“Just why the American electorate gave the present administration such an overwhelming mandate in November remains something of a mystery to me. I firmly believed throughout 1971 that the major hurdle to winning hte presidency was winning the Democratic nomination. I believed that any reasonable Democrat could defeat President Nixon. I now think ( Read more... )

Every number that I see right now seems like an outlier: double-digit leads in PA by 5 polls, 7 and 9 point leads in OH, 12 in NV, 7 and 9 in CO, 5 in FL. Statistically speaking, these all can't be outliers... Realistically speaking, this just says McCain hasn't closed anything and has lost ground in more battleground states, leaving Obama fairly ( Read more... )

This morning I woke up without much of the sickly intense pain or nauseous regret that normally comes with large quantities of cheap champagne and Miller swill. I attribute this good fortune to those friends around me who seemed to take much more of the impact than I did, leaving me to scrounge for half-empty glasses near the bar. The event was ( Read more... )

Home of Jon Tester's successful 2006 War Hero-Democrat bid. Research 2000 put McCain at +4 on 10/16, in line with expectations and trends since August... until MSU released a 10/20 poll that puts Obama +4 ( Read more... )

It will be a Bad Night on Nov. 4th if PA goes Red, and while my hedge investments on McCain in PA (9:1 Intrade) will pay big, they will only cover a portion of my bail should Obama lose.

Some of us are not planning so much for the bliss of retirement, but selling short that long dream for the dangerous, violent urgency of now. Those of us not invested in our futures... ah well, the japanese market fell 4.5% this evening and there are more grim prospects from the 24-hour failure circling the planet ( Read more... )

I vaporized my knuckle. I hit a large, unforgiving wood door while attempting to hit the promoter in the face. I missed. There wasn't as much pain as I expected, but my mood turned foul as the promoter fled the scene. I was left to the mercy of Jen, Cris, and Rocka and the bandmates who were less than thrilled at the prospect of my inability to ( Read more... )

In these desperate times, the lives of men turn cold and their beliefs are set aside for the hard realities of the phone bank:

Republicans launched an enormous wave of phone calls Thursday blasting Barack Obama for "having worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers," party sources said.It's early evening in the American Household and the ( Read more... )

RCP's state map now has Obama/Biden with 286 EVs solid or leaning democrat. They're not including FL, MO, IN, OH. That's 94 EVs in RCP's toss-up states, and giving all of them to McCain puts him at 252 EVs, short of the 277 needed to win. That's some serious distance and desperation. But they've got Sarah Palin and Steve Schmidt - campaign ( Read more... )

The one thing that McCain will take from this debate is the perfect anti-democratic soundbite of "distribute the wealth." This was probably something Obama believes, but is not something most undecideds are going to vote for. For many reasons. I'd consider it a minor moment of gaffe for the normally eloquent and nearly perfect Obama campaign ( Read more... )