Cogitamus

Monday Miscellany and Open Thread

"Sometime Around Midnight" - Airborne Toxic Event

Work once again seriously interfering with my web time. 

- It's official -- Mitt is at 47%! I continue to obsessively monitor the election results as the final tallies roll in.  Obama's lead continues to grow -- it is now 4,360,000 votes, which puts him at 50.85% to Romney's 47.43%. Total turnout is now down by only 2.96%, with 127,424,299 votes cast versus 131,313,820, a decrease of about 3.4 million.  Half of that total -- just over 1.7 million votes -- is attributable to voter downturn in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.  (Votes are still being counted there, so this could change.)  Again, this is probably going to cost Obama about 1 million votes and another 300,000 in margin over Romney.  In the swing states Obama outperformed his national vote, with a 3.95% spread versus 3.14% in the non-swing states.  For the second election in a row, Virginia almost precisely replicated the national vote percentages -- 51.16% for Obama (versus 50.85% nationally) and 47.28% for Romney (versus 47.43% nationally) -- the closest state to the national results just as it was in 2008.  

- One of the things that puzzled me throughout the election season was the smug certainty among right wing commentators and certain pollsters -- yeah I'm looking at you Gallup -- that turnout among black voters would be lower in 2012 than it was in 2008.  There was a patronizing sense that surely black voters were disenchanted and disappointed with Obama.  (I always felt that this sentiment was much more the province of a certain class of white male liberals.)   There were two things that convinced me that the black vote for Obama would be huge once again.  First, was the incredible disrespect and hostility directed at Obama by the Republicans from the first day he took office -- this had to stick in the craw of people who had taken pride in a historic first only to see a man who had won a landslide victory treated as less legitimate than George W. Bush after his highly dubious win in 2000 (following which Democrats in Congress worked with him to pass a variety of measures).  (This post at TPM captures some of that feeling.)  Second, was the outrageous array of voter suppression tactics adopted by Republicans across the country, from voter ID measures to shortening or eliminating early voting.  In so doing, the GOP screwed with a right that had been won with the blood of martyrs.  Maybe this didn't resonate with the Frank Newports or Karl Roves of the world, but I suspect that most people in the black community are painfully aware of the very real price paid to win access to the ballot.  By their actions, the Republicans made clear to blacks that they were deemed less worthy voters -- and by implication less worthy Americans.   We know who got the last laugh.

What say you?      

Always Low Wages

I have been following with interest the recent attempts to bring pressure to bear on Walmart, the world's largest and most hideous retailer, to pay a living wage.  It is hard to understate how difficult it is to organize or strike against a company this big and this committed to stopping even a hint of unionization.  This is particularly true when your work force is so economically vulnerable to begin with.  (Dailykos has had excellent coverage of this movement.)

A recent Demos study, which has been getting a great deal of attention, (especially on Melissa Harris Perry's excellent weekend show on MSNBC) shows the degree to which Walmart and other imitators in the retail market are holding back the American economy with their incredibly meager wages.  (Harris Perry and Chris Hayes are doing incredibly good work and put the bullshit Sunday talking shows to shame.  What a better place the world would be if Joe Scarborough and his dumbass band of white boys were sent elsewhere and Hayes and Harris Perry could divide up that slot.) Basically, if Walmart would pay its average workers $25,000 a year instead of the woeful $16,000 a year that many of them make, there would be a huge boon to the economy.  Price increases resulting from these wage increases would likely be minimal.  It might put a small dent in the fortunes of the Walmart heirs, who currently hold down positions 6, 7, 8, and 9 of the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans and between them hold accumulated wealth valued at $107 billion dollars. (This is a classic illustration of why the bottom 50% of Americans own 1.1% of total wealth, while the top 1% hold a staggering 34.5% of the nation's wealth.)

Yglesias had an interesting piece the other day about the difficulty of organizing Walmart today compared to the success of the United Auto Workers in organizing GM back in the 1930s, which wasn't, by the way, attributable to GM being more enlightened than Walmart.  The UAW was able, by illegally occupying GM's Flint Michigan plant, to bring GM's production to a halt.   The UAW also had important political allies in Governor Frank Murphy of Michigan (future Supreme Court justice) and Franklin Roosevelt.  They also acted in a culture in which labor militancy was an every day thing and in which radical economic views were relatively common place.  Walmart has no single pressure point that can be attacked.  It can close stores and move them more or less at will, it can reconfigure its supply chains, and it can take advantage of its enormous heft and flexibility to devise work-arounds against strikes. 

Yglesias also correctly raises the fact that unions now have treasuries, employees, members at other employers to service, and institutional interests that discourage them from engaging in extra-legal tactics that could result in large judgments being entered against them.  This is one of the frustrations some times in advising unions -- which by definition should be militant organizations -- in tactics.  It is very difficult as a lawyer to feel comfortable green-lighting tactics that might result in significant legal liability against your client.  (One small quibble with Yglesias -- he mentions pension plans as a reason that unions avoid exra-legal tactics -- it should be noted that pension plans are separate and distinct legal entities that are not subject to creditor claims.  A small point, but one that hits me where I live.)

The struggle against Walmart is really at the heart of trying to create a different kind of America.  It strikes me as a hugely uphill battle, but one we should try and support wholeheartedly. 

Update:  Not too crazy about post by Ezra -- it seems to me obvious that the destructive impact of Walmart -- on wages, on worker power, on small retailers and traditional downtowns, vastly exceeds the benefits of cheaper food.  I vastly prefer this post by Kathy Geier pointing out that other retailers like Costco and Trader Joe's have succeeded while taking a very different approach to employees.

Happy Thanksgiving and Open Thread

"Now be Thankful" - Fairport Convention

It's become a tradition to find a new version of this song every year. (Co-written by a very young Richard Thompson along with Dave Swarbrick and sung by Chris Leslie.)

I hope that all of you have things for which to be thankful at the moment -- good health, the love of family and friends, the bonds of community. 

I am thankful to all of you for your time spent here, the friendships both virtual and in the flesh that have been fostered as a result, the joy of having met several of you and the hope of meeting many more.  I appreciate your input, your wisdom, your humor, and your solidarity.

I will be boarding a north bound train in a little bit, hopefully in a saner atmosphere than would have prevailed yesterday.

Among things for which to be thankful, the reelection of our president and the fact that Romney has now slipped to 47.51% of the popular vote, truly hanging on the brink of the 47% vote, a total he can wear like a crown of irony.  Obama's margin is now just under 4.2 million votes and would likely have been over 5 million but for Sandy.  Overall turnout in the election is down just 3.4% thus far from 2008 and Obama looks likely to garner at least 65 million votes.  Not a bad showing all in all.

Alright, time to back and get the little dog to the kennel.  I wish he could go on Amtrak, but alas is a little too big.  I gave him roast chicken this morning to try and make amends.

Enjoy your day and be safe.  Hopefully the wifi on the train will let me check in later. 

A Few More Facts About the Election

I am still watching for the final voting tallies to be reached.  One of the annoying things about the way the vote comes in is that is generally leaves the impression on election night that the Republican presidential candidate has fared better in the popular vote than he in fact has due to the late counting of votes in California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii, all of which are Democratic bastions.

So as of today, I see that Obama's margin is up to 4.1 million votes.  (Right now the vote is at 51% to 48% -- or more precisely 50.77% to 47.54% -- if Romney slips just a bit more to below 47.5% he will officially have won the support of 47%, which would be sweet indeed.)  And Obama has now topped 64 million votes -- he is still down 5 million votes from 2008, but it is a far cry from the claims one heard on election day of Obama being down by 9 - 10 million votes.  I am not sure how many votes there are left to count, but it seems likely that Obama will continue to add to his margin.  As I have noted previously, it is pretty clear that Obama's overall vote count has been substantially hurt by Hurricane Sandy.  If you look at the vote totals for New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut (which were the sixth, eleventh, and twelfth most pro-Obama states in the country) they were down by 19%, 12%, and 5% respectively.  (See column J in the attached link.)  It looks to me like this accounts for about 1 million likely Obama voters who were not able to get to the polls.

I was curious to see how Obama's white vote held up this time around.  There were places in 2008 where he performed improbably well like Indiana, Missouri, Montana, and North Dakota the last time around.  Alas, this time his performance in those states eroded a great deal.  (I don't think this was shocking given the performance of the economy over the last four years -- voters who went against the grain in 2008 probably did not see enough upside to keep them moving in Obama's direction -- throw in the incredible vilification to which Obama was subjected during this time and the general erosion in his rural support and the outcome does not seem at all surprising.  I think 2016 will give the Dems another chance in at least a few of these places.)

In 2008, Obama prevailed among white voters in 18 states plus the District of Columbia.    Sadly, I can't give quite the same analysis as I did in 2008 due to the elimination of exit polling in several states.  But it appears to me that Obama won the white vote in 12 states plus DC this time around.  He took 91% of the overall vote in DC, 70% in Hawaii, 63% in Rhode Island, and 59% in Delaware -- none of these states were exit polled, but it is safe to say that he won the white vote in three of them -- Delaware, which had 20% minority voters in 2008 may not have quite made it.

In the states that were exit polled, Obama prevailed among white voters in the following -- these states also had pretty noteworthy gender gaps among its white voters:

                        White Vote for Obama                 White Women v. White Men        Gap

Vermont:                 66%                                        72 - 59%                                13%

Massachusetts:       57%                                        63 - 50                                   13%

Maine:                    57%                                        64 - 49                                    15%

Oregon:                  54%                                        57 - 51                                      6%

Washington:           53%                                        55 - 50                                      5%

Connecticut:           51%                                        57 - 44                                    13%

New Hampshire:      51%                                        56 - 46                                    10%

Iowa:                      51%                                        58 - 42                                    16%

New York:               49%                                        55 - 43                                    12%

I continue to find the scope of the gender gap in places like New York, New England, and Iowa (versus say Oregon and Washington) to be really interesting.  I don't have an explanation for it, but it strikes me as an interesting thesis topic.  

(And it's stuff like this that makes me really regret the lack of fifty state data.)

I am going to continue to comb through the data to see what else might be of interest. 

What do you all think?

- Sir Charles  (It says Stephen's name, but that's because I am once again found wanting technologically.  But I did make Ian disappear.)

And More Open Thread

 

"She Owns the Streets" - Raveonettes

Another great song. 

Looming and oppressive deadlines beckon, so I must turn the discussion over to you.

Be back in the afternoon for something more substantial I hope.

Until then.

Update:  Argh, comments are down once again.  I am hoping this will cure itself in the short term.  I am still in the midst of trying to get a couple of things done for a 3:00 PM deadline.  Hopefully can turn my attention to this in a while. 

 

Weekend Open Thread

   

"Slack Motherfucker" - Superchunk

Hey there.  I saw "Lincoln" last night, which I thought pretty compelling.  It has its moments of Spielbergian sentimentality, but Lincoln is such an extraordinary character -- being played by an extraordinary actor -- that it feels like quibbling to point that out.  Daniel Day Lewis makes you believe every minute he is on the screen.  I don't know enough about the nuts and bolts of the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment -- the focus of the film -- to judge its historical accuracy in that regard, but the broader picture strikes me as pretty scrupulous in its detail.  It's a bit of a throw back in a way to old-fashioned political potboilers like "Advise and Consent."  People who have been critical of the movie for its "wordiness" -- imagine, a movie about Lincoln in which words are important -- need to stick to Marvel comic movies and let we adults have our pleasures.  Well worth seeing, for Day-Lewis alone, although the remaining cast is excellent as well. 

- I was disappointed to see how much the exit polling had been scaled back for this year's election. A huge number of states -- nineteen -- were omitted from full exit polling, leaving big gaps in the available demographic data -- stuff that I really love. I was trying to do a comparison of the states in which Obama had carried the white vote in 2008 versus his 2012 performance and several states were omitted.  I also wanted to look at gender gap information as well.  I will definitely do a post on this, but I am really saddened that the full data is not available.

- Watching the current disaster unfold in Gaza, I can't help but think that Benjamin Netanyahu is not understanding the way in which the world has changed in the Middle East and just how perilous his present course could be.   The emergence of some kind of popular government in Egypt, along with a moderate Islamist government in Turkey, has altered the landscape of the region in unpredictable ways.  Egypt, in particular, has the ability to really complicate the situation in Gaza and I think the appearance the other day of the Egyptian prime minister in Gaza should be setting off alarm bells in Israel regarding just how different things may be with Mubarak gone.  Egyptian President Morzi is already signalling that he cannot sit by and watch another ground invasion of Gaza without taking some steps in response.  Israel has benefitted immensely from the lack of threat on its Egyptian border.  Does Netanyahu really want to jeopardize thirty-five years of peace -- however cold -- at precisely the moment that he is also trying to focus world pressure on Iran?  It seems like folly to me.

- Nancy points out in comments this excellent essay by Rick Perlstein regarding the folks who put the "con" in the conservative movement.  It's a fascinating read.  Perlstein probably knows more about the conservative movement as it has existed over the last 50-60 years in the United States than anybody.  I think that the concerted devotion to untruth that characterizes the right wing (and those who make their living off of them) is going to make it very difficult to make the kind of changes in response to demographic realities that have been much discussed in recent weeks. 

What's on your minds? 

Gallup Goes Galt

Read this whiny, petulant post by Frank Newport, President of Gallup, and share my sense of derision.  Really, it is an amazing amalgam of disingenuousness and wounded privilege -- and as Salon notes, a clear attack on Nate Silver for having the gall to slap down the biggest name in polling.

First, the disingenuousness:  Newport tries to make the case that basically they got the election right, having done a final poll with Romney in the lead 50-49.  In so doing, he ignores Gallup's polls very close to the date of the election that showed Romney with a 5 or 6 point lead, clearly a preposterous take on the race.  One gets the sense that Gallup, after an alleged Sandy-induced hiatus, simply pushed its numbers towards a 50-50 race in the hopes of minimizing the damage to its reputation that being so far off would do.  Newport also suggests that Obama is only going to win by 50-48, meaning they only missed the race by two points.  However, as the final votes get counted, it is conceivable that Obama will prevail 51-47 (already it is 51-48) as his lead has grown to just under 3.5 million votes.  In reality, Gallup missed the margin in the race by four or five points, not really all that impressive.  Newport does not even bother to give an accurate percentage of the vote thus far nor does he let on that there are still hundreds of thousands of likely Obama votes still out there.  (Obama was likely hurt by Sandy due to the depressed turnout in voter rich blue states like New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut -- it looks to me like this may have shaved 1 million votes from his total.)  Newport insists that the presidential campaign was truly a volatile affair and that Obama may have gained 5 points in the final week because of Sandy.  This is poppycock (which is Dutch for "soft shit").  The defining characteristic of this race, at least as seen through the eyes of the aggregators, was its overall stability.

Speaking of aggregators, Newport then turns his wrath on them (read Nate Silver) for having the temerity to call out Gallup on its outlier likely voter model for the last few months of the campaign.  One senses Newport's fury at these presumptuous upstarts attacking the grandaddy of them all.  He threatens that if these aggregators keep doing that thing they do, that companies like Gallup may cease polling altogether.  Really.  So then what the fuck does Gallup do to pay Mr. Newport's no doubt considerable salary.

Here's the thing -- if Gallup ceases polling, others will happily step into the void.  And it seems likely that they will do a better job.

So quit your bitching Frank and either get better or get out.  You won't be missed. 

 

The Overrated Mr. Rove

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the recent election is watching the myth of Karl Rove -- "the architect" -- explode.  Rove has shown himself to be a fairly poor political messenger, even with virtually unlimited funds, while also veering badly into believe your own bullshit territory.  But to some degree, Rove has always been a bullshitter, one vastly enabled by a Washington media that finds genius on the right easy to come by.

If you look at Rove's historical track record, it was largely built in conjunction with the inevitable movement of Texas politics from old school southern Democratic to overwhelmingly Republican -- a movement replicated in states all over the old confederacy.  Rove rode that wave, but surely did not create it.

On the national scene, Rove's claim to fame is largely the three elections in 2000, 2002, and 2004.  In 2000 and 2004 he helped steer George W. Bush to the presidency twice and in 2002 helped the Republicans regain a narrow majority in the Senate.  A look at all of these elections though suggests that there is less than meets the eye.  In 2000, Bush lost the popular vote and was handed a dubious win in Florida by the intervention of the Supreme Court.  Bush's 47.9% of the popular vote was about where Mitt Romney is about now in the voting count.  His 271 electoral votes were one over the minimum necessary to obtain the presidency, the smallest margin of victory since Rutherford B. Hayes prevailed in the disputed election of 1876.  In 2004, seeking reelection as a war time President, Bush did obtain 50.7% of the popular vote.  However, his electoral vote total only climbed to 286 and he was within one state of losing to John Kerry.  His two term total of 557 electoral votes is the lowest of any two term president and represents only 17 electoral votes above the minimum, while he obtained 2.5 million more popular votes than his two opponents out of roughly 222 million.

Now a win is a win, but I don't think either of these elections was indicative of campaign genius on Rove's part.  What he did excel at though, was hyping his accomplishments, somehow selling the Washington punditocracy on the notion that the Republicans had somehow obtained an electoral college lock on the strength of two of the narrowest victories in over a century.  Rove also managed to get credit in 2002 when the Republicans gained two Senate seats to obtain a 51-49 majority, a victory attained in large part through the untimely demise of Paul Wellstone and the jingoistic atmosphere rife in the post 9-11 environment.  In short, Rove's three "triumphal" electoral victories were all basically split decisions characterized by the narrowest of victories.  

Something else is worth noting about Rove's national victories -- he may have been Bush's brain, but Bush was Rove's heart.  With Bush at the top of the ticket, the two of them were able to stake out a more moderate kind of conservatism aimed at expanding the base just enough to prevail.  Thus, Bush pushed his "compassionate conservative" program that included Medicare Part D, an unfunded expansion of entitlements of a very significant kind, No Child Left Behind, a huge federal educational inititiatve that ran directly contrary to right wing notions of local control of schools, and support for immigration reform.

Rove and Bush showed an ideological flexibility in these matters that acknowledged the reality that the hard core conservative base was not large enough to win national elections, lessons that Rove, operating independently of Bush, seems to have been unable to bring to his 2008 and 2012 efforts.   As a result, his super PAC efforts achieved a remarkable level of futility, wasting vast sums in a crude, bludgeoning, remarkably dishonest set of efforts.

I suspect that Rove will remain in the thick of things for the right, but that his claims to genius will continue to fade as white electoral dominance does as well. 

Time for a quick cardiac catheterization.  See you when I get out.

I'm out and the news was good.  I had suffered from chest pains and shortness of breath on Saturday night, so on the way to the movies my wife suggested that perhaps a quick trip to the ER might be warranted.  And I've been in te hospital since.  (Long weekends really are not the time to be looking for quick answers.)  Turned out to be a strange thing that was causing spasms in my coronary arteries, mimicking (on a pretty convincing level) the symptoms of a heart attack.  I just need to take some kind of beta blockers and will be as good as new. 

Weekend Open Thread

   

"Forest Whitaker" - Bad Books

I love this song.  First thing I've heard in the last couple of months that really grabbed me. 

"You started a job that you hate when you're sober and hate even more when you're not."

- More onanistic triumphalism -- I will note that the popular vote is now at 51-48 as per my prediction and Obama is up by 3.2 million votes.  When all the votes are counted, there is a decent chance that Romney will end up with an highly poetic 47% of the vote. 

- This is an incredibly wise post by Rich Yeselson at Political Animal about the difficulty for the Republican Party of engaging in ideological retooling without undermining their reactionary and tribal base.  Also at Political Animal is this great piece by Ed Kilgore regarding the absolute imperative for the Democrats of improving off-year turnout in elections.  Read them both.  They are far superior to almost any of the half-assed post voting reflections you will see in your daily rag or the talking head shows. 

- Why do I find this a bit shocking? Really, you're a congressional leader and the President calls and you don't take it because you are asleep?

- Might I just note that were Ashley Judd to run for the Senate and beat Mitch McConnell it would be the single greatest aesthetic improvement in the history of legislatures of any time and place.  I have already explained to my wife that I will be quitting my job and working for her campaign full time.

What's on your minds?

The Swing States That Weren't

I continue to be amazed by the collective delusion that gripped Republicans in the closing days of the election and am completely gobsmacked by the notion that the Romney people were shocked that they lost.  The available data overwhelmingly indicated that a Romney loss was highly likely despite a fairly evenly divided electorate.  Nonetheless, a kind of groupthink settled over right wing politicians and pundits alike, claiming that their momentum and greater enthusiasm were going to prove all of the collective polls wrong.  It's worth taking a look at the actual results.

Pennsylvania - The great white whale of Republican politics.  Every four years they claim it is going to be competitive.  Every four years they are proven wrong.  It is a state that they seem to be capable of getting to 47% and no more.  And that's exactly what Romney did, losing 52 - 47 and by nearly 300,000 votes.  That's not a landslide, but it's not really close either. Pennsylvania last went Republican in 1988, so it's not exactly like this was a new phenomenon.

Wisconsin - This, along with Pennsylvania, seemed to be the other great illusion.  Somehow Paul Ryan, who had never run statewide, was going to deliver a state that last went Republican in 1984.  And once again, not close at all, with Obama prevailing 53 - 46 and by 205,000 votes. 

Minnesota - George Will actually claimed that this state would go for Romney, despite the fact that Republicans last won it in 1972!  In other words, even through all of the Democratic electoral debacles of the 1980s, Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis prevailed here.  Why would the strongest Democratic candidate in nearly a half a century fall short?  He didn't of course, winning 53 - 45 and by 220,000 votes.

Michigan - Why people thought the man who wrote the editorial entitled "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" would prevail here is even more baffling than the Minnesota delusion.  These people do know what the major industry of this state is, right?  Obama won 54 - 45, with a margin of 400,000 votes. 

Other states that weren't close:  Iowa, which Obama took 52 - 46, Nevada, which he also took 52 - 46, New Mexico, where he won by 53 - 43 (and simply cannot be called a swing state anymore), and Oregon, where he prevailed 54 - 43, but about which some of the truly deluded got excited because of an outlier poll toward the end that showed the state within five points.

The bottom line is that wishful thinking and cherry picking polls are not really a winning strategy.  One poll aggregator whose reputation should be damaged by the results is Real Clear Politics, which went into the last day of the election characterizing Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania as toss ups, and Oregon and Minnesota as "leaning" Obama.  Five to nine point victories do not reflect "tossup" status and eight and eleven point wins hardly constitute simply "leaning" to a candidate.  Even their poll aggregators manage to be wishful thinkers. 

I will brag that I nailed the electoral vote precisely (calling Florida before Nate had shifted it) and I think when all of the votes are counted, my prediction on the popular vote of 51-48 will be correct.  If not, I think the reduction of about 1.5 million likely Obama votes in NY and NJ because of Sandy will likely prove the difference.   

 

Post-election Open Thread

"Dancing Days" - Led Zeppelin

I am taking a schadenfreude tour through the right wing blogosphere.  Oh sweet, sweet, Himalayan pink salt tears o' wingnut, it is truly not your father's America. (Thank you LG&M.)

I am sure I will be posting about this fine night for days on end.

In the meantime, share your thoughts on the outcome and how your own personal gloating is taking shape.  (And those of you who are better people than I, can suggest ways to begin the healing process with our right wing brothers.)

And We're Doing it Live

Okay, up and running.  Time to figure out what is going on.

The early exit polls sounded good to me.  I heard on npr that the electorate is projected to be only 74% white, that young voters constitute 18% of the electorate and that hispanics make up 10% of voters.  This strikes me as a very promising make up. 

And now I think I am going to walk Stanley to be back in time for the 8:00 poll closings.  See you in a few.

Okay, I'm back.  Florida looks really close, not surprisingly.  I am going to take a quick spin around the web and see if anyone has any interesting news. kos reports that Obama is leading in Hillsborough County (Tampa) by a margin of 52-47, which is just where he needs to be. 

Wow, they are already calling it for Chris Murphy in the senate race for Connecticut.  This one was uncomfortably close for a while.  We also have the Bill Nelson seat already in hand with an extraordinarily easy win.  Neither are big surprises, but they are nice wins. 

- Virginia - I am trying to delve into the county by county results in Virginia a bit.  I continue to think that Prince William and Loudon counties -- the two exurban DC counties -- are a good bellwether for the state as a whole.  So far Loudon in literally one vote apart with 33,000 counted.  Prince William is in the very early stages of its vote count, so I can't really make a judgment yet.  There are very few votes in from the large jurisdictions contiguous to DC.  They tend to come in late, much to the consternation of we Dems.

- Florida - It sounds like Obama is doing pretty well so far in Florida. kos reports that Obama is leading in Hillsborough County (Tampa) by 52-47, which is just where he needs to be.

- Flyover country -- Wolf Blitzer excitedly exclaims that Texas, Nebraska, Kansas, Lousiana, and South Dakota went to Romney.  Gee that's news.

- Michigan -- What do you know, "tossup" state Michigan was just announced by CNN, the moment that the polls closed.  Once again, the press and the GOP conspired to make this seem in doubt when it simply never was.  

- The polls -- so far the polls seem like they were more or less right on.  So much for skewing.

- Prup: Hate to say it, but Romney is already at 152 electoral votes. 

- North Carolina - Obama is running dead even.  I don't know where the vote is coming, but this is pretty encouraging.

- Ohio -- the "whole shooting match" state as it should be called.  Obama seems to have a pretty goo lead thus far.  He appears to have a huge lead in Cuyahoga County.  All signs seem very favorable. 

- Massachusetts - Warren is up 52 to 48 on Brown, while Obama is beating Romney 59-39.  That seems like she is on target. 

- Wisconsin bitchez - So gee, I guess Wisconsin and Michigan were not toss up states.  Great job Sean Trende (Real Clear Politics), who kept this as a toss up even today.  It is pretty clear that the Republicans have been engaging in bullshit spin (or self-delusion) on this and Michigan.  Next illusion to disappear -- Pennsylvania.

- And Elizabeth Warren bitchez!!!!! Yeah!!! So far with Angus King winning in Maine, we are up two seats thus far in the Senate. 

- And let's make it three -- Conservadem Joe Donnelly has defeated Rapepublican Richard Mourdock.  We are up three seats in the Senate now.

- And Sherrod Brown is reelected.  Not a surprise, but great news about a great guy.  And a good sign for Obama I think. 

- Pennsylvania - I missed the call for Pennsylvania for Obama.  So at what point do all of the pundits who bought the Romney bullshit start feeling silly.  Clearly, there was no contest in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.  Nate must be feeling mighty good thus far. 

- Granite State baby!!! -- It's looking awfully good for the good guys.  I am almost ready to head over to NRO and listen to the lamentations of our enemies, and bask in their sweet tears, while they rend their garments.  Fuck yeah!

- And speaking of the audacity of bullshit, check out this item from Taegan Goddard on what the Romney campaigns internals actually showed in Ohio yesterday.

- Virginia - I have perused the official county by county statistics in Virginia and am pretty confident that Obama is going to win.  There is still 60% of Fairfax County to count and that alone should be enough for Obama to win.  It also appears that no votes from Norfolk have been counted, which will also go heavily for Obama.  Obama leads in the bellwether of Loudon County and is running neck and neck in Prince William.  All very good signs.  Tim Kaine seems to be running slightly better than Obama, which is more good news.

- And more good news.  Claire McCaskill!!  Bad night for the Rapepublicans.  

- Atrios can breath easy.  Kerrey has lost to Deb Fisher.  The Republicans grab one back.

- Minnesota -- Another shocker - Obama becomes the tenth straight Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state.  But it is a swing state.  Really.  Joe Scarborough tells me. 

- North Carolina - CNN just called it for Mitt.  Looks like Obama ran a nice race, but as I suspected he would, came up just a bit short.  No worries though.  Everything else looks on target.  Time to check in on Virginia again.

- Virginia - Romney's edge is down to 8,000 votes.  He's a dead man walking.

- And now Iowa!!!!

Imagine if we had any enthusiasm going for us. 

***** And there it is -- NBC calls it for Obama.  Victory.  Sweet, sweet, victory.

- It is time to dissolve the people and elect a new one.

- I wonder what Peggy Noonan is feeling now?  Besides the lulling oblivion of some gin and olives.  Make mine dirty barkeep!

- It looks like Nate Silver knows a whole lot more than Frank Newport of Gallup and Scott Rasmussen.  I can't wait to see the demographics, but it seems to me that this was like 2008 plus.

- Obama is now up 30,000 in Virginia and I see no way for Romney to come back given the jurisdictions that are remaining. 

- And Shelly Berkely is running significantly ahead in Nevada.  I don't know if it's enough to win, but this is my upset pick of the night.

- Boy almost all of the news looks good -- Baldwin is ahead, Heitkamp has a narrow lead, Tester is ahead.  This night is shaping up about as well as we could have ever have expected.

- Marriage Equality -- So far the good guys are up narrowly in all four states.  This could be epic.  In Maryland it is ahead 52-48 with 86% of the vote in.  There is a four point margin in both Maine and Washington with about half of the vote counted and a two point margin in Minnesota with about half of those votes counted. 

- Very pleased to see that Loudon County has come down 52-47 for Obama and Prince William has gone for Obama 55-44, which is a really nice win.  I like to win and I like being right.

- I cannot believe that Romney is not conceding.  It doesn't matter if Ohio is up for grabs -- which it really isn't.  He is going to lose Virginia, Florida, Colorado, and Nevada too.  He has no coneivable path to victory.  Get some class man.

- I am describing our winning coalition as suburban women and the men who cut their lawns.

- Obama must be pissed that Romney is keeping him from addressing the country until such a late hour.  Romney is a douche to the end.

- Obama just took the lead in the popular vote.  And that is with only about half of Washington and Oregon's vote in and less than 30% of California's.  I feel pretty good about my 51-48 prediction. 

- There is so much to this election we haven't discussed -- the marijuana initiatives, the return of Alan Grayson to the House, and an incredibly tight race to send Allen West packing among other things.

- So Shelly Berkley has slipped behind by 2,000 votes with 85% counted, but Heidi Heitkamp is up by 5,000 with 89% of the vote in.  These can be meaningful amounts in jurisdictions as small as Nevada and North Dakota.  Keep your fingers crossed.

- Romney's concession was actually quite gracious. 

- And the big winner tonight thus far seems to be the poll aggregators.  It seems to me that there results are amazingly on track thus far. 

- I just took a glance at CNN's exit polls -- very interesting stuff.  Once again, it seems to reinforce the notion that demography is destiny.  The turnout by African Americans was impressive once again -- as I expected.  They constituted 13% of the electorate, which I believe means they were slightly overrepresented relative to their share of the population.  No enthusiasm gap at all evident there.  Obama won the African-American vote by a staggering 93-7.  And then Hispanics increased their presence to 10% of the electorate and they went for Obama by 71 to 27.  Asians -- who are actually the fastest growing demographic in America -- constituted 3% of the electorate and went for Obama by a margin of 74 - 24.     By the way, Americans under 30 constituted 19% of the electorate versus 16% of the electorate over the age of 65.  In other words, it was the 2008 electorate again -- plus as I said earlier.  Obama took 60% of the vote among the under 30 voters.  Again, no enthusiasm gap at all.  We just need to try and get all of these groups to vote every two years instead of every four.  Oh, white men gave Obama just 35% of the vote.  A sad commentary on them, not the President.

- Nice speech by Obama.  Too bad it is going on at 1:45 EST. 

Good night all.  It's 2:45 AM and I need to drive to Richmond tomorrow and back.  But I will feel fondly toward old Virginny on my way.  I can't make it long enough to get the definitive word on Heitberg, Berkley, and Tester.  Or Michelle Bachmann, who is hanging on by her fingernails.  Maybe more good news awaits in the morning.

As always, it's been a pleasure. 

PSA: Tonight's Poll Closing Times in Key States

Here are the closing times in the Presidential swing states (with Pennsylvania added, due to Mitt's late push there) and in the states with close Senate races:

Presidential swing states:

7pm: Virginia
7:30pm: Ohio, North Carolina
8pm: Florida*, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire
9pm: Wisconsin, Colorado
10pm: Iowa, Nevada

*FL polls close at 7pm local time. But a few counties are in the Central time zone.

States with close Senate races:

7pm: Virginia, Indiana
8pm: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Missouri
9pm: Wisconsin, Arizona, Nebraska
10pm: Montana, Nevada
11pm: North Dakota

The break-even point in the Senate tonight is almost geographical: barring upsets in Western states where we're overwhelmingly favored (NM, HI), we are guaranteed to break even in the Senate if we win in all the seriously contested races in states east of and bordering on the Mississippi.  If we win all of those, then every state in the list above that we win in the Plains and further west adds to our current margin.  Losing states along and east of the Mississippi needs to be balanced out by gains further west in order to remain even. 

So unlike the Presidential race which, if we're lucky, will be over by 8pm or so, the earliest we might know that we're coming out ahead in the Senate (if we are) would be if we pick up the Arizona seat, which is a longshot.  We've got better shots at the 10pm pair.

But if it's gonna be a sucky night for the Senate, we'll find out pretty early.  Hopefully that won't be the case.

My big hope for the evening is that Romney's ultimate share of the popular vote settles out at somewhere in the 47% range.  I would so love for him to have to carry that number around with him for the rest of his days.

Open thread.

Some early liveblogging, while Sir Charles does his warmup exercises:

With 9% of the vote in in Indiana, Donnelly's pulled ahead of Mourdock by ~9000 votes.  Good news.

With 1% of the vote in, Allen's 10,000 votes ahead of Kaine in Virginia.  Means nothing without knowing which part of the state, of course.

 9:40pm - NBC has called Pennsylvania and Wisconsin for Obama.

9:43pm - NBC calls Massachusetts for Elizabeth Warren, and Indiana for Joe Donnelly.

Prediction Time

Well, I guess it is that time when we make our best guesses about what is going to happen on Tuesday.  I feel pretty good, although I am fuming about the travesty that is early voting in parts of Florida and Ohio -- the deliberate attempts to disenfranchise American voters by Republicans has been a constant and disgusting aspect of this campaign.  It would be nice if once this election is over, the mainstream media focuses a bit on this truly outrageous effort.  Every one looking at those lines snaking endlessly around polling places -- turning voting into some sort of endurance sport -- should feel a sense of shame at the betrayal of American democracy.  Kudos to everyone who hangs in there and votes -- fighting those who would take away their voices. 

With that out of the way, what to expect on Tuesday.  Well those of us who have subscribed to the adage "keep calm and read Nate Silver" are feeling reasonably good. 

I am predicting that Obama will win with 332 electoral votes, carrying all of the swing states except North Carolina.  I have gone back and forth on Florida -- I was initially going to say 303 electoral votes -- but I have the sense that the intensity of Democratic voters generally and in that state specfically is higher than the likely voter models have predicted.  We shall see.  But 303 would be just fine with me as well.

Popular vote guess -- Obama 51 and Romney 48.

As to the Senate, I think that the news is also good.  Shockingly good really, when one thinks about the basic mathematics of the race -- 23 Democratic seats at stake to only ten Republican -- and the fact that we are defending open seats in North Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Virginia, as well as the seats of vulnerable incumbents in places like Montana and Missouri.  The Republicans only needed to hold their ten and pick off four of these seven vulnerable seats and they were home free.  But fortunately, Olympia Snowe retired, Elizabeth Warren decided to enter electoral politics, and Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock won primaries.  As a result, I believe that we are going to pick up at least three seats -- Massachusetts, Maine (with independent Angus King), and Indiana, while losing two -- Nebraska and North Dakota (the latter still possibly winnable due to the excellent campaign of Heidi Heitkamp).  I think we are going to manage to hold difficult seats in Missouri, Virginia, Wisconsin, Montana, and New Mexico. 

I also feel like we have a shot at a surprise pick up in Nevada.  I think that Obama is going to run stronger in Nevada than the polls have shown to date, just as Reid did in 2010.  As a result I think Shelley Berkley has a decent chance of knocking off Dean Heller.   There are enough variables here that we could actually have a gain of 2-3 Democratic seats, which would be an unbelievable result.  Right now I am betting on an end result with the Democrats holding 54 seats.

As to the House, I really have no clue.  I think the Dems will gain, but I have no feel for the magnitude of such a gain, other than it seems unlikely to yield a majority.  Let's say a net gain of 12 seats, leaving the Republicans with 230 and the Dems with 205.  If the other things I've predicted above happen, we can live with the disappointment. 

Please join in and give me your thoughts. 

And read this by all means -- it made me laugh my ass off.

 

Sunday Open Thread

I don't have much to say this morning.  The state of the race as we head to the finish line is, thank goodness, far better than it was in the wake of the post-Debate 1 slide.  Right now, Nate Silver gives Romney about 1 chance in 7, and I really think he's overstating Romney's chances a bit.

I don't believe the GOP really has the ability to steal Ohio.  But for those who do, there should be comfort in the knowledge that if we lose Ohio due to vote suppression, computer skulduggery, or other means unrelated to an underlying shift in voter preferences, we should still have the upper hand in pretty much all of the other swing states except for NC (still likely Romney) and FL (tossup).  There are really only so many states you can steal, and the way the polls are breaking lately, the GOP would need to steal not only Ohio, but Virginia and at least one other swing state.  Good luck with that.

The video is a message to the Republican Party.  Please keep your bull outside our china shop!

Open thread.

On edit: thought I'd recommend a couple of pieces I found worthwhile this weekend.

First is one that Paula mentioned in comments yesterday: Tom Scocca's Why Do White People Think Mitt Romney Should Be President? Parsing the narrow, tribal appeal of the Republican nominee which flips the usual perspective - of whites (especially white men) being the 'real people' and everyone else being minorities voting as members of a class - to show how Republicans have inverted that logic to attempt to get large numbers of whites to vote the way they do on the basis of their race.

The second was Wen Stephenson's A Convenient Excuse in the Boston Phoenix, which makes the point that, to the extent that the mainstream media even covers climate change at all, it's covered like a side issue that's only of importance to environmental activists, rather than an oncoming crisis that threatens the stability and well-being of the world that our children will spend most of their lives in:

After a quick round of introductions, I explained to my former Globe colleagues that I wasn't there to "save the planet" or to protect some abstraction called "the environment." I'm really not an environmentalist, and never have been. No, I said, I was there for my kids: my son, who's 12, and my daughter, who's 8. And not only my kids — all of our kids, everywhere. Because on our current trajectory, it's entirely possible that we'll no longer have a livable climate — one that allows for stable, secure societies to survive — within the lifetimes of today's children.

That struck a powerful chord with me, because I've often wondered if I've already fundamentally failed my 5 year old son in this respect.  He could very well live to see the opening years of the 22nd century, a fact that's still an astounding notion to a guy who was born in 1954.  I'd hope that my generation would leave a decent world to him and his cohort, but I can't say I'm optimistic.

Wednesday Open Thread

   

Sorry for blog neglect.  Day long meetings, family visiting, end of month billing, and house cleaning are all cutting into my all important internet time. 

I am just trying to catch up with the day's news.

- I enjoyed the Bloomberg endorsement of Obama -- not because I think it will translate into votes, but because Bloomberg is the beau ideal of a certain class of pundit.  I am looking forward to the Morning Joe crowd chewing on this.

- The sanctimonious cluelessness of the dinosaur media is a spectacle to behold.  The advent of the "public editor" has really proved to be one of the most amazing wastes of time ever.  How can every last one of them have the same stick up the ass mentality?

- The Romney campaign pretends that wishful thinking translates into votes.  It's been tried before.  And will have the same effect. 

- I have to brag about getting a perfect score on this Slate test of presidential electoral maps since 1860.

I will do my election predictions this weekend and invite you all to do the same.

In the meantime, tell me what's happening.