Politicana

Sorry, but not very…

As I listed last Wednesday, the 9 polls over the previous week had Obama leading by 7.77% on average.  In the week before that, he had lead by 8.45% on average.

Well, it would appear that the 7.77% i reported was disproportionately effected by the 1 point AP-GfK poll.  The 9 polls that came out over this past week give Obama the lead by an average of 9.625 points.

So, is the race tightening?  As best I can tell it is not.  Incidentally, this matches what folks like Markos and Nate are saying.  As I said last week, I’m surprised but folks appear to have settled in on their decisions.

I’ll be curious to see how the Obama ad tonight effects the polls.  My guess- not at all.

I’ve got some for you right here.  From a myDD diarist, a list of historical points  you might be hearing form the  talking heads Election Night when it becomes clear Obama has won (though i thought Carter just won over 50% of the Popular Vote– can anyone help me with that?):

Assuming Obama wins, the networks will offer you some facts about him as president-elect right after they declare him the winner.  Here are some they may include:
*America’s first African-American/biracial president (duh)
*First African-American/biracial person to lead a majority white nation
*First Democrat to win 50% of the popular vote since 1964 (LBJ)
*First senator elected president since 1960 (JFK)
*First Northern Democrat to be president since 1960
*First Midwestern president since Gerald Ford (MI)
*First Midwestern president elected since 1948 (Truman-MO)
*Voter turnout is likely to be the highest in over 40 years–young, new and black voters will be key.
*4th youngest president (47; after Bill Clinton at 46, John F. Kennedy at 43, and Teddy Roosevelt at 42)
*First Democrat to win NC since 1976, and/or IN, ND, and/or VA since 1964.

This is just some interesting trivia for you geeks out there:

During the Twentieth Century, there were only 3 presidents who won with less than 300 electoral votes:

1900   McKinley (R) 292 to Bryan 155

1916   Wilson (D) 277 to Huges 254

1976   Carter (D) 297 to Ford 240

During the same time period, there have also been 3 presidents who have gotten over 500 electorals:

1936   Roosevelt (D) 523 to Landon 8

1972   Nixon (R) 520 to McGovern 18

1984   Reagan (R) 525 to Mondale 13

I point this out just to say that we have gotten used to low victories and I think this serves as proof of how polarized our electorate has gotten in the last couple of decades.  In fact, Clinton’s 370 and 379 wins respectively were slightly below average.  14 of the 25 elections in the 20th Century saw victories above 400, while only 8 were in the 300 range.  So, Obama’s Clinton range victory will not be earth-shattering by the standards of the last 100 years but may be as good as it can get in this very divided country.

If he can pull off any portion of what he is promising, maybe Obama can have a breakout win in 2012.  It is worth pointing out that all 3 500+ wins were for 2nd terms.  Their first terms were:

Roosevelt  472

Nixon        301

Reagan      489

Chances are Obama’s going to beat Nixon’s first term victory, so who knows what 2012 brings.

Do you think I’m getting ahead of myself…

That’s right, it is exactly 10 days since the last debate and, as I had promise in two previous posts, here is my prediction for November 4th:

OBAMA       364

McCain       174

Continue reading Obama Wins!…

I’m feeling a little bad about that last downer of a post… so for a nice antidote, click here.

I wish I could import some of the great photos from this moving 2 minute slide show that accompanies Obama’s speech yesterday in Richmond.

Wow– so much going on and so much to comment on.  It’s hard to identify the most disgusting comment a McCain surrogate has made to the media, but here’s my nomination for today.    I don’t know who this fucker is, but he claims the real outrage is not Palin’s $150K spending spree, but Obama taking a 767 jet to fly back to Hawaii to see his dying grandmother.   No, I am not making that up.  God, 11/4 can’t come soon enough.

[From TPM's "The Day in 100 Seconds".  It's at about 1:05]

The AP ran an article today by Liz Sidoti claiming that the presidential race has tightened to a dead heat, as evidenced by their new poll which showed Obama ahead by just 1 point (44% to 43%).  Sidoti went on to state that McCain has been gaining ground ever since the last debate, which she suggests he won.  She also states that his “Joe the Plumber” storyline has resonated with voters and is helping close the gap.

I was surprised by how much this story line existed outside of any narrative I was familiar with.   So, I decided to look at the latest polls myself.  When I last reported on the polls in my “Preemptive Post,” Obama had an average lead of 8.45% during the previous week of polling.  So, I ran the numbers for the 9 polls I found for the last 7 days and the average of those polls gave Obama a 7.77% lead.  The AP-GfK poll was the only one even close to a dead heat. In fact, 6 of the 9 polls had Obama leading by 8-14 points.

I was further reassured when I visited FiveThirtyEight and saw that Nate’s Super Tracker, “thinks that Obama is now no more than a half a point off his peak numbers.”  The fact that his .5% closely matches the .68%  difference I found between my two sets of polls, suggests that the race may be tightening (as I had thought it would) but not at an alarming rate.  If that rate of decline continues, Obama will lead by an average of 6 points on election day, which is again not far from my prediction of a 5 point lead.

In other words, don’t believe the spin; folks gotta sell papers.

… and the revolt of the bureaucrats. I’m starting to like this David Brin guy.

Specifically, in the case of Virginia, you can see America’s First Colony start to fracture in two — much as it did in 1861, when Appalachian settlers angrily refused to betray their country at the behest of aristocratic tidewater slave owners, choosing to secede instead and form West Virginia. Similarly today, you hear tales of local politicians declaring that Northern Virginia is something totally apart from the “real” parts of the state. One angry neocon called it “Communist country.”

I suspect there are interesting factors involved in the rebellion of Northern Virginia, that go beyond simply the economy, or a demographic shift toward more education, or even a lot of northern migrants. I surely doubt socialism of any inkling has a thing to do with the surge of Obama support in the counties surrounding the District of Columbia. Rather, I think this local phenomenon is due to something largely overlooked.

The swing against the GOP in Northern Virginia is all about the U.S. Civil Service. It is a mini-referendum by members of the professional class who we hired to run the business of America’s government — by far the top employer of that region. These people are turning to the Democrats, in droves.

Note that it did not start out this way. Polls showed repeatedly that (contrary to some expectations) federal employees are not notable more liberal or democratic-registered than Americans, at large. Indeed, many are deeply conservative by temperament. And remember, Northern Virginia includes a lot of military folk, as well, including the Pentagon and several huge Naval installations. Then why this dramatic swing of political passion, in a region that showed strong GOP streaks in the past?

I’ve tried to make this point repeatedly. The civil servants and members of the U.S. Officer Corps have endured eight years as the very worst victims of this administration. They’ve been stewing under the grip of thousands of political appointees, partisan hacks charged by President George W. Bush with a single, paramount mission — to bully, harass, divert and demoralize the men and women who actually keep the nation running. From the Justice Department to the intelligence services, to science agencies, to the military, those hatchet men seem to have had no other purpose than to prevent our public servants from doing the lawful jobs that we pay them to do.

Note the cleverness of this neocon stratagem. In most of American life, if workers suffer abuse, the right to complain and seek redress is pretty strong. Civil servants, too, are supposedly protected from direct political interference. But so long as the hacks refrained from anything too overt — (with the exception of stupidly firing those assistant U.S. Attorneys) — they could erect barricades of distraction and mal-assignment that would thwart agency workers from accomplishing anything, or solving any problems, causing many to resign in frustration. Moreover, civil servants and military officers are constrained — by both law and tradition — against speaking out against their political superiors.

Is there a comeuppance? Apparently, the military did stand up, courageously, a couple of years ago, in what is now quietly known as the Generals and Admirals Revolt – resulting in the ousting of Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary and the arrival of the Gates-Mullen team, effectively peeling the hands of Bush and Cheney away from the tiller at Defense. An episode when our officer corps bravely kept their oaths once again, to protect us from enemies, both foreign and domestic. And they did it so discretely that most Americans haven’t a clue how much we owe them.

Alas, I’ve been disappointed that few other groups of civil servants have done likewise. Apparently, the FBI and CIA agents and others, who might have blown the whistle on Bush era crimes, proved too timid to stand up and help their country in its hour of desperate need. Instead, they appear to be leaving it up to the People. The ignorant, febrile, much-maligned People will have to fix this mess. Much as they did on 9/11, common citizen voters will work a miracle that the professionals could not. Or would not.

Still, here’s the point: I believe that it is the simmering resentment of the civil service caste that we are seeing erupt in Northern Virginia… and in patches around the country. When our first state joins in the blue rebellion, nobody in the GOP or in Red America should yelp in wounded surprise. They brought it on themselves.

And then there’s this coda:

Which brings us to the news that: “In 2001, the last year the Internal Revenue Service estimated the tax gap – the difference between what taxpayers owe and what they actually pay – the figure stood at $345 billion, or $290 billion after subtracting enforcement efforts and late payments.”

Yes, this is half of the recent bailout passage. But what I find stunning is that very little has been said about the fact that 2001 was the last year of figures on missing taxes owed! Think about it in light of my earlier contention that the greatest crime of the Bush Gang has been to divert, quell, bully and repress the ability of the entire US Civil Service to perform any function that might help the republic to operate in a healthy way.

Now you have the smoking gun.

When Libertarians meet the Bush regime … step back!!!

… or anywhere else you want to put it. But I found this map on Andrew Sullivan (linked from Poulos) that highlights John McCain’s current “best case scenario.”

Basically, he needs to win Pennsylvania. And Ohio and Florida and Nevada. But here’s the thing: he’s not going to win Pennsylvania.

Steady … steady.