Redmap: Republican Plan to Win 2016 (Even if They Don't Get More Votes)

I don't usually run two posts in a row from the same source, but frankly, this topic is important. And to be honest, a clip from The Rachel Maddow Show is probably the easiest-to-swallow way to take your medicine, if you haven't heard of this issue. Rachel has a way of distilling a lecture into something you want to learn. And this one is a doozy. [Story continues below]

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If you didn't know, the Republican victory in the House of Representatives in the 2012 election was achieved by gerrymander. More people voted for Democratic candidates total, but because of the hinky way that Congressional districts are drawn up, more Republicans were elected. This rubs me the wrong way, but is semi-tolerable, because by district, the Republican actually did win. The quarrel is only with how the districts are drawn. But, given the GOP desire to turn several "blue" states into "red" states--by changing the way electoral votes are divided--gives me more pause. With that scheme, the district gets the spoils, and ends in a result where the statewide winner can lose huge chunks of electoral votes even though he/she carried the state.

The fact of the matter is, had this scheme been in place in 2012, Mitt Romney would be getting inaugurated this weekend, despite losing by millions of votes. This sort of scheming could only be done by a party that doesn't care what voters think. It can only be done by a party that puts winning and power ahead of the wants, needs and desires of the American people. My question is this: do American conservatives and Republicans care? Or are they also willing to "win" at any cost, even if they really lost? Any conservatives want to tell me (Dan?). 

Reince Priebus: Win 2016 by Rigging the System?

Swing that hammer, Reince!
Image from source, Think Progress

There's a plan afoot in "blue" states headed by Republican governance, to change the way Electoral votes are awarded. The plan would essentially gerrymander each of the targeted states so that a Republican candidate is almost assured to win the state even if the statewide vote totals go to the Democrat. Barring that, it would at least apportion close to half of the electoral votes to the Republican even if he still somehow manages to lose. It's one of those situations where it's legal, but it ain't right. And it's very telling of the Republican philosophy, so on display in the 2012 election: rig the system wherever possible.

Some key Republicans were busted actually admitting that Voter ID laws were more about disenfranchising Democratic voters than it was about "protecting" the vote. And that was just one of the schemes they had going. It dates as far back as 1980, when modern conservative forefather Paul Weyrich said it best:

They don't want everybody to vote. It is fairly well known that if everybody comes out to vote--and is allowed to vote--Democrats tend to win. What kind of party has to scheme and plot to try and squelch the other side's votes? And what kind of party is totally cool with winning at any cost, even if it means cheating?

[Excerpt]

RNC Chair: Rig The Next Presidential Election For Republicans

In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus did not simply endorse this election-rigging scheme, he indicated that it should be targeted towards consistently Democratic states where it is most likely to skew the presidential election to the GOP’s benefit. . .

Read more at: Think Progress

Nate Silver's Election Eve 538 Forecast

OMG!!! 

What would cause me to use a 12-year-old's exclamation? Nate Silver, the wunderkind statistician--so good at what he does the New York Times absorbed his FiveThirtyEight.com--has revised his election eve figures. And the news is awesome if you're a Barack Obama supporter. Nate's figures have been an oasis in a desert of bad news during the post-Denver debate, and a continuing boost of confidence during what has been relentlessly called a very tight race. Take a look:

Pretty sweet, right? I mean, that doesn't exactly look like a squeaker, does it? In fact, it makes me feel much, much better. So much, that I might be able to sleep tonight.

Now, I'm not going to get over-confident, and declare that this sucker is over. I mean there are several things to note:

- Even Nate Silver says an 8.6% chance that Romney wins is still a chance. It isn't impossible.

- Nate himself could have gotten overconfident, or forgotten to carry a 2 somewhere.

- Voter suppression efforts in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere could have caused erosion in the vote that doesn't show up in the polls.

- This kind of prediction--if taken too much to heart--could discourage people from bothering to vote. So VOTE!

Source: FiveThirtyEight.com

Could An Electoral Tie Give Us Romney/Biden?

In the clip below, Rachel Maddow--always very instructive as well as entertaining--outlines a horrifying possible outcome of the Nov. 6 election: a tie. What happens in a tie? Who decides the President? Who decides the Vice President? And how could that all lead to a Mitt Romney/Joe Biden White House? Horrors!

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Barack Obama Now Officially President-Elect

Photo from source, MSNBC

Not everybody realizes it, but an elected President isn't "official" until the Electoral College actually casts their votes. It is unlikely that they wouldn't vote for the guy who won on election night, but you never know. Well, this time at least, we do know. Barack Obama was officially elected by the Electoral College yesterday.

Now will "FReepers" and crazy conspiracy theorists stop calling Obama the "President Select?" If this is any indication, probably not. . .

Political Scientist Says Electoral College Lacks What It Need To Elect Obama To White House (FreeRepublic.com)

But whatever. He's in. And though these guys will undoubtedly try to stir up trouble for the four or eight years Obama is the 44th President, the will be seen as the looney tunes they are.

[Excerpt]

It's official: Obama elected 44th president

Presidential electors have formally elected Barack Obama the nation's 44th president. . .

Read more at: MSNBC

3 Days to Go: The Electoral Vote Right Now

With three days to go, despite talks of a resurgence for John McCain (mostly on FOX "News" and the right-wing blogs), the future looks bright for Barack Obama. But we Democrats, liberals and progressives have been burned before, and most of us are avoiding the "L"-word (landslide) like the plague. Apparently, without realizing it, we're a bunch of superstitious individuals who believe we're gonna jinx it, or something.

So, no matter what happens, we're all going to feel foolish on November 5th. If Obama wins, we'll feel foolish for ever having been so worried. If McCain pulls off an upset, we'll feel foolish for believing we had it in the bag--in addition to a laundry list of extremely negative emotions. As a long-time cynic and pessimist, I'll do what I always do: hope for the best, but try to be prepared for the worst.

Still, the latest poll aggregators are very encouraging. Take a look.







Sources: Pollster.com, FiveThirtyEight.com, RealClearPolitics.com, Electoral-Vote.com

Bill O'Reilly Spins the Electoral Map

Image from source, Daily Kos

Everyone knows that FOX "News" is being disingenuous with their "Fair and Balanced" motto. But only Bill O'Reilly takes it further by declaring his show, The O'Reilly Factor, a "No Spin Zone." That can be disproven nightly by just watching the show and having a brain.

Keith Olberman takes delight almost nightly in deriding O'Reilly's spin, and has christened him "Billo the Clown" and "The Big Giant Head." To me, he's just that big splotchy guy who hates Al Franken. But he loves spinning like a hurricane, while pretending not to.

Here, O'Reilly presents his United States electoral map. The map is unique, in that it doesn't reflect any current reality. It may be O'Reilly's wished for reality, hell it might even turn out to be reality on November 4th. While I certainly hope not, we Democrats have been disappointed before (and how). But where does O'Reilly get off presenting this as the way things are today?

[Excerpt]

O'Reilly's map, and ratings

Oh noes! We're behind! Yeah, Oregon, Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and New Mexico are tossups, but Indiana, Georgia, North Carolina, South Dakota and Montana are not. Got it.

To be fair, if you're Bill O'Reilly, you've got to make shit up. He can't help it. And how else is he supposed to show McCain in the lead?

Read more at: Daily Kos

A Sea of Blue Washes Over Red States

All maps from sources below (except Greenlee Gazette prediction), all dated October 19, 2008

I've been a registered Democrat only since the 2006 elections, but I've been voting for Democratic Presidential candidates since Bill Clinton ran against George H.W. Bush. I can thank Pat Buchanan's "culture wars" speech that year for the change. Before that, I was nominally a Republican, just like good old Mom and Dad (and Step Dad, and Step Mom).

In this jumble, I've had a pretty good track record picking Presidents. In 1984, at the tender age of 18, I voted for Ronald Reagan. Landslide victory. In 1998, I voted (tepidly) for George H.W. Pretty sizable victory there too. In 1992 and 1996 I voted for Bill Clinton, and while he won neither in a blowout (H. Ross Perot was in the mix), he still won pretty solidly. In 2000, things got a little murky, with Al Gore eking out popular vote win, and probably electoral too, though that will be argued for the rest of American history. And in 2004, I voted for John Kerry, which George W. Bush won in a squeaker--and I'll never be convinced that Ohio, the toss-up state, wasn't stolen. Never.

So, as a two-time (sort of) loser in these things, I'm very, very leery of getting too excited about Barack Obama's apparent lead. Still, there's something a little thrilling about looking at some of these predictive maps. See, in 2000 and 2004, where "red states" and "blue states" were solidified in the public's minds as "GOP" and "Democratic", those final maps were awash with a large field of red in the middle, and some blue fringe around the edges.

This was parodied on several web sites as "Jesusland" or "Dumbf**kistan" in the middle, and America on the sides. I'm sure conservatives had a flipped version of their own. But even as intelligent people are aware that large numbers of people live in those blue states, and smaller numbers live in the red ones, it was disheartening to see that vast field of red. Oddly, in the mainland, the red was contiguous, and the blue mainly was too, just around the edges in clumps.

On all of the sites listed below, as I've followed them through the last couple of months, "Jesusland" has gotten smaller and smaller. Red states have switched to pink, to neutral, to light blue. Deep red states have gone pink in many cases. If viewed as an animation, you'd see blue pouring in toward the middle of the country from all sides, seemingly somewhat buffeted by the Rocky and Appalachian mountains.

Red America (a term that is ironic and very funny to me) is still contiguous, excepting Alaska. But Blue America nearly is too. A stubborn slip of Idaho may be all that prevents them from meeting at the top. Georgia might surprise us, and link a strip through the south. New Mexico and Colorado probably have no hope of linking up with states around them, but who knows? Arizona could link it up in the southwest. This weary voter longs to see a little more thoughtfulness from voters. We've seen a lot of almost solid red fields on this map in the past (if you allow for revisionist colorization). It sure would be nice to see that map swallowed up by a sea of blue.

Below, just for the fun of it, are my best case scenario prediction, and my more realistic scenario. Absolutely no science involved, just guessing and (probably) wishful thinking. This is simply my pie-in-the-sky expectation, tempered with the realization that I could be wrong. A lot can change in two weeks. I'll follow up on November 5 (provided we know who the winner is this time) to see how I did. Well, unless I'm vastly off, in which case I'll be curled in a corner sobbing somewhere. . .

Resources:

www.Electoral-vote.com

www.FiveThirtyEight.com

www.Pollster.com

www.RealClearPolitics.com

Obama & McCain Polls Treated Differently in MSM

Map captured from Electoral-Vote.com

Here is an interesting little story, for those of you who believe there is such a thing as a liberally biased media. Remember back in the primaries, when the press was bringing John McCain donuts, and fawning over his spectacular resurgence against his Republican rivals? McCain openly called the press "his base." At the time, Barack Obama was fighting for survival against Hillary Clinton, and the press was all over him for the Rev. Wright issue. Relentlessly. Ridiculously.

Then, after Obama clinched the Democratic primary, the media gathered 'round. After all, as the first African-American major candidate, there was more interest than there would be for an old white guy who's been in the Senate forever. That's only natural. As Obama's popularity swelled, McCain went sour on the press, declaring most of them "in the tank" for Obama.

This is despite the fact that--outside of opinion shows like Countdown with Keith Olbermann, and the entirety of FOX "News"--the mainstream press is actually fairly balanced, even ridiculously so. They go to great lengths to show "both sides," even when one side is clearly wrong. If McCain said that the moon was made of green cheese, the press would give Obama's argument that the moon is not made of cheese, and would present it as a he-said/he-said. They're terrified of being branded as biased.

McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, are still on the warpath anyway, taking every opportunity to get digs in at NBC News or The New York Times, and their crowds--trained for years to believe the liberal bias myth by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity--eat it up.

But, check this out. In a comparison of tons of data, Daily Kos has found an alarming disparity between the ways polling is being represented for Obama vs. McCain. Though almost every single poll has Obama far and away in the lead, it isn't being presented that way. Read on. . .

[Excerpt]

Media nonsense

Every state in which McCain has a lead, even if it's just 2.2%, is a "leaning Republican". Every state in which Obama has the lead, even if it's over 10 percent, is a "battleground". . .

The key point is that all small media election projection websites, including the Republican Election Projection and Real Clear Politics, have Obama over 270 electoral votes. This is because polls now objectively show that Obama is well over 270 electoral votes. However, none of the big, and so-called liberal, media websites show Obama over 270 right now. Every single one is even more favorable to McCain than Real Clear Politics. . .

Read more at: DailyKos

Democrats Lead on Electoral Map?

Image from World Atlas

Let's hope so. I still can't help thinking, this thing shouldn't even be close enough to worry about. Historically, has a deeply (and long-term) unpopular President, with a week economy and an intractable foreign war (or other major kerfuffle) ever managed to cede the White House to his own party?

This should be a slam dunk. I'm still crossing my fingers, and hoping that all the current goings on will be long forgotten by November.

[Excerpt]

Democrats favored in electoral map
Electoral College road to the White House favors Democrats; McCain playing defense

The electoral road to the White House favors Democrats this fall — either Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton — and has Republican John McCain playing defense to thwart a presidential power shift. . .

Read more at: Raw Story