And now we approach the darkest time of the year, when the veil between life and death tears and the dead walk the earth… election day
— Ancient Ship of Faf (@Fafblog) October 31, 2014
Because you don’t want to leave it up to these guys…
(I do agree with Robert Wise, starting at 3:38)
Apart from / as well as voting, what’s on the agenda for the day?
Baud
C’mon, Dems. I want every headline on Newsmax tomorrow to be about the “Massive Voter Fraud” that kept the Senate in Democratic hands.
raven
I’m trying to figure out how to use all these vacation days before I lose them!
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
A bit of a laugh, voting, laundry, and burying myself in clearing out the closet in the sewing room.
Bobby B.
That guy in the blue shirt is really smokin in his culottes…oops it’s baggy shorts.
Morzer
My agenda includes requesting, humbly, an open thread in which we can predict the outcome of today’s Senatepocalypse and governor races.
Also too: why hasn’t Cole staged a coup and taken over the WV Democratic party? Republican lunkheads are able to do it – why not a well-preserved liberal gentleman with a penchant for bad football teams and demanding feline overlords?
evap
I voted absentee in Georgia weeks ago and made a big batch of chili for tonight. I always eat chili on election night while watching returns. I have no TV this year, anybody have suggestions about the best way to follow what’s happening via laptop?
Go Michelle! Go Jason! Go Dems!
Morzer
@evap:
DailyKos often has good live election result threads. I don’t know whether the Guardian is planning to do a liveblog, but they sometimes indulge the proles with election coverage.
raven
@evap: The election results from the Georgia Secretary of State suck.
Valdivia
voting and then trying to stay away from news. I’ll check the NH results early. If we win that I can breathe easier and keep working. If not: go to bed early because it will be ugly. I am thinking it will be better than the savants are saying though.
Morzer
@Valdivia:
Hey Valdivia the Terrible! I think NH is safe. Whatever else may happen, seeing Scott Brown slither away towards his next “home state” is going to be deeply enjoyable.
JPL
I also voted early for Michelle and Jason. The tea party candidate for superintendent of schools is scary. Someone needs to point out that school choice in rural counties is a farce.
Morzer
Reason 100,123 why I sometimes wish I was more of a drinker:
http://crooksandliars.com/cltv/2014/11/msnbcs-luke-russert-touts-joni-ernst
Valdivia
@Morzer: I think so too and totally agree with you about watching Brown lose another one! :)
For me it’s a matter of seeing how much the polls were off or on and by how much and to which side. NH would be a good measure of that and an early one at that.
Valdivia
@Morzer: I saw that yesterday and wanted to shoot the tv I don’t watch.
Mustang Bobby
I will vote after work on the way home, then go to a dinner meeting and get home in time to see if any of my oh-what-the-hell click-bait predictions come true.
I am going to end up voting the straight Democratic ticket here in Florida (problematic with Charlie Crist on the ballot) and take some small comfort that every two-term president since World War II has faced an opposition Congress in their last two years in office, and I will enjoy watching the Orcosphere work themselves up into an impeachment frenzy because it worked so well the last time.
Morzer
@Valdivia:
I am probably over-optimistic, but I think we are going to pull out the close races in Iowa, Alaska and Colorado.
Valdivia
@Morzer: I have been thinking that too but the Colorado one has me worried. I do think we won’t know about Alaska for a while and if its that close it’s a good thing because it bodes well for our side.
Morzer
@Valdivia:
My guess is that the polling averages are underestimating Democratic turnout by something like 2-3%. That might just be enough to save Udall’s bacon. I do think that as a party the Democrats have begun to learn some lessons about turnout – but they haven’t figured out how to campaign effectively enough or pick consistently good candidates. Ernst should never have been within 5%, but Braley ran a thoroughly bad campaign, by all accounts.
Betty Cracker
@raven: Duh! Go fishing!
Mustang Bobby
@Betty Cracker: If I didn’t have to work I’d go vote then head for the Keys; there’s a nice spot on the old Seven-Mile Bridge that’s perfect for sitting and watching the pelicans.
danielx
@Morzer:
“Certifiable rock star in the making”. No, seriously, little Lukie said that. I must disagree; Joni Ernst won’t be a certifiable rock star in the making until Rich Lowry admits that she causes starbursts in his trousers. Certifiable, yes, she’s that already. Snowbilly Snooki is gonna be pissed – there ain’t room but for one Mama Grizzly in the wingnut asylum, and the position is already filled.
Kill me now. Or someone bring me a bottle of something at least 100 proof, whichever happens first.
Valdivia
@Morzer:
agreed. Also: they need to learn a lesson from Obama 2012: define your opponent very very early. It’s been shameful and malpractice how Ernst got away with passing for a normal candidate. Go read the profile of her in the WaPo style section. Starbursts!
@danielx: ha ha, I was thinking the same thing. See though that the Village is already having those!
beltane
If Scott Brown loses today (FSM willing), does that mean he will discover his Vermont roots and curse us with a Senate run here? Maybe he is like the Patriots, a GOP candidate for the entire region?
I voted yesterday just in case something happens to me.
Morzer
@danielx:
I suppose it’s too much to hope for a Rick Perry/Joni Ernst 2016 GOP ticket?
When I contemplate the state to which the party of Lincoln and TR has descended, I find myself wondering just how much nastier things are going to get as the tide of minority voters starts to come in over the next decade. I have a feeling that Republican apartheid is going to get ever more naked and desperate with ever more vicious reprisals against anyone who stands up for the right to be a human being who isn’t straight white redneck conservative peckerhead male.
Baud
@beltane:
Yeah, I kind of wish his hobby was collecting all 50 state quarters, or something like that.
Morzer
@beltane:
I suspect the Scottster is secretly hoping for Chris Christie to explode in a tidal wave of guano so that he can discover his ancient Joisey Roots. You didn’t know he was found as an orphan child floating in a cradle amid the bulrushes of Bergen County? Don’t worry – you will when the time is ripe.
Morzer
Dare I ask the residents of Massachusetts for their opinion on whether Cholly Fish Story Baker is going to win?
On a sidenote – I have never seen such utter disinterest in a candidate by the local Democrats as I did when Coakley ran for Senate back in what feels like the Bronze Age. I was astounded when I learned that she had won the primary this time around.
Gene108
@Valdivia:
It takes money to define your opponent early and / or define yourself early.
Obama started running attack ads against Romney in June or July, IIRC.
In discussing Obama’s success, as a national politician, his record shattering fund raising ability often gets overlooked, but should not be discounted.
Tome Wolfe, the Dem candidate for PA governor, self funded his campaign and ran a bunch of ads defining himself early on.
JPL
The news is telling me that N.Carolina is key. I’d stream MSNBC to see what Joe says, but I fear, I might damage my computer.
Morzer
@JPL:
I feel more confident about that race than about most of the other close ones. I suspect we could all do worse than take some lessons from the Moral Mondays people and Reverend Barber.
ThresherK
Okay, my fellow liberals: Time to Write Your Own Headline for the article that says this.
“Thanks to close races in three or four states and likely runoffs in two states, Senate control may be in doubt well after midnight”.
beltane
@Morzer: It reminds me a bit of Liz Holtzman’s series of failed challenges to Al D’Amato in New York. When a family friend who was a Dem party insider was pushing Holtzman to us once again in 1998 I couldn’t believe it. Yes, Chuck Schumer is a dick, but anyone who wasn’t an absolute dick would have had no chance at all against D’Amato, the prince of dicks.
debbie
I refuse to watch any of the returns shows tonight. I’ll wait until the 11pm news, when most races will have been decided. At minimum, I’d like Josh Mandel and Mike DeWine to lose.
I have a DVD of the 13th season of South Park to keep me busy until then.
Gene108
@Morzer:
I am not counting the demographic change as making Republicans obsolete.
Democrats still need to make a positive case for voting for them.
They did this in the past with: Democrats brought you Social Security, Medicare, the 40 hour work week, etc. People old enough to remember those things as being revolutionary are “aging out” of the voting population.
I thought Obamacare would rekindle that kind of connection with voters, but the ability of big moneyed interests to reach a lot of people quickly, in this day and age, has helped kill enthusiasm for the law itself and keeps people from connecting the dots that things they like are because of Obamacare.
Keep people discouraged enough and they may not see a reason to vote for anything other than “throw the bums out” and if Democrats are the bums in charge, they get thrown out. This happened, in NJ, in the 2009 governors race that elected Chris Christie.
NotMax
Open Thread?
Good dog, these are good. And addictive.
Thing is that the cheese in them is so much better than what is sold as cheddar in markets here, said product in and of itself an exception to Sturgeon’s Law in being 99.99% crap.
Morzer
@Gene108:
I agree with you that demographic change in itself isn’t enough to win races for Democrats, although the GOP helps by being persistently racist and constantly reminding people that they are never going to be part of the White Bigots Club. I think it will help – but yes, finding a consistent, clear, hard-hitting message delivered by good, solid candidates is the key, plus a measure of voter education.
I do wonder why as a group we don’t try and take over the local branches of the Democratic party the way the teabaggers have taken over their local GOP groups. If we want a better Democratic party, I think we are going to have to get off the sidelines and make it happen.
mai naem
Sam Wang has a piece up that I kind of understand where he says the key is watching McConnell and Shaheen(they’re the first close ones in) and the amount they under/overperform assuming they win because it gives you an idea on the underperform/overperform on the other close states.
beltane
@Gene108: Even more troubling is the large contingent of people who do not vote at all, either because they’ve been directly disenfranchised by the Republicans or because the GOP’s psy-ops efforts have convinced them that voting is futile.
Shakezula
Mr. S and I voted early so there’s more room at the polls for the rest of the Free Staters.
I would like an open thread to compile all of the dumbshit arguments (but I repeat myself) people give for not voting. Or that other people shouldn’t vote.
Valdivia
@Gene108: excellent point. Even more important then that Harkin sat on his $2 mil instead of helping keep his seat. I don’t get it.
NotMax
@raven
Hawaii Calls.
You know you want to return.
And I actually have enough scratch at this point to treat you and your better half to a meal. ;)
Morzer
@mai naem:
I like Wang, but I am not so sure that he's got a good metric there.Kentucky is very much a state to itself demographically, while New Hampshire is notoriously volatile politically.
beltane
@Morzer: New Hampshire is volatile but it may be a useful gauge of teabagger fervor.
MomSense
That video was depressing. Did that woman say she listens to random people talking at the park or asks her husband who will be better for their paychecks?
I always hate it when I am calling through my list and a husband answers who won’t let his wife talk on the phone herself.
Iowa Old Lady
@Morzer: Wang says RV is a more accurate metric than LV in predicting, which I hope is true.
Chris
Word up. Vote, motherfuckers! If votes didn’t change anything, they wouldn’t be working nearly so hard to suppress them!
ThresherK
@Morzer: Oh, pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease! There’s nothing more predictable, yet rewarding, than a crazee right-winger overstepping their own voter appeal.
Chris
@Mustang Bobby:
And pray to whatever gods you believe in that whoever our candidate is in 2016 has the goddamn common sense not to run away from Obama’s record, as all the media outlets will surely tell him/her to the same way they told Gore to run from Clinton’s in 2000.
Betty Cracker
@Mustang Bobby: Sounds like a great plan! Some of my earliest memories are of crossing Seven Mile Bridge as a child. I grew up in North Central FL, but my dad was (and still is) an avid fisherman who took us to the Keys every summer. The bridge stands out in my memory because it’s so long and the scenery is so beautiful.
Valdivia
@Morzer: I actually think Wang said to watch NH & NC because they are both close and good measure of over or underpreforming of numbers.
Catherine D.
I voted today at about 6:50am, and I was number 14. That’s pretty good for the People’s Republic of Ithaca, because it’s not an early morning town.
NotMax
@ThresherK
Bachmann vs. Ernst Jello-O pit match in the offing. Pay per view bids now open.
Oy, sometimes I make my own gorge rise.
Chris
@Gene108:
Neither am I. U.S. history is littered with political machines using a bunch of not-quite-legal and technically-legal-because-we-wrote-the-laws-that-way mechanisms to maintain control regardless of what the public wanted (Jim Crow in the South being the worst example). But that’s why I agree with Morzer that the attempts at suppression of minority rights are only going to become more and more blatant.
Morzer
@Valdivia:
NC makes more sense than Kentucky to me. Ah well, soon enough we shall know.
Valdivia
@Morzer:
here’s the link. Good pointers I think.
http://election.princeton.edu/2014/10/31/halloween-story-the-curse-of-the-midterm-polls/
@mai naem: was right, he said watch McConnel race for over or under performing of numbers, not how close it is.
NotMax
@Chris
Granted that prez election years are different than midterms, but what we all witnessed in 2012 was those suppression measures energizing and motivating voting by those at the charged end of the Taser.
The demographic tipping point may not quite be universal as yet, but it is not without unpolled clout in many districts.
Eric U.
from the basis of no information, I have a hard time believing that Ky Senate going for McConnel is a good indicator of anything. If it is really close, then that is big news
Gravenstone
@Morzer: Sarah Palin 2.0 : Electric Boogaloo
NotMax
@Gravenstone
Ernst/Wurzelbacher ’16?
(I feel dirty.)
raven
@Betty Cracker: We’re booked at the Emerald Coast for almost 2 weeks comin up!
Gene108
@Morzer:
Money.
We do not have millions in Koch dollars to back our candidates nor do will we get 24/7 news coverage of sparsely attended rallies, as if it they are the greatest mass protest in American history, the way Fox News dedicated coverage to the initial 4/15/2009 TEA (taxed enough already) Party rallies.
Also, what has me worried about pegging hopes on millenials is the fact there a good chunk of them that have a high distrust of authority. Anti-vaxxers are largely millenials, when you stop to think about it, as they are the ones young enough to have kids that need vaccinations.
Unless the balance of the SCOTUS changes. I do not see any hope in driving money out of politics, which is needed to reduce the size of the right-wing noise machine.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
I like Mezzetta olives. I’ll have to look for the cheese-stuffed ones at the store.
delk
Ha, the local Fox News channel called perennial loser, homophobe, Dick Durbin challenger, Jim Oberweis the Dairy Queen.
Steeplejack
Interesting article in the Times today on XKCD guy Randall Munroe and his new book.
d58826
@MorzerWith all due respect to the various optimists, I’m not sure there is a whole lot the Dems can do about the turnout or defining the GOP candidate. According to one recent poll the majority of the country thinks the GOP can do a better job of handling the economy. Now this is the party that turned a trillion dollar surplus into a trillion dollar deficit, blew up the world economy in 2008, shut down the government, forced a bond rating downgrade and thought that a debt default was a good idea, If the democrats can’t build a case in running against that kind of record then I think it’s a lost cause. There is an old cliché – none as blind as he who will not see. I suspect that applies to a majority of the American public at this point. They are either blind or have been terrorized by the Ebola carring ISIS terrorists who are hiding in Benghazi just waiting to attack.
Elizabelle
@Gene108:
Good comment. (#60)
Chris
@d58826:
The polling on national security disgusts me about as much. Given a choice between the party that invaded an irrelevant country and whose leader said he “just wasn’t that concerned about” Osama Bin Laden, “to be honest” and the party that fucking killed Osama Bin Laden, the American people, at most, will say “oh, I guess I trust ’em about the same.” But that’s a best case scenario: most of the time, they will simply default to their love for the Daddy Party.
Stupid is as stupid does.
Chris
@NotMax:
It’s a factor for sure. I’m just saying it’s not certain yet that it’ll trump the vote suppression factor.
@Gene108:
True. We tend to distrust corporate authority, which is a step up from the Cult Of Reagan, I guess. At the same time suspicion for government and organized labor is a thing too, and more generally the faith that these things can make a difference.
I feel like if someone proposed the U.S. Space Program or the interstate highway system or the Marshall Plan or the war effort of WW2 today, the powers that be would proclaim that it simply couldn’t be done – and much, perhaps most of the public would believe it. The “knowledge” that Government Can’t Do Anything Right has penetrated into the public consciousness far beyond the 27%.
d58826
@Chris: I think it has gone beyond the ‘
. The elephant echo chamber has been systematically working the refs and any other institution that isn’t bought and paid for by the 1%. The attacks on unions, academia, science, etc are all designed to reduce peoples trust in anything other than Limpdick and the Sage of Wasilla. Even the media is a victim (willingly maybe) but a victim none the less. They have been beaten on from the time of Nixon/Agnew as being liberal mouthpieces. The result is ‘both sides do it’, the Sunday morning GOP round table on the networks and accepting the GOP narrative w/o question.
We have been told the only institution that can be trusted is business. Listen to the Sage’s rhetoric – trust businessmen, business friendly government, etc. No one ever questions why we should blindly trust businessmen, we just should. I’m not saying that unions or academia don’t have their share of scoundrels it’s just we are told to ignore the scoundrels in corporate America. As Cole mentioned in a previous post the GOP will win big in WV on its less government platform even after a major chemical spill poisoned the local water supply and the government had to provide drinking water. Our local water company will have to raise rates to clean up the PCB’s that someone has dumped in the water supply.
It is all part of the veneration of private property. What a businessman does on his property is no one else’s business even those affected by it beyond the boundaries of his property. One of the most flagrant cases is the chemical plant explosion in West TX. The owner was free to do whatever he wanted on his property. Texas was not about to interfere with his sacred property rights. No one bothered to ask about the property rights of the owners of the homes destroyed by the explosion. Or the right to life of the 14 first responders who died that night. The only rights that matter are the businessman’s. Or to put it more bluntly the guy with with biggest checkbook.
JoyfulA
@Gene108: Tom Wolf didn’t entirely self-fund. He put $5 million into his primary campaign and defined himself early against much more likely Dems, like Allyson Schwartz (who presented as a leftie but was found to be on the board of a DLC outfit when that outfit produced a gross op-ed).
His self-definition from all the primary ads held over to the general. (Tom Corbett is pretty much loathed by everyone for many different reasons, and any Dem candidate, even me, would beat him in the general.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I saw that video yesterday and didn’t watch because I knew it would be depressing> The guy who bases his vote on who he would rather have dinner with seems so proud of himself for that high and thoughtful standard. I bet he watches Meet The Press
hedgehog the occasional commenter
Spousal Unit and I both voted early by mail. Voted for Mark Udall and Hickenlooper, fingers crossed. I live in Diana DeGette’s district (yay for redrawing) and am hoping for my neighbors’ sake that Romanoff can pull it off against Coffman–truthfully not feeling optimistic on that one. Am going to the gym tonight and will head for the circuit training area which has no TVs. Spaghetti for dinner and S.U. and I both agreed not to watch returns. I’m thinking a Monty Python marathon.
Hillary Rettig
Already voted, and now will spend a large part of the day watching the polar bear cam:
http://boingboing.net/2014/11/01/polar-bear-livecam.html
Citizen_X
Jesus, that video. Talk about stupid white people!
@danielx:
It must be repeated: Shut the Fuck Up Luke Russert.
I agree on the “certifiable” part, though.