Can we vote now?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
23 Comments
Can we vote now?
Yes, please. It’s time to get the Assclown Express off the stage.
early voting is already on…
many bigots will be living very uncomfortably. O’Reilly for one.
Sullivan provides this link.
If the election is not stolen, we’ll be hearing a lot of references to President “That One”
i’ll have to see the video and check billo’s inflection, but his comment could be made innocuous with a small change in punctuation:
just don’t tell anyone i tried to give captain falafel an out, ok?
It reminds me of a telegram Trotsky is alleged to have sent to Stalin at one point during the late 30s or so. It said:
Of course Stalin read this in Red Square to an assembled audience, and after the cheering stopped, he noticed an old Jewish guy at the front of the crowd.
“Comrade Stalin?” the old Jewish guy said. “I think perhaps you didn’t read that quite right.”
Well of course Stalin fumed and ranted about how could you possibly read a telegram wrong, but finally he finished up by saying, “And how should I be reading it?”
So the old Jewish guy went up to the dais, stood in front of the microphone, and read:
I returned my absentee ballot yesterday.
I can. Hooray for Ohio’s early voting laws!
I hope I can get down to my polling center sometime next week.
Stupid MI and their no early voting.
Let’s hope they count it. We’ll see . . .
I live in a county controlled by Dems and the Secretary of State is now a Dem.
If my ballot doesn’t get counted we’re completely screwed.
I’m thinking about doing the early voting primarily to make sure it gets counted – we get a paper ballot that gets hand counted if we do it that way.
And Nancy Pelosi is a Dem too. Lot of good that’s done us.
Today, I drove across Illinois from Cook County to Jo Davies County on the Mississippi River. Jo Davies seemed to be Democratic country as did Cook. In between is red territory. Only in the middle of that stretch did I see any McCain-Palin signs. There were two and they did say McCain -Palin, not McCain. I take that as evidence of Kool-Aid drinking Wingnuts rather than sober Republicans.
The most interesting thing I noticed, though, was that in the red territory near Cook and Jo Davies, I saw yards with signs for the Republican state rep or state senator and Obama signs on the same lawn! Thinking Republicans (they do exist, really) are rejecting McCain and openly embracing Obama. These are farm and small town Republicans. They must be hurting badly and really scared of their fortunes under the prospective Geezer-in-Chief.
The Republican in the Washington governor’s race, Dino Rossi, is trying to paint himself as an agent of change. (It’s a lie, I might add. He’s a Bush Republican and even goes so far as to describe his party as “G.O.P. Party” rather than “Republican.”) Unfortunately he’s being somewhat successful, and I will occasionally see Rossi signs next to Obama signs around Seattle. I am told someone has taken out a large electronic billboard in the south part of the county proclaiming “OBAMA/ROSSI”, but they’re on the other end of the county from me so I haven’t seen it. Can’t say I’m in a big hurry to.
In Illinois, these farmers and small town denizens are Republicans historically because of the Civil war. They have kept that identity in the 20th Century primarily in reaction to Democratic dominance of Chicago. Chicago is Illinois’ only mega-city and it’s size gives it virtual control of the state government. The reaction is to line up with the opposite party which is quite adroit at whipping up anti-Chicago feelings. Truthfully, arrogant Chicago politicians are good at whipping up anti-Chicago feelings also.
This balance was what made Illinois a swing state. For the most part, these Republicans are moderates. The rightward drift (wholesale charge?) of the Republican Party has been a big factor in making Illinois a blue state.
Since Washington is also a one city state, unlike California, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, I would expect Washington’s politics to be similar to Illinois’. Is that correct?
In a lot of ways we’re more of a megalopolis state. While Seattle is the core of the megalopolis and the counties on either side of King occasionally are a bit reddish, when they all go in the same direction, the election tends to go in that direction.
Most of the state’s population lives in the roughly six-county area from the Canadian border down to the capital, Olympia, but the biggest concentrations are in Snohomish (Everett), King (Seattle and its exurbs), and Pierce (Tacoma).
And don’t forget that Washington has a long reputation for being left of center. The IWW got its start in the logging camps of Washington state, and Roosevelt’s Postmaster General (the one the US Post Office building in DC is named for) once declared the US to be composed of “47 states and the Soviet of Washington.” It was never really quite that bad — but then again, we did have one of the few general strikes ever to take root in the US.
Yes please.
And can we also amend the constitution so that the new president takes office on November 5?
Not the greatest job, but here’s the link to my first contribution to YesWeCarve.com
when King County, Washington sends out its absentee ballots.
And then I’m going to take three days off at the beginning of the first full week in November. The week before that I’m heading over to Costco to by the big economy size bag of Schadenfreude so there’ll be lots of it for election night and the day after.
By then, the price of Shadenfreud should drop like the price of oil; even then, hope you can afford it. 🙂
I think there’ll be plenty to go around. 🙂
my own addition to the newest internet tradition:
Holy chronology, Batman!
There’s something of a meme going on at FriendFeed with these. I just shared this over there.
Watching Rachel Maddow last night (Thursday show) and her segment on those so-called angry town “hollers.” Well, wasn’t that Armstrong Williams who asked McPa to please, please bring up Rev. Wright at next debate? As Rachel says, “please talk me down.” Anyone have footage? I so believe my eyes & ears.