; electoral-vote.com shows it going for Bush 60%-39%: a full 21% point difference. Flipping to Obama +1, let alone Obama +10, is a correspondingly significantly greater swing -- 22 points, or 31 points, respectively.

Yet that was Bush against Kerry. In '96 with Clinton Gore the margin was +5.6 for Dole so flipping to +1 Obama would only be a +6.5 against that margin. In 2000 the Bush margin was +15 the last time we had a race without an incumbent so an Obama flip there would be +16 which is obviously not as big a swing as Virginia but in this kind of a wave election which is shaping up its entirely possible.

Edit: Hovering over the map at electoral-vote, Indiana's Bush margins are more similar to Mississippi's, Tennessee's, or Alabama's than Virginia's, West Virginia's, Colorado's, or Missouri's. This is a state that has been consistently more Republican than Georgia; even though different dynamics are in play because of Indiana's industrial (or, I should say, post-industrial) economy, flipping Indiana is, for Obama, more like flipping MI, TN, or GA than flipping VA, WV, CO, MO, or any other swing state.

Obama does have several structural advantages that no other Democrat has had since LBJ took the state in '64 the most obvious being the proximity of the Chicago Machine and the lateness of the primary. Within the context of both of those points Obama already had a very favorable trajectory in the state (and eeking to a near tie with Clinton in the primary should have been the first indication that his ground troops can deliver the votes). Admittedly he has some structural advantages in Georgia as well (if he can get Black turnout up to 40% and keep 20% white support then he wins GA) but obiously they are not as strong a set of advantages as he enjoys elsewhere.

That being said I would say that WV is less likely to flip than Indiana mostly because Obama has neither a machine to drive turnout (as with IN) nor a large Black populace to drive turnout (as with GA)

Within that context, and especially with the proximity of the Chicago machine, Indiana flipping is far from impossible. A 10% win in indiana is probably unrealistic though but not by that much since Survey USA has it as Obama +4 and PPP with a +2.

It's not impossible, but I do hasten to note that within the last month, Research2000 has it as an exact tie, Rasmussen put it at McCain +7, SurveyUSA had McCain +3, and CNN, McCain +2 (data frome fivethirtyeight.com). I do admit that at the time of my writing, I was unaware of the newest SurveyUSA and PPP polls; all I knew about was the absurd +10 poll from Big Ten. It does appear IN is trending toward Obama right now. But a significant Obama win is still a far bigger achievement here, I contend, than in CO, VA, or MO.

Caveat: Things can change in ten days.

Well there was also the Seltzer poll with the +3 Obama result in that same grouping and aside from the Zogby Interactive poll everything has been within single digits .

[Crossroads Inc.]

So this morning I had an unsettling conversation with a conservative "Friend" of mine online... Basically he was Terrified that if Obama won, that black nation wide would "Want their due" and feel like they "were going to get payback" for years of racism... Now, my friend ASSURED me that he was not a racist, but non the less felt that "for years, black have been getting out of the way of whites, of moving to the back of the bus, if Obama wins I fele like im going to be forced to do those thing for blacks."

Anyone else finding this a growing trend? Yesterday I heard a similar conversation on NPR from some voters... Seriously WTF?

[Justforfun000]

So this morning I had an unsettling conversation with a conservative "Friend" of mine online... Basically he was Terrified that if Obama won, that black nation wide would "Want their due" and feel like they "were going to get payback" for years of racism... Now, my friend ASSURED me that he was not a racist, but non the less felt that "for years, black have been getting out of the way of whites, of moving to the back of the bus, if Obama wins I fele like im going to be forced to do those thing for blacks."

Anyone else finding this a growing trend? Yesterday I heard a similar conversation on NPR from some voters... Seriously WTF?

In my opinion, he's got it completely backwards. I said long ago that making Obama President will do more towards healing the racial divides and past history of slavery and segregation better then all the racial integration and counseling in the US. It's an extremely powerful message that will be sent saying "Finally, racism has lost a serious battle and now the most powerful person in the entire country, is part black." On a subconscious level, I'll bet it will be very influential, particularly for blacks everywhere in the country. They STILL feel racism and I'll bet that the grand majority feel that they were never going to get to the same level playing field as the whites. There were always certain breakthroughs and major strides but I believe this will finally be the pinnacle. After this, other victories and improvements could look anti-climactic, and I think it's a really good thing.

This is assuming Obama is getting in of course. I am pinning my hopes to a star. He does look like he's doing it.

[SirNitram]

So this morning I had an unsettling conversation with a conservative "Friend" of mine online... Basically he was Terrified that if Obama won, that black nation wide would "Want their due" and feel like they "were going to get payback" for years of racism... Now, my friend ASSURED me that he was not a racist, but non the less felt that "for years, black have been getting out of the way of whites, of moving to the back of the bus, if Obama wins I fele like im going to be forced to do those thing for blacks."

Anyone else finding this a growing trend? Yesterday I heard a similar conversation on NPR from some voters... Seriously WTF?

Racists are terrified of actually being the ones without power.

Yes, yes, he assured you. Yet he's saying to your face that the 'blacks nationwide' will do something together. When someone decrees all people of a race are going to get together and do something, generally because he's a racist.

It's the most primal fear there is. American whites, pampered and secure in power, have been terrified of the bogeyman of losing the monopoly on power since the slave revolts in the Carribean reminded them that those people they beat and killed and sold could get together and really cause mayhem if you pissed them off enough.

[Ender]

I actually wonder what will happen if Obama loses, particularly if it is very close with accusations of cheating. Working around here I've heard some pretty heated statements on that topic. I figure most of them are in line with "I'm moving to X if Y wins!" BS, but some people are saying them with that scary kind of conviction in their eyes.

[Duckie]

McCain's collapse possibly isn't entirely his own fault- it's the division of the Republican Party between those who want a McCain and those who want a Palin.

Washington Post Writers Group
"Whose Side Are You On, Comrade" by E.J. Dionne, Jr.
Why conservatives have finally lost their sense of solidarity and purpose.
Post Date October 24, 2008

WASHINGTON--Conservatives are at each other's throats, and here's what's revealing about how divided they are: The critics of John McCain and the critics of Sarah Palin represent entirely different camps.

Skeptical social conservatives are precisely the people McCain was trying to mollify by picking Palin as his running mate. These include the faithful of the religious right who remember McCain as their enemy in 2000, and parts of the gun crowd who always saw McCain as soft on their issues.

That McCain felt a need to make such an outlandishly risky choice speaks to how insecure his hold was on the core Republican vote. A candidate is supposed to rally the base during the primaries and reach out to the middle at election time. McCain got it backward, and it's hurting him.

A Pew Research Center survey this week found that among political independents, Palin's unfavorable rating has almost doubled since mid-September, from 27 percent to 50 percent. Whatever enthusiasm Palin inspired among conservative ideologues is more than offset by middle-of-the road defections.

Even on the right, she hasn't done the job. In The Washington Post tracking poll released on Thursday, Barack Obama drew 22 percent of the vote from self-described conservatives. That's a seven-point gain on John Kerry's 2004 conservative share.

Yet the pro-Palin right is still impatient with McCain for not being tough enough--as if he has not run one of the most negative campaigns in recent history. This camp believes that if McCain only shouted the names "Bill Ayers" and "Jeremiah Wright" at the top of his lungs, the whole election would turn around.

Then there are those conservatives who see Palin as a "fatal cancer to the Republican Party" (David Brooks), as someone who "doesn't know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin" (Kathleen Parker), as "a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics" (Peggy Noonan).

These conservatives deserve credit for acknowledging how ill-suited Palin is for high office. But what we see here is a deep split between parts of the conservative elite and much of the rank and file.

For years, many of the elite conservatives were happy to harvest the votes of devout Christians and gun owners by waging a phony class war against "liberal elitists" and "leftist intellectuals." Suddenly, the conservative writers are discovering that the very anti-intellectualism their side courted and encouraged has begun to consume their movement.

The cause of Edmund Burke, Leo Strauss, Robert Nisbet and William F. Buckley Jr. is now in the hands of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity--and Sarah Palin. Reason has been overwhelmed by propaganda, ideas by slogans, learned manifestoes by direct-mail hit pieces.

And then there is George W. Bush. Conservatives once hailed him for creating an enduring majority on behalf of their cause. Now, they cast him as the goat in their story of decline.

The conservative critique of Bush is a familiar rant against his advocacy of big government and huge deficits--now supplemented by a horror over his embrace of actual socialism with the partial nationalization of big banks. And, yes, a fair number of conservatives were never wild about the adventure in Iraq.

Things are so bad that the internecine warriors on the right have begun copying the rhetoric of the old left. In a Washington Times column this week upbraiding dissidents such as Brooks and Noonan, Tony Blankley, the conservative writer and activist, fell back on an old left slogan, asking them: "Whose side are you on, comrade?"

This is a revelatory question. It arises when a movement has lost its sense of solidarity and purpose, when the "sides" are no longer clear. There is no unified "right" or "center-right," which is why we are no longer a conservative country, if we ever were.

Conservatism has finally crashed on problems for which its doctrines offered no solutions (the economic crisis foremost among them, thus Bush's apostasy) and on its refusal to acknowledge that the "real America" is more diverse, pragmatic and culturally moderate than the place described in Palin's speeches or imagined by the right-wing talk show hosts.

Conservatives came to believe that if they repeated phrases such as "Joe the Plumber" often enough, they could persuade working-class voters that policies tilted heavily in favor of the very privileged were actually designed with Joe in mind.

It isn't working anymore. No wonder conservatives are turning on each other so ferociously.

E.J. Dionne, Jr. is the author of the recently published Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right. He is a Washington Post columnist, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a professor at Georgetown University.

[Duckie]

Ghetto Edit- Link

and a quote to highlight the significant section

For years, many of the elite conservatives were happy to harvest the votes of devout Christians and gun owners by waging a phony class war against "liberal elitists" and "leftist intellectuals." Suddenly, the conservative writers are discovering that the very anti-intellectualism their side courted and encouraged has begun to consume their movement.

The cause of Edmund Burke, Leo Strauss, Robert Nisbet and William F. Buckley Jr. is now in the hands of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity--and Sarah Palin. Reason has been overwhelmed by propaganda, ideas by slogans, learned manifestoes by direct-mail hit pieces.

[Patrick Degan]

Then there are those conservatives who see Palin as a "fatal cancer to the Republican Party" (David Brooks), as someone who "doesn't know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin" (Kathleen Parker), as "a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics" (Peggy Noonan).

These conservatives deserve credit for acknowledging how ill-suited Palin is for high office. But what we see here is a deep split between parts of the conservative elite and much of the rank and file.

For years, many of the elite conservatives were happy to harvest the votes of devout Christians and gun owners by waging a phony class war against "liberal elitists" and "leftist intellectuals." Suddenly, the conservative writers are discovering that the very anti-intellectualism their side courted and encouraged has begun to consume their movement.

The cause of Edmund Burke, Leo Strauss, Robert Nisbet and William F. Buckley Jr. is now in the hands of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity--and Sarah Palin. Reason has been overwhelmed by propaganda, ideas by slogans, learned manifestoes by direct-mail hit pieces.

Yeah, boo-hoo, we all have problems. This is what these people get for giving power to the stupid and the vicious —a political party ripping itself to bits. They sowed the wind, they can just fucking well enjoy the whirlwind they now reap.

[Knife]

I actually wonder what will happen if Obama loses, particularly if it is very close with accusations of cheating.

Conspiracy nuts aside; not that differant than Bush/Gore 2000. Hard core party hacks will hold resentment and bring it up when merited. The mushy middle will forget it quickly.

Working around here I've heard some pretty heated statements on that topic. I figure most of them are in line with "I'm moving to X if Y wins!" BS, but some people are saying them with that scary kind of conviction in their eyes.

Those are the semi mushy middles. Want to be hard core but reality usually smacks them around to... well reality. I know there's a large segment on this board that laments the 'mushy middle' but mostly I feel they represent the 'undecided'. Make of that what you will, but they don't necessarily represent 'bad' rather undecided. In this case I give them the analogy of 'agnostics' that are really atheists that really haven't put forth the effort to discover they are atheists.

McCain's collapse possibly isn't entirely his own fault- it's the division of the Republican Party between those who want a McCain and those who want a Palin.

Well....duh.

While the GOP, imo, has been slowly imploding into nothing more than bible thumper s and libertarians, it did have a vast large tent at one point. This years politics has only served to highlight the fractured GOP. For one, the very nomination of McCain shows the infighting of the larger groups. At his base, McCain is more centrist (even if he made a hard right turn for this election) in American politics. The fact he had to nominate Palin as VP further shows the cracks in the machine and McCain's high school attempt to shore up the base. The Rockefeller Republicans are a diminishing share of the GOP but between what's left and the waring bible thumper's, you 'got the centrist (in republican terms). I think, being in Utah, the Morman's learned an important lesson this year and I'm interested in what happens two and four years from now.

My state has been... comfortably known as a red state because while the Protestants can't stand Mormons, they are at least Christian and so vote as the 'religious right' block. You know, vote for brother so and so because of 'family values'. This time, however, the Mormons got fucked. Their guy got up there and did the whole 'vote for brother Romney because of family values' and got shot down by the typical souther baptist asshole.

I find the whole thing funny, however I do know scores of people holding their nose and voting McCain only because A) Romney didn't make it and B)Huckabee isn't the candidate. If Huckabee was the candidate, I'd laugh my ass off as Utah went blue.

Then you can deal with the 'conservative movment' and the GOP angle. I distinctly remember sean hannity babbling about how mad he was that McCain was the nominee. That he, and by that all his followers, were conservative first and republican's second. I actually lament that a split didn't happen there and then but...

There are many a splits in the GOP this year. However; one can see the demise while another can simple see a 'we lost because of the centrists....long live the Libertarian/bible thumping GOP. While the Democrats should be able to run over these nut cases, we've seen the effectiveness of the left to burn through the stupidity of the nutballs before and I'm not too optimistic.

[Darth Wong]

Most of the McCain/Palin campaign right now seems to be focused on accusing Obama of "wanting to spread the wealth". Is this attack really supposed to be devastatingly effective, in an environment where most of the country is furious at the rich guys on Wall Street for taking their money?

[Illuminatus Primus]

Most of the McCain/Palin campaign right now seems to be focused on accusing Obama of "wanting to spread the wealth". Is this attack really supposed to be devastatingly effective, in an environment where most of the country is furious at the rich guys on Wall Street for taking their money?

Yes, because McSame is focusing on the endless right-wing red-herring on progressive taxation: "small business owners." And everyone feels bad for them because its hard to be one I guess, and they're not evil financiers in New York. The other red herring is that rich people are the ones who work hardest and want it the most; how anyone believes this bullshit about virtue and income, I don't know. How anyone thinks your Wall Street investment banker works harder than your ICU nurse or whatever, I don't know. How anyone thinks their work has done more constructive contribution to society, I don't know. But McCain's being butchered in the polls, so it probably isn't working that much. I wish Obama would more forcefully refute it, but his approach seems to be working okay and he knows better than me.

[Darth Wong]

Maybe some people don't realize that people are taxed on net income? Sure, there are plenty of small business owners who have more than $250k in revenue and are barely getting by, but they're not taxed on their gross revenue; they're taxed on their net income after expenses. Any small business owner who is netting $250k after expenses is not just getting by; he's doing pretty well and he can afford to give a little back to the community.

[Justforfun000]

Darth Wong Wrote:

Most of the McCain/Palin campaign right now seems to be focused on accusing Obama of "wanting to spread the wealth". Is this attack really supposed to be devastatingly effective, in an environment where most of the country is furious at the rich guys on Wall Street for taking their money?

I know, eh? I can't figure it out myself. Obama has made it painfully clear that NO one under $250,000 is going to get taxed more. Indeed they are guaranteed a cut. So if he's truly sticking to his campaign promise, then why would the grand majority of America be opposed to this? I suspect that they of course are NOT, and the slower ones are finally coming around and actually listening to what Obama is saying and not what McCain and Palin are saying he's saying.

And I'm sorry, but any greedy cunt in the States making more then $250,000 a year boo hooing about paying a little extra to help those not only less fortunate, but also a facet of the work force that drives the market and the economy in the main, is being selfish and miserly. He/she wouldn't be able to become so rich without the middle class, so it's fair shake to ensure that one group isn't shouldering the highest burden as well as working the hardest.

Fuck...I've never made $250,000 in the last 10 years I've been singing my ass off. I could take that one sum and be able to nearly buy a house off in Downtown Toronto. Personally I think he's setting the bar a little high. I think it should start around $150,000 a year. That's where you really start getting into wealthy territory. 5 years of that salary and you're sailing along pretty nicely..