If you’re like me, you’re looking forward to this election being over. If you’re pundit and former Bush 43 speechwriter/press hack Ari Fleischer, you want this thing to last forever, hence this tweet earlier today:
Prediction Time:1) The election won’t end Tuesday night. 7 states will b decided by 1 pt or less. (VA, OH, CO, IA, PA, WI, NH)
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) November 4, 2012
Seven states in recount? Chaos for weeks, if not months…and of course plenty of TV appearances for pundits like Fleischer (despite the irreparable harm it would do to our voting process, not to mention the American psyche.) Then again, that’s the point, isn’t it? Only our pundit class would be able to navigate America through these rocky shoals, and they could shape the nation for years to come as a result.
So yeah, Ari Fleischer wants recount chaos. It directly benefits him, not to mention 5 of those 7 states have GOP governors. Me, that sounds like a nightmare scenario followed by the Supremes handing the election to the Republicans again.
Self-service in every sense of the word.
jl
Can the Super PACs spend on election challenges? Anyone know? That would be a cool cash cow to keep the money flowing.
arguingwithsignposts
In a just world, nobody would give that lying sack of shit the time of day. Further proof there is no god.
Hal
And he’s basing this 1 point margin idea on…?
Robin G.
I have screaming nightmares about this scenario.
That being said, as my money sits right now, I’d say OH won’t be decided on Tuesday but it won’t matter. Obama will push over 270 without it.
Schlemizel
Ari & self-service makes me think of the type of self-serve guys give themselves – its a perfect metaphor for what Ari does.
@Hal: It squirted out while Ari was self-servicing, he found it in a rock hard tissue under his desk
Schlemizel
@jl:
YES! they did it here in MN Franken/Coleman race
Ocotillo
I will be traveling on business that day, I have already voted. I will land at 7:00pm CST and will be driving for roughly 2 hours. My prediction is this thing will be pretty well decided by the time I get checked into my hotel for the evening.
Anonymous
But of course, if he’s proven to be wrong, people will stop listening to him and trusting him, right?
James E. Powell
I am going to risk looking like a moron or a deluded partisan, but I’m going to predict that the election will be decided earlier than Ari and his fellow pundits think, and that it will be Obama/Biden by wider margins in the battleground states, particularly Ohio and Virginia, than shown by current poll aggregators.
Almost all of those claiming the race is ‘tight as a tick’ or ‘neck and neck’ are Republican pundits who are desperate to avoid the ‘Romney failed to make the sale’ narrative from appearing over the weekend.
MikeJ
@jl:
It depends on the state.
jl
@Schlemizel:
” YES! they did it here in MN Franken/Coleman race ”
Oh boy! What fun we might have. Agree with commenter above that the hack Fleischer has no clue how close most of the swing states will be. I will hang my hope on that.
rlrr
Romney is winning over the crazies…
meander
It’s quite a racket, have your cronies in the Secretary of State’s office (or other voting agency) run suppression schemes that push people onto provisional ballots, or underfund the voting apparatus so there are crazy-long waits, and then blame the problem on “government.” And then say, shamelessly, “We need more Republicans in government.”
Spaghetti Lee
Hilarious. Not gonna happen, Fleisch.
Capt. Seaweed
So that’s the plan. Don’t concede nothing. Challenge every close result in court, then win the framing and pundit battle. Worked in 2000.
Haydnseek
Ari Fleischer was a lying sack of shit when he was Dubyas press secretary, and he’s been a lying sack on CNN ever since, but he’s right about this. Not because all of these states will be that close, but because hordes of lawyers will instantly file dozens of frivolous lawsuits in an attempt to stall SoS certifications in states where exit polling shows Obama winning the popular vote. Chaos ensues, votes “disappear,” etc. The wingnuts have gotten much better at this since 2000, and when challenged they will cast themselves as the true defenders of democracy, and what do you have against freedom and liberty, anyway? I think Zandar is right, but Fleischer is a very small cog in a huge machine.
Spaghetti Lee
@Anonymous:
Of course! And the Cardinals are gonna cover the spread against the Packers today, too.
BarbCat
I plan to nag Ari (and Dick Morris, EE, Rove, the Unskewed guy) on Twitter on November 7th. He’s wrong.
How long until the united media shuts down Nate Silver? I saw Charlie Cook with Chuck Todd yesterday and he was fumbling around trying to put his ‘predictions’ together with spit and bubblegum. Unwatchable.
Schlemizel
@Ocotillo:
One thing I find interesting is that the party insiders will be looking at exit polling and voter turn out. These guys know districts and how they represent across the nation as well as what polling actually shows. Those guys will know by noon CST who is going to win unless it really is that close. My guess is it won’t be that close & you are going to see rictus grins around Rmoney/rAyn Tuesday afternoon.
Alexandra
@James E. Powell:
With you on this. The steam seems to have gone out of many Republican elites who know the writing’s on the wall and are writing post-mortems already. OFA has this in the bag; I can feel it my bones.
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
I’m feeling a tad under the weather today, so this bit about Airhead Fleischer just re-enforces for me the notion that there are far too many corrupt, smug, power-pigs in this country and that it’s a real push as to whether we survive and prosper in the long run or go down in a burning heap. Sorry for the Sunday a.m. gloom.
NotMax
Confident that Rasmussen’s Dec. 15 poll will correctly show the winner and electoral count from Nov. 6.
Scott S.
Too much fucking around with people’s ballots is going to finally inspire the long-overdue shooting war on asshole Republicans and douchebag pundits…
mdblanche
Well, if Ari Fleischer says it, it must be true.
cynn
Here in Colorado, I think there may be a factor I haven’t seen considered or addressed. We have a statewide issue decriminalizing minor marijuana possession. My 18 year old and all her friends registered to vote specifically because of this. I imagine a huge cohort of young or otherwise uninvolved voters will come out for this. The Obama folks have been hitting this age group aggressively, but they haven’t been polled. It will be interesting to see how things play out here. Maybe not such a horse race after all.
Schlemizel
@jl:
The good news out of the deal – outside of the really important bit that the nutjobs failed to cancel votes & Al won – is that the state GOP cooked their books to hide how much they spent. The violated election law & were fined, had to fire their chairman & ran up a ton of debt.
If only there was another party that could have pointed this illegal and stupid behavior and used it against them in the upcoming election.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
I think I read somewhere that how VA is called will more or less predict how fast Obama will be declared the winner. If he wins VA (polls close at 7pm EDT), it’s all over but the counting.
Mark B.
I think Ari should watch what he says.
A lot of those states won’t be all that close. Thinking that PA is anything but an Obama slam dunk is wishful thinking by the Romney camp.
AA+ Bonds
In the midst of all this frothing I hope that y’all are actually prepared for the real possibility of a repeat of 2000 on a large scale
Are you ready to use your bodies and your voices and all your resources, because people on the right sure are
Haydnseek
@AA+ Bonds: Exactly this. I feel like Ripley in the Alien sequels this time. Constantly paranoid, can never let down your guard, complacency is a fatal mistake. I remember 2000 and 2004 all to well.
Schlemizel
@Haydnseek:
Do you suppose Dem Congressmen would send staffers to riot and shut down the recount? If they did would the media be kind enough to not mention the fact like they did for the GOP in ’00?
JustAnotherBob
@Alexandra:
There’s that and there’s the fact that Romney doesn’t seem to be loved or trusted by anyone. With Bush the Republican party was united behind the effort to get him and Cheney into control. This time, I just don’t see any huge desire to put Romney and Ryan into position.
Feels to me that the major players on the Republican side are holding back and trying to figure our how to reconfigure the party for 2016.
redshirt
Chaos is good for business!
the Conster
@cynn:
I’ve been saying for a couple of years that as smart as Obama is, if his campaign promised to legalize marijuana as a crop, and stop the war against some drugs, he’d be putting red states back in play. It’s a winner.
Cacti
As Ari knows, when all else fails, just make shit up.
Ben Franklin
@JustAnotherBob:
With Bush the Republican party was united behind the effort to get him and Cheney into control
I think it has the same smell. They just want a figurehead POTUS to endlessly ditto the construct of their Congressional bagmen.
AA+ Bonds
I want to point out that well before election night in 2000, the Bush campaign declared that they would challenge and fight any result where Bush could have won the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College
The Republicans and Romney already have their ground game in place to fight next week’s election results in court
Do the Democrats?
Another Halocene Human
@meander: As I said last night, it worked for the NSDAP.
Never give these people an INCH.
Haydnseek
@Schlemizel: They won’t, because they’re Dems, after all. But just for grins, suppose they did. The media would probably play it as a shameful assault on the greatest democracy the world has ever known by a small group of disgruntled extremists who seek to illegally alter election results for their own perfidious ends. 2000 will never be mentioned again. It’s languishing at the very bottom of the memory hole.
arguingwithsignposts
@AA+ Bonds: 9/11 was an inside job!
Haydnseek
@AA+ Bonds: From reading some of Kay’s FP posts here, it sounds like they do in Ohio. Don’t know about anywhere else.
Ben Franklin
@AA+ Bonds:
Do the Democrats?
Good question. I hope the first debate woke some of the intellegentsia into a consciousness of the level they need to play at.
Woodrowfan
tweets like that are fine, but should be done in private and you should wash your hands afterwards…
Steve LaBonne
Sorry, Ari, Obama will win Ohio by AT LEAST two points.
Steve LaBonne
@AA+ Bonds: Obama has 2500 lawyers on the ground in Ohio alone. Next question?
Fred
@AA+ Bonds:
I think you are right. And don’t expect the SCOTUS to be chastened by past miscreant behavior. Another finding that souldn’t be taken as precident will merrily pass as a 5/4 while Scalia smiles his reptilian smile.
Chris
@JustAnotherBob:
This.
Republicans loved Bush. Not as madly as Reagan, but there was an overall sense of “he’s a good man doing a hard job as well as he could, he’s one of us and he understands our values and our way of life, and we’re lucky to have him.” (Bullshit, yes, but that’s what they believed).
I’ve seen nothing of the kind for Romney. At most, they’ll say that he’s successful and rich so he must know something (but that’s a ways from the “Joe Sixpack” populism they did with Bush). More often, they’ll say some damning variation of “he’s not much of a prize, but at least he’s not a Kenyan Socialist Muslim Usurper!”
AA+ Bonds
@arguingwithsignposts:
That’s kind of a disgusting thing to say, and not really on topic at all
If you want to blank 2000 out of your mind, feel free to do so, but it may cause you trouble in a week or so here
Ben Franklin
@Steve LaBonne:
Obama has 2500 lawyers on the ground in Ohio alone. Next question?
Should we take solace in the number of lawyers?
Too many cooks spoil the broth.
Chris
@Another Halocene Human:
Amen to that.
Mike in NC
If the Wingnut Welfare were to dry up, Ari could always fall back to being ball-licker to Sheldon Adelson.
The Dangerman
@Robin G.:
I think this is right – in the EC.
My fear is that Romney runs up the score in the South and takes the PV in a squeaker…
…thus giving us weeks of the Right trying to flip some faithless Electors. I don’t think they would be successful, but it would be ugly. The Right can see the recovery as well as I can (they can’t suppress it forever) and they don’t want Obama to get credit for it.
Cacti
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
If Obama has 192 Electoral Votes prior to or as of 11:00 p.m. EST, he’s secured a second term, and if Virginia is the first swing state called for him, he’s almost a mortal lock for that number.
Edited to add that 11:00 p.m. eastern time is when polls close in the Pacific states, and Obama picks up 78 EV from CA, OR, WA, and HI.
JustAnotherBob
@Ben Franklin: I don’t feel the real when it comes to Republican support for Romney. It feels more like they view him as some carpetbagger/outsider who isn’t under their control. He’s not part of the machine.
That’s not saying anything in Romney’s favor. It’s just a weakness in party support that I perceive. Romney, to me, is a guy with zero friends.
karen
I heard that even if the state votes for a Presidential candidate, the delegate can just change their mind and vote for whoever they want. Is that true? Sorry if this sounds stupid.
Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches
@James E. Powell:
I’m just hoping that all those early votes get counted.
I don’t know much about the nuts and bolts of elections, but it’s starting to dawn on me that early voting was as much a part of the Obama camp’s strategy as aggressive GOTV. He did, after all, make a show of early-voting, himself.
Which has made me curious: Does early voting somehow make an election harder to steal?
I’m also puzzled at reports of early vote margins in OH/FL/NV/IA being heavily pro-Obama, while polls are still moderately flat. Romney is said to need around 60% of the remaining votes to take any of those states.
Are Dems that much more likely to vote early?
Woodrowfan
Don’t count on Virginia going early. I could be wrong, and hope I am but we may be waiting to see how much of a margin Obama runs up in Richmond, Arlington and Fairfax.
Steve LaBonne
@Ben Franklin: Should we take solace in wetting the bed? Too much pee spoils the sheets.
arguingwithsignposts
@AA+ Bonds: Who’s blanking 2000 out of their minds? You’re preemptively seeding conspiracy theories.
the Conster
@The Dangerman:
My first choice is to have O win it going away, but my second choice is to see the mirror image of Bush’s 2000 victory. Bush’s FAIL is the only thing that made Obama’s election possible, and there’s a lovely symmetry about having O benefit from that other Bush precedent. I would happily spend my days saying “suck it, wingnuts”.
NotMax
Ben Franklin
Many hands make light work.
Bruce S
I don’t think Fleischer wants this for his potential personal media appearances, so much as the opportunity it offers to the GOP to steal the election, via corrupt state officials and Bush 1&2-appointee judges.
Ben Franklin
@JustAnotherBob:
It’s just a weakness in party support that I perceive. Romney, to me, is a guy with zero friends.
What’s the Islamic expression, “The enemy of my enemy, is my friend”?
They want someone they can like and admire, but, in the final analysis, they want a gopher, and will settle for Romney.
Woodrowfan
2,500 hundred lawyers is good, but there are over 11,000 precincts.
Cacti
For the big 3 swing state prizes, it goes like this…
If Romney loses VA or NC, he likely loses the election.
If Romney loses OH, he almost certainly loses the election.
If Romney loses FL, he definitely loses the election.
Ben Franklin
@NotMax:
Many hands make light work.
The expectation of chicanery is what I seek. Will the Top-Down protocols prepare for the worst kInd? I hope so.
Shawn in ShowMe
@AA+ Bonds:
What new phantasm will you bring to our attention after Nov 6? We’ll be powerless or too inept to stop it, of course, but maybe we could get Scooby, Shaggy and the rest of the gang on the case.
NotMax
From a short while ago, but Huckabee has totally gone off the deep end.Your vote will affect the future and be recorded in eternity. Will you vote the values that will stand the test of fire?Watch video
Speculum Spatula
Another recount crisis, especially in multiple states, would be an unmitigated GOOD thing for this country’s very flawed voting system.
One would hope some long overdue changes would be made as a result.
Though we saw almost nothing in that direction as a result of the 2000 fiasco, except a huge move to even LESS transparent and verifiable means of voting.
kay
@Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches:
Early voting benefits Democrats because we can narrow the margin between likely voters and registered voters. There are more of us than there are of them, but more of them VOTE.
It takes time to do that. Early voting buys time.
That said, be careful of the OH early vote advantage. Husted sent out absentee ballot applications to every voter. That’s never happened before. I’m not comfortable with how they’re comparing 08 to 12, because I don’t see that they distinguishing early vote ( in person) from returned absentee ballots.
AA+ Bonds
@arguingwithsignposts:
You seriously think that it’s a “conspiracy theory” that Republicans are preparing to fight the results in court if they think it’s at all possible?
The Obama campaign appears to disagree with you, as other posters have noted.
It’s not all smiles and sunshine (and I can’t believe I have to post that, here, after the last 12 years).
Robin G.
@the Conster:
It’s a winner for Dems, but not for Obama, I think. The Drug-Dealing Ni-CLANG meme would be too powerful.
NotMax
Fixed.
From a short while ago, but Huckabee has totally gone off the deep end.
Watch video
the Conster
@Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches:
As I understood the memo from Organizing for America that lamh35 posted last night, they targeted unlikely voters and got them to vote early, banking those votes. The polls that show the tightest national race were likely voters as opposed to registered voters, and I think that the polling largely missed them.
AA+ Bonds
@Cacti:
It appears unlikely that Romney would lose NC, but it would be difficult to imagine a result where Obama wins NC but loses Ohio. If Obama wins NC, then he’s won the election IMO.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ben Franklin: The 2500 lawyers in Ohio are going to be out on the ground. That is the point. They will be there and prepared to take action if anything untoward takes place.
Citizen Alan
@rlrr:
That is hilarious! They really are Stalinists, aren’t they?
Mr Stagger Lee
Hey what happened to Political Observer/ElectorV(whatever)/Ted/Reason or whatis name? Shouldn’t he be here talking major smack?
Ben Franklin
@Omnes Omnibus:
I see the tactic. I worry abut the over-arching strategy.
arguingwithsignposts
@AA+ Bonds:
Who said everything was all smiles and sunshine? I’m not going to pull my hair out because the GOP is doing what any party would do in similar circumstances (fight in court where possible). The Dems have shown they aren’t going to put up with Husted’s bullshit in Ohio. I give Obama’s team the benefit that they’ve learned from 2000, as well. We’ll see how it goes.
Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches
@AA+ Bonds:
Gore didn’t fight much. Kerry, not at all. But neither of them were sitting Presidents. I’m pretty sure that Obama would fight. And will have the DOJ and FBI at his disposal for almost three more months at least.
I don’t trust those GOP fuckers to respect the rule of law, either: But there are now 3-5 state elections that have to be stolen, instead of just the Ohio Firewall.
We shall see.
Cacti
@AA+ Bonds:
Just remember 192. 192 or more by 11p eastern = election over.
dmsilev
@Mr Stagger Lee: He doesn’t clock in for his shift until later this evening.
Haydnseek
@AA+ Bonds: I expect the Repubs to fight the result in court no matter the closeness of the popular vote if there’s even the slightest chance that they can gin something up. They have nothing to lose, and money certainly won’t be a problem.
JustAnotherBob
@kay: Early voting means less opportunity for “players” to disrupt the vote on election day.
It seems that part of the strategy to suppress the Democratic vote is to under supply voting stations in Democratic areas. Voting early spreads the activity, shortens lines, and probably reduces walk-aways.
kindness
I’m pretty sure Obama will have a popular vote majority so I discount the harpies on the right who claim
bush43Romney will get a popular majority and electoral college loss. So really in my mind it comes down to electoral college bullsit.Sure hope it doesn’t go there. All I know is that I won’t be sitting on my ass like the last time bush43
Romneyran in 2000.NotMax
@Ben Franklin
Was more attempting jocularity by pointing out that nearly every adage has a mirror image. (As your cybernym is that of Poor Richard’s Almanac author, thought it apropos).
Another example:
Birds of a feather flock together.
Opposite attract.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ben Franklin: You don’t see it as part of a strategy to make sure no chicanery goes unchallenged? Because that is what it looks like to me.
Cacti
@dmsilev:
Nah, it’s because the public liberry is closed on Sunday.
Cermet
@Haydnseek: But remember when Gore was, in reality, elected President and the inferior court threw it out the recount that would have proven this fact on the grounds we couldn’t wait even a few days for a recount since the country couldn’t exist without knowing who won? Baby that is precedent and will be used to stop all state recounts against Obama while he has the lead – pay back bitches.
Ben Franklin
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s what I’m hoping, as I said upthread. I hope someone, somewhere took the cautionary tale from the unpreparedness of the first debate. I mean, no one expected Romney to swing left, did they?
arguingwithsignposts
@Cacti:
You assume he’d know where the public library is. Perhaps his mom has limited his ‘puter time.
the Conster
@Robin G.:
Probably, but it sure would pit red state generations against each other and peel off a lot of those glibertarian assholes. Next time.
Cermet
@cynn: Wow – that is great news! Better still, makes sense – nothing like self interest that gets the youth vote out!
nellcote
No exit polls this year in Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
@NotMax: Huckabee is wrong! The Flying Spaghetti Monster does not let her children burn in hell! She brings them to a slow simmer in a white wine sauce and serves them over mashed potatoes….
I don’t know, it sounded funny in my head.
NotMax
@ arguingwithsignposts
Or he/she is without power and frantically working on a generating station to say he/she built it him/herself.
Cermet
@nellcote: These just don’t matter at all – OH, Fl, PA, VA, CO, IA are what will tell us who wins and who whines.
Haydnseek
@Cermet: As I recall, the SCOTUS made a big point of saying that this decision could NOT be used as precedent; that it was a one-time decision that existed in some sort of vacuum and don’t even bring it up because “WE CAN’T HEAR YOU!” Look, I hope your right, payback would be sweet. That’s exactly why SCOTUS was so adamant about precedent in this decision.
Applejinx
I’m going back out to NH for a second time in an hour or so, to do data entry. I was stapling directions to another Obama HQ- the canvasser turnout was so huge they burned through all the canvasser packets already.
Smiling Mortician
@Cacti: Which is perhaps why Fleischer conveniently omits NC and FL from his list . . .
Cermet
@arguingwithsignposts: No shit – where do you think the terrorist pilots were sitting dumb shit (yes, I’m being over the top.)
NotMax
In a perfect world, Paul Ryan would lose two elections this Tuesday.
Cermet
@Ben Franklin: Do do realize that most are spread amoung all the polling stations? LOL
Haydnseek
@nellcote: Yeah, wouldn’t want any pesky Nate Silver wannabes comparing the exit polling to the actual popular vote. Nothing to see here, move along……….
Haydnseek
@West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.): …..with fava beans and a nice chianti……..
jl
@MikeJ:
(Can the Super PACs spend on election challenges?)
” It depends on the state.”
thanks for info. I wonder how many swing states allow it?
But if OH or FL go Obama, it might not make any difference.
Cermet
@karen: Yes, could happen for any State but one;however, has never happened and could lead to serious issues that would create a vast battle in the country, courts and even the streets – really hard to believe anyone would risk it (and their lives doing it, as well.)
Sly
@karen:
Faithless electors are a possibility but have never been a problem, because the electors are drawn from the same political party as the candidate people vote for. There have been about 150 faithless electors across all elections since 1788, with more than two thirds of them occurring in just three elections;
– In 1872, when Horace Greeley died after election day but before the electoral college voted, 63 of his 66 electors changed their vote to various third party candidates. The remaining 3 voted for Greeley anyway and had their votes thrown out by Congress. Grant won in a landslide anyway.
– In 1836, the entire Virginia delegation (23 electors) refused to vote for Richard Johnson of Kentucky for Vice President because he had affair with a black woman. They still voted for Van Buren for President, and both he and Johnson won anyway.
– In 1832, the entire Pennsylvania delegation (30 electors) voted for PA local William Wilkins for Vice President instead of Van Buren, who was not popular within the Democratic Party, and still voted for Andrew Jackson for President.
There are smaller single-year examples of faithless electors wherein a state would swap the President and Vice President votes if the Vice President was from that state, out of protest (ex. in 2000, the D.C. delegate refused to vote in protest over the lack of Congressional representation), or the elector simply made the wrong vote by mistake.
I don’t imagine it would ever be a problem. Most states do not have their electors vote by secret ballot, and the public backlash would be astounding.
Davis X. Machina
@NotMax:
I did, and this jamoke had better shut his face re ‘the test of fire’
Ben Franklin
@Cermet:
has never happened and could lead to serious issues that would create a vast battle in the country, courts and even the streets – really hard to believe anyone would risk it (and their lives doing it, as well.
LOL
Peter
While we’re tossing around wild predictions, here’s mine: Obama will win Florida by a narrow margin, and Ohio comfortably, and we’ll have three hours of watching pundits sit around and try to talk around the elephant in the room because they’re not allowed to call it until the west coast polls close.
Schlemizel
@Chris:
– – – William Hazlitt
CarolDuhart2
@Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches: Neither Gore nor Kerry had the resources to really fight on and on-both had taken Federal Matching, and towards the end were running financially on empty. And there was no army of supporters organized enough to take on the fraudsters. Obama has an army, is already President, and has about a billion or so (and more if needed if this thing goes into the Fifth Quarter) so he can fight until the last dog dies.
Another reason is that Gore and Kerry were getting hostile feedback from DLCers to be “nice” so that they could preserve their possible comebacks and political viability. Obama and Dean have pretty much ended the influence of those types-indeed the main party committees are filled with non-DLCers. Not only that, but Obama already is President and won’t worry about getting a second bite at the apple. His place in history is secure to say the least.
NotMax
@Sly
Not that it will make a whit of difference in the outcome, but still expect one or two electors to adamantly vote for Ron Paul.
Shawn in ShowMe
@Ben Franklin:
And I hope the Republicans took the cautionary tale from running a candidate that nobody likes and selecting a fraudulent policy wonk as his VP. I mean, no pundit expected that a Kenyan Muslim would be leading the Real ‘Murican job creator given the state of the economy, did they?
Riilism
According to TPM, Pew just out with a poll with O at 50% (Zomney at 47). Having Obama at 49-50% in the polls will likely insure a popular vote win (not that it matters, since the EVs are what is needed and Obama is looking pretty good on EVs), so Ari can suckmitt. Have to wait till Tuesday, but feeling pretty good ’bout this…
Roger Moore
@AA+ Bonds:
It’s hard to imagine a case where he wins NC and legitimately loses Ohio, but it’s all too easy to imagine some kind of shenanigans costing Obama Ohio.
cmorenc
The CNN network is a far bigger, more effective promoter and cheerleader of the “race is tied, may not be decided until the Wednesday morning” school of possibilities than Ari Fleisher, whom all but the most low-information voters recognize as a GOP shill. That network has been perhaps the most egregious promoter of the horse-race framing and focus of the campaign, the better to attract more viewers to their election coverage.
Cermet
@Haydnseek: No – the thugs will never risk undermining the electoral college; it is their only hope in future elections. Count on that.
Schlemizel
@the Conster:
DO NOT WANT!
The calls for more ‘compromise’ and for Obama to more right in response to that scenario would be unbearable. Remember how Brooks wrote that Boy Blunder should act as if he really had a mandate after ’00? He sure as hell won’t do that for Obama if the tables are turned. He will lead the charge for “Obama is not really legitimate and simply must give in to the GOP to make up for it” brigade.
Yutsano
@Roger Moore: Oh Husted is bending over backwards trying to ensure that happens. But Obama may just be too far ahead for it to matter.
Cermet
@JustAnotherBob: The critical issue with early voting for Dems is that many of their voters cannot get time off to get to a polling station early so they are more likely to find LONG lines, being tried, no one home for the kids, so leaves. Early voting is a god send for dems.
NotMax
Mitt’s acolytes should get that binder full of retirement options ready for him.
Riilism
@Riilism: FYI, previous Pew had a tie at 47%.
Violet
While we’re thinking wishfully, my preference is for Obama to win all the swing states by large margins, for Dems to hold the Senate and even gain seats, and for Dems to retake the House.
What’s the latest on the House anyway? Last I heard, Dems had pretty much no chance to retake it. But doesn’t that sort of projection rely on polling by district for the various candidates? Not as much of that kind of polling as there is nationally, right? Could some of it be off, wrong, or outdated?
Sly
@NotMax:
Only in states where Romney wins and, yes, its happened numerous times in the past as a form of “fuck it” protest when the pledged candidate has already won/lost and it won’t change anything.
The only time it’s actually affected the process was in 1836, when the Senate had to step in and sort out Virginia’s bigot vote in the Vice Presidential count.
Comrade Mary
Evil fuckers update, weekend edition:
Florida: emergency lawsuit over early voting
Florida 2: GOP offers extended early voting in single GOP stronghold only
Florida 3: oops
Cermet
@Haydnseek: And currently, many federal courts HAVE used that ruling to define election law. Yes, the inferior court at the time can try and limit its scope with that add on statement but for the specific reason they sighted as case law, the ruling CAN be used.
cmorenc
@CarolDuhart2:
Obama’s legacy as the first black president is all that’s secure. If he wins, he’ll end up as a president who made a broad, huge substantive impact on the trajectory of the nation’s history that won’t be easily undone, even with GOP obstructionism. The roots of health care reform will be set too deeply for them to effectively be able to reverse the overall trend, even if they can dent some of its effectiveness and reach. OTOH if Obama loses to Romney, the GOP will be in a position to rewrite Obama’s position in history as the “black Jimmy Carter”, and Romney will be able to not only effectively cripple health care reform, but perhaps undermine progressive infrastructure going all the way back to the New Deal with a couple more SCOTUS appointments along the lines of Scalia, plus what they’d do if they also had a Senate and House majority.
aimai
@Ben Franklin:
No, you dope, because those lawyers have to cover a huge number of polling places as well as online/telephone consults.
aimai
Spaghetti Lee
I just don’t think a split is likely. It’s only happened twice. I mean, Obama wins Electoral Votes by winning the popular vote. The two aren’t unrelated. Yeah, so Mitt runs up the score in the South. Put all the solid red states in the south together and it’s not as many people as California and New York and Illinois. And if Obama wins the EVs in OH, FL, and VA, that means he’s got a popular vote edge in those states too. (I think Obama wins OH by about 4-5 points and squeaks out FL and VA. NC I’m not so sure about.)
Ben Franklin
@aimai:
Missed the point, again. Do you ever read the context before opening your piehole?
Ruviana
@redshirt: Can you say disaster capitalism? There, I knew you could!
LD50
@Chris:
And to this day, they hate liberals for making it so that they can no longer say that about Bush.
NotMax
@Violet
My take:
Will Dems pick up House seats? Absolutely.
Enough to have a majority? Sadly, no. Obama’s coattails stretch only so far, unfortunately.
As for the Senate, expecting the numbers to either remain exactly the same or result in a -1 for Dems. Wish I could confidently state otherwise, though.
Riilism
@Spaghetti Lee: I concur regarding the split. Doesn’t seem that likely. My only concern was that Sandy would suppress turnout in the NE, possibly giving Romney an edge on PV but still losing the EV. But still thinking PV goes to Obama if he wins the EV….
Spaghetti Lee
@Violet:
I think the Dems will retake lots of seats in upstate New York, Illinois, and the upper midwest. Whether it will be enough I really don’t know. I think redistricting is not going to be as bad as people think. I know for a fact that the IL redistricting was totally done by Dems, and they took the liberty of making things tough for the Republicans. Walsh is gone. Schilling might be gone too, and Dold. I also think there are new Dem-friendly seats in WA, AZ, and I think even one in TX.
Not that anyone here needs to be told, but I think a big problem now and in the near future for the House is all the Blue Dogs that lost in ’10. Yes, they could be annoying, but they were keeping a hell of a lot of seats safe in Tennessee and Arkansas and Mississippi and Virginia that aren’t coming back, at least not this cycle.
Chris
@LD50:
Yeah, I think that’s at least part of why they’ve tried to hard to make Obama’s administration a failure (both in fact and in the public imagination). In their mind, we got one of theirs, which means they need to get one of ours.
Amir Khalid
@Speculum Spatula:
First you say
Then you say
which directly contradicts the your two paragraphs.
Far be it from me to argue with someone of your undoubted talent, charm, and grasp of logic; but you’re not quite making sense here.
Roger Moore
@LD50:
Then they’re barking up the wrong tree. The reason they can’t say that about Bush starts and stops with the Bush Administration.
MikeJ
@Amir Khalid: But this time will be different for sure!
Anoniminous
@Violet:
GOP has an awful lot of seats they took by 2% or less Obama won handily in 2008.
Countering this is the excellent job the GOP did with gerrymandering after 2010 creating a tall wall to surmount.
The Dems should win some House seats. Enough? Don’t know. Doubt anyone can really know. The most likely outcome is a narrow GOP hold because of the gerrymandering.
pepper
i know a few things still have to happen, but i don’t think this will be as close as folks want us to think. the president will win all of the battleground states with the possible exception of north carolina, and i am optimistic he wins north carolina. there will be some shenanigans in some of the states with republican governors, but it won’t be enough to offset the president’s lead. i think this will all be done by early to mid evening and we can focus on house and senate races.
i think the media coverage has been generally incompetent, but if the folks leaning to team blue think it’s close, they might be more inclined to vote and/or help others vote. there are more of us than them so as long as our guys show up, we win. if the result of the media coverage is to help democrats win, it’s not an altogether bad thing.
LD50
@Roger Moore: You don’t understand. They adored Bush2. He was a Republican. They banked everything on him as the Second Coming of Reagan. It’s impossible for them to believe they were massively wrong, so Bush2 must have been sabotaged. So they’re now aping what they think the DFH’s did to “bring down” Bush. They’re even repeating much of the exact same rhetoric the DFH’s were saying about Bush, right down to the stuff that makes no sense, like calling Obama ‘stupid’.
Bruce S
I’m not prone to conspiracy theories, but I think Team Romney has a strategy in place – with state officials – to try to steal Ohio. It won’t work, but the Jeep ad is proof to me that these are the dirtiest, lowest fuckers on the planet. They make the Bush 2000 team seem like Boy Scouts. Nasty Boy Scouts, of course, but Romney is the biggest dirt-bag of a GOPer nominee I’ve ever seen. And I lived through Nixon. I’d vote for Nixon over Romney, just on the basis of personal integrity. Nixon was a cynical scumbag, but I don’t think he simply made himself up as he went along, was running on empty when it came to the issues or touted anything close to as much total fucking nonsense as Romney does.
Patricia Kayden
So now we’re supposed to worry and shake in our boots about Ari and ilk’s speculation?
I don’t care how tight President Obama’s electoral college win is. A win is a win. Do Repugs actually think that President Obama is the same as Al Gore? I think Obama has a lot more fight in him than Gore did, and I doubt his supporters are going to let the Repubs steal this election.
All the voter suppression crap appears to have backfired as Blacks and Browns are coming out in force to early vote. I think if anything, the polls have been underestimating Obama’s support and that he’ll win the popular vote as well as the electoral college.
Bruce S
“I think the media coverage has been generally incompetent”
I appreciate your ability to ironically understate.
JustAnotherBob
@Cermet: Correct. That’s what I meant by “walkaways”.
David Koch
“face the nation” was a complete wank fest today.
One moment Dame Peggy Noonan was insisting you can’t judge Ohio based on polling, that you actually have to be there to “feel” the mood. Then the next moment she was declaring Florida in Mitten’s column because of polling.
Sly
Democrats have 21 seats up for election while the Republicans have only 10. In light of this fact, a net change of -1 or 0 is pretty good.
The same is going to be true in 2014, which is also going to have some tight races. Maybe even more than this year. Landrieu, Begich, Merkely, Udall, Shaheen, Hagan, Franken… all those candidates won with 53% of the vote or less in 2008.
We’re basically going to be playing defense in the Senate until 2016, when 24 Republicans will be up for re-election at the same time. Then we get a change to push the Tea Party assholes who won in 2010 out of Ohio, Illinois, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Wisconsin.
Spaghetti Lee
@Bruce S:
That whole Jeep thing just straight-up fizzled, though, didn’t it? I mean, no one bought it, not even the media, and I think Chrysler itself basically took the time to call bullshit.
I think blue-collar workers in Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania know what happened with the auto bailout, and they know that Obama’s on their side and Mitt isn’t. That’s the ‘firewall’. Mitt’s just not going to win people over with cheap crap like that. They know what really happened.
Mike E
I hope chaos visits Ari via a micrometeorite upside his ass. Just sayin’.
Anoniminous
@Spaghetti Lee:
Gerrymandering isn’t a By-Guess-and-By-Golly process any more. It’s an exercise in applied mathematics. If the election voter turn-out is within the statistical prediction(s) the gerrymandering used to carve out the seats the GOP will hold more than they lose. IF the election voter turn-out is outside, in some way, means, or manner, the statistical prediction(s) the gerrymandering used to carve out the seats the GOP will lose more than they hold.
ETA:
@David Koch:
HA! That’s the Nooner we have come to love.
Spaghetti Lee
@Sly:
I think everyone thought the Senate was a guaranteed flip earlier this year. But then along came Akin and Mourdock. Heitkamp in North Dakota is staying in it, and Tester isn’t going down easy either. If you told me 6 months ago that Dems had at least a chance to win all four of those, I wouldn’t have believed it.
Chris
@LD50:
Yeah, the Obama teleprompter meme? Started out as a Bush meme, based on the fairly obvious fact that the man couldn’t articulate shit unless he was reading it from a teleprompter. They decided to start throwing all the same shit at Obama, never mind the fact that the man’s done very well in no-teleprompter cases.
chopper
@arguingwithsignposts:
we’re democrats, it’s never smiles and sunshine. most of the time we’re too cynical to even get out of bed in the morning.
Chris
@Bruce S:
Oy, I’m not even going to say “it won’t work.” I just hope to hell enough Democrats turn out that it’s too much for the election to be stolen.
NotMax
@Sly
Small nitpick:
Also 2 seats currently held by independents who caucus with Dems (Sanders, a shoo-in, and Lieberman, not running – certainly looks as if McMahon will fail again).
pepper
bruce:
the media coverage has really been somewhere between malpractice and a crime (is that better?), but there is a benefit to following blogs like this one and folks like sam wang and nate silver. it means we can know the truth and not get as rattled by some of the garbage that comes from wolf blitzer and his ilk.
the media issue to me isn’t if it is horrible. we know that. what i wonder is if it will ever change and if committed people can get their candidates elected despite it.
the Conster
@David Koch:
Who would know more about the buzz in Ohio because Peggington Noonington spends all her time in Akron and Columbus and Youngstown and Dayton, amirite?
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@Mr Stagger Lee:
I get the feeling all of the front pagers have had enough and just whack-a-mole him whenever he appears. It feels good.
Bill Arnold
@Chris:
One scary thing was that through GWBush’s first term it was clear that nobody had taught him how to use a teleprompter, or that it hadn’t stuck. He would shift eyes left, then right, then back again.
Yutsano
@Sarah, Proud and Tall: I see you found what the shiny red button is for dear. Now keep in mind it won’t work on the nice orderly Alejandro.
Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches
@Bruce S:
“Say what you will about the tenets of Richard Nixon, Dude, but at least he had an ethos.”
Speculum Spatula
@Amir Khalid:
Idiot.
did you miss the words “one would hope…”
Quit reading only the words you want to read and things will make more sense.
Chyron HR
@Speculum Spatula:
What’s with the new name, anyway? For somebody who brags about posting here, “with John Cole’s approval,” you sure do seem to get banned a lot. Must be server gremlins.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@Yutsano:
I’ve promised myself that Taco is the only one. I like troublemakers, but he is just fucking annoying.
Sly
@Speculum Spatula:
If you stop using words like “unmitigated” when referring to the outcome of a particular event before you hedge, people will probably have less trouble discerning the nuances of your argument.
“X will always be a good thing! Except, of course, in the cases when X was a bad thing.”
Yutsano
@Sarah, Proud and Tall: You’re totally within your right to ban that pest. He contributes nothing to discussions. It’s also so dastardly easy to get him to say something racist or homophobic or misogynistic. In a way that was kind of fun. Otherwise I agree.
CarolDuhart2
@cmorenc: What I meant was that party insiders could threaten not to support them if they wanted to try again and run for President. One of the reasons why I despite Rendell of Pensylvania was because as head of the DNC, he kept demanding that Gore stop fighting. Those old hacks are retired-Dean, and then later Obama, retired them all. He’s also won once, so there’s no leverage to make Obama quit before he’s ready to quit.
I remember 2000 well-Jesse Jackson tried to get something going, but what was created was far too late to help. Hard to believe after OFA, but there was really no place for a concerned citizen to go either virtually or physically. Lots of folks didn’t even know where Dem headquarters was, let alone knew someone who they could contact for help.
2012. Obama has a million-person army of volunteers in all 50 states, who have spent months and weeks canvassing and connecting. OFA is not just some head honchos in an office, but a real organization with real organizers. If things get crazy, we can go crazy en masse as well.
We haz tools that weren’t there for instant communication. Twitter, YouTube and camera phones and handheld recorders. Phone lists and texts and so much more. We can follow every move they make and more.
zzyzx
Everyone is missing the lead here. When Republicans are saying, “It’s going to be very close. Very very very close. We don’t know who will win, that’s how close!” well that’s a good sign.
lol
@Cermet:
PA would cease to be a swing state if it had any kind of early voting. The Dems there need to wake up and push it through the next chance they have.
JustAnotherBob
@Sarah, Proud and Tall: Don’t limit yourself.
If someone does nothing but post to irritate then can them. The contributors around here provide adequate irritation without outside assistance.
mclaren
SHORTER ARI FLEISCHER:
“Even if a black dude gets elected president in America, he doesn’t really get elected.”
mainmati
There will probably be outrageous Retuglican voter repression and outright vote-rigging in Ohio and Florida. I OH it will probably make no difference. In FL it could put us right back into 2000 but not make a difference in the outcome.
Jeb Goodcarver
@James E. Powell: Jeb Goodcarver I think you are quite right. The poll data we’ve seen re: this election, is bull hockey. BHO will win big, and I’m pleased it will be so.
Jeb Goodcarver
@James E. Powell: Jeb Goodcarver I think you are quite right. The poll data we’ve seen re: this election, is bull hockey. BHO will win big, and I’m pleased it will be so.