The final pre-election polls show Obama in the lead. I would have said “comfortably” in the lead, but you know us lefties. We always expect a cartoon anvil to drop out of the sky and flatten us.
The Right is still running a signature right-wing campaign. They’ve got the illegal immigrant aunt, more 1960s terrorist ties, claims that Obama will destroy entire industries/ban Christianity/start another holocaust. A vote for Obama is a choice to go to hell.
Good thing the election is tomorrow, or in a few more days they’d be claiming Obama wants to eat your baby. With fava beans and a nice chianti.
Michael Tomasky theorizes why the smears aren’t working the way they used to:
That coalition of affinity that Reagan created between right and middle, Bush has put asunder. His failures have made the average, apolitical American as distrustful of conservatism as he or she once was of liberalism – indeed somewhat more so, since the memory of conservative failure is fresher in the mind. This is a new context. Many experts have yet to grasp it. Certain elements within the mainstream media haven’t quite got it yet. And clearly some liberals just can’t believe that it might be the case.
This is not to say that negative campaigning will disappear as of tomorrow. But it is to observe that political contexts change, and eras end. I’m still suspicious enough to use the conditional tense, but by Wednesday morning even the most paranoid liberals may be forced to accept that fact.
I believe we are looking at an enormous political re-aliagnment, bigger than 1980. More like 1933. But these things don’t begin and end neatly. The re-alignment has been going on for a while — at least since Katrina — and I don’t expect it to end tomorrow. I’ll have more thoughts on that later.
“…even the most paranoid liberals…”
One can never be too paranoid…
You can’t be too paranoid if they really are out to get you.
With the polls in Obama’s favor and the view of most pundits (not, of course, the consummate asshole Fred Barnes) that the election is his, I sit waiting for the expected dirty trick that Republicans are so good at pulling off. Whether it is voting machine manipulation or keeping voters away from the polls, or coming out with a new lie which is big enough to shake folks up, I don’t know. But the last couple of Presidential elections have left me damned worried.
I get nervous when I see replays of joking comments like “McCain’s not a Maverick… he’s a sidekick” because I remember Ann Richardson getting a big laugh when she said George W. “was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”
And politicians cracking jokes have hurt the Republican side as well. I remember Giuliani (and Palin) at the Republican Convention making fun of Obama having been a “community organizer.” And on the news this morning as the usual pundits evaluated the success of each of the campaigns, they attributed the great strength of the Democrats to the “organization” of the Obama team and volunteers.
So I sit watching the last speeches and get ready to volunteer this afternoon at the Obama office in Shepherdstown. And I’ll be glad when it is all over.
Please get out and vote… and vote for Obama/Biden.
Under The LobsterScope
…as one version of the old saying goes, “It’s OK to be paranoid if they really are out to get you.”
Negative campaigning won’t go away any time soon. Republicans are already offering so many examples of why this election cycle is operating in such a poisonous environment for them this year that anything even looking vaguely like “success” will reinforce their faith in that tactic. If they truly believe that McCain has been narrowing the gap in recent days (after, for once, the Republicans having to deal with one of the most inept presidential campaigns in modern time), the only definitive reason they will be able to point to will be the negative tone of the McCain campaign…
After a random sampling of local TV advertising this weekend, I’d be willing to bet that Gordon Smith, if he pulls off a win against Jeff Merkley here in Orygun, will be all in with the idea of negative campaigning, given that’s about all he and the Party are doing right now…
Isn’t it ironic that the politician that has done the most to revive the democrat party is the extreme right wing GWB. The country has had to pay a heluva price. Has it been worth it?
Hmm, let’s see: the Left trotted out completely fake documents about Bush’s TANG service, and still held on to that false flag operation even when it was proven to be a complete fabriaction.
In 200, y’all tried the Bush drunk driving thing.
And there was so much more. But, hey, welcome to Politics 101. Try to toughen up that thin skin, OK?
If by “complete fabrication” you mean “completely and utterly true,” and by “tried by Bush drunk driving thang” you mean “pointed out fully documented criminal behavior,” then by golly, you got us.
Give it up, William Teach. Only rightards believe your so-called “proof” that Bush’s phony service and drunken driving were fabrications. You pathetic people, your pathetic “proofs” and your pathetic president are nothing but ridiculous, and by Tuesday night you will see this writ large. The jig is up – the country is on to your movement’s idiocy, and has had enough of Stupid. It’s over and you will know it soon enough.
Glenn Greenwald has a piece today about how Bush is so strongly disliked in this country that he dare not campaign or show himself in public. He has the worst polling numbers since Hoover. And yet the moronic rightard ombudsman at the Washington Post says that the reason the paper is losing money is because they don’t run enough favorable stories about conservatives. In other words, they’re too liberal. As Glenn put it:
“…What if the actual facts — i.e., “reality” — are consistent with the views of “the hard-core left” and contrary to the views of the “hard-core right”? What if, as has plainly been the case, the conservatives’ views are wrong, false, inaccurate? What if the McCain campaign was failing and relying on pure falsehoods and sleazy attacks, and The Post’s coverage simply reflected that reality? It doesn’t matter. In order to sell more newspapers, according to Howell, The Post’s news coverage must shape itself to the Right and ensure that “their views [are] reflected enough in the news pages”…
“In Howell’s view, The Post shouldn’t determine its news reporting based on what is factually true. Instead, it should shape its coverage to please this discredited, failed political movement — in order to sell more papers. That corrupt formula is, of course, what is now meant by “journalistic balance” — say what both sides believe and take no position about what is true — and it is precisely that behavior which propped up this incomparably failed and deceitful presidency for so long.”
I look forward to either the Post taking Ombudsmen’s Howell’s advice and losing more circulation, OR deciding that reality is where the money is, and changing course.
It’s fun watching conservatives flail like dinosaurs trapped in the tar pit.
The secretary to the commander of Bush’s TX Air Natl Guard unit confirmed on 60 Minutes that its information about Bush was correct.
Also, CBS News is not “the Left.”
Try to exercise those weak brain cells, OK?
So what I was going to say before my train of thought got interrupted by Moron up there was, it’s the DAY before the election and they’re still scrambling around looking for that magic-bullet factoid that’s “gonna bring this whole Obama scam crashing down.”
As a liberal, I invite them to continue thinking that after two years of campaigning, media scrutiny and voters’ making up their minds, including millions of primary votes, that that fact, which will “change everything,” is still out there. I think they should base their entire 2012 strategy around finding it.
Paranoia? Maybe, but I’ve been saying for days now that “It ain’t over until the Supreme Court sings.” Though I am using all my powers of visualization to attract a landslide, I still remember how it was we got into the mess of the last 8 years. (One balm for such fears is that the McCain campaign has proven too klutzy to be able to organize an election theft this time round.)
However, interviews with some of the McCain voters over the weekend has me concerned about what happens after the election. I read one white lady who was worried that “they” (the blacks) were going to riot and burn down the cities, like they did in the 60s, if Obama lost. So now I’m worried.
Are all the Joe-the-Plumbers going to riot and burn up their pickup trucks when McCain loses?
Seriously, though, I do expect that an Obama win will just increase the size of the chip on the shoulder of many Palin supporters, and Joe the-not-actually Plumber will only get angrier when his predictions of doom under an Obama administration fail to materialize. It might really be a good time to increase staffing for the Secret Service and the ATF.
Fava beans and chianti are very elitist.
Fava beans and chianti are very elitist.
I thought we needed arugula to be elitist?
–even better, arugula, sliced tomatoes, and shaved Parmesan with either a red wine vinaigrette or walnut-raspberry dressing. My favorite salad.
Some GOP 527 (goptrust) is running the long awaited Jeremiah Wright ads here in Indiana. They are as racist as one would expect. I quess this the Right-wings last desperate attempt at appealing to the worst in people. I think it says alot that they would not run these ads until one day before the election. McCain can claim he knew nothing of the ads and that he asked them to be pulled, it’s the last day who cares? I drove by Grant Park in Chicago today, they are planning quite a rally, the road that runs down the middle of the park (Columbus ave) is closed, and fences have been erected with covers so no one can see what’s going on, the local news here is reporting that as many as 1 million people are expected!
McCain’s rally in Tampa today drew a whopping crowd of 1,000 people..Obama better start quaking in his boots now that McCain has turned the tide and is able rally such a huge number of supporters. Go, Johnny, go…and take Sarah with you!
Oh, and Joe the unlicensed plumber wasn’t among the massive crowd. He’s missing in action. I think Joe found out that high visibility isn’t compatible with unlicensed contracting. I don’t know what Ohio’s statutes governing contracting are, but here in Florida (Pinellas County) any person who knowingly hires an unlicensed contractor is subject to a potential $5,000 dollar fine for doing so.