Nate Silver says we have a 16% chance of holding the House of Representatives and will most likely lose 53 seats. How do you feel about that? How do you feel about this? Forget Olbermann’s commentary. Just focus on his accumulation of quotes and what it means for the country. Then compare it to what went on today on The Mall. What is going to happen on Tuesday, as will only become clear in retrospect, is the complete repudiation of everything Stewart stands for and everything those ralliers believe in.
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.
Boo:
I’ll wait to gnash teeth and stuff till the results come in on Tuesday. Do people want to punish Democrats? Or is it anti-incumbent? Can Manan Trivedi really win? Has anyone polled the race, especially since Trivedi has enough money to run TV ads, which I’ve seen a few times? Are polls under-counting Democrats? I’ll wait to see how many seats we lose, and where. Will we take back “Dollar” Bill Jefferson’s old seat in the House? HI-01?
IL-10 – Kirk’s seat that he is abandoning. HI-01. A couple in NY.
We are already discounting seats that may well be in play. VA-05 is one – Periello is being more competitive than I believed possible.
Plus there are weird weird things in polling. In one poll quoted on TPM, Josh pointed out that a poll at 13% 18-39.
Do you believe that the electorate has 13% of all persons from 18-39? I sure don’t.
There’s a lot of shit out there, and the Rasmussen fuckheads have perverted the polling process in fundamental ways.
I still believe that we are going to do better than expected because:
The key, of course, is all of us getting involved in GOTV so that we can turn the registered voters and cell phone only users into actual voters.
http://www.winningprogressive.org/turn-off-your-computer-%e2%80%93-and-get-out-the-vote-for-the-demo
crats
I agree with you completely as far as Democratic voters are concerned. Republican voters are similar. We’ve got a better ground game so we’ll beat them. No problem there.
BUT… The “Independent” crowd is a strange, less involved crowd. They aren’t die-hard Yankee or Red Sox fans. They just want to know that they picked the winner so they can feel good about themselves. For the last month or two, we have heard nothing from the pundits but that the Dems are gonna get stomped HARD by the Republicans, even though they had VERY little evidence to go on. The media may have created a self-fulfilling prophecy, though. The “Independents” know that if they want to be on the winning side and justify wearing the winning team’s cap for the rest of the year, they’re gonna have to go with those Republicans… unless they get some other stimuli from the Dems between now and voting day that there’s a chance the Dems wight win this thing. Then they might just gamble in us.
That is what we have to overcome right now.
I hope you’re right. But we’re going to have to find ways for Independents to reject the Republicans in individual races over the next couple of days if we are going to win this thing.
I agree that the independents are a wild card here. Hopefully, they will recognize how far off the rails most GOP candidates are and swing to the Dems once they get to the voting booth.
If you know any undecided voters, or Dems who aren’t sure if they are going to vote, feel free to forward my closing argument for voting Democratic to them.
http://www.winningprogressive.org/the-closing-argument-in-support-of-voting-democratic-on-november-2
I’m shaken tonight. My Sister in Law forgot to take me off her mailing list after she sent me pictures of my nephews. It was signs from the D’ice cocktail lounge? Looks like a real nice place (not). Racist mean and stupid. I’ll spare you. I sent back:
“No more hate signs for me Aunt __ . Your too sweet for that. Love, Uncle Jeff
I knew she was a prolife, christian, gun lover but sheesh. Evidently caring ends at birth. Bad times breed hate I guess. I’m feeling very sad right now.
I received a poisonous piece of crap like that from my father last summer. It’s one thing to attribute destructive ignorance to any anonymous number, another thing to see it in a member of your own family.
I went through a miniature version of the five stages of grief because of it. Just a lousy time. Finally I came to feel compassion for his suffering, because that place of hatred & fear is not a nice place to be. That’s all.
It does shock you. Good grief.
A request. Don’t touch the booze before Tuesday night.
Too late. š
Here:
Jon Stewart…as talented as he may be in a comic sense, and I consider him Johnny Carson’s equal on that level (No small praise, because Carson was a comic genius.) …Olbermann and the rest of them.
Lightweights.
Sorry.
Snark does not play well in truly hard times.
Sorry.
Gotta bear down when people are afraid.
Sorry.
That’s just the way it is.
Heavy up or die.
So it goes.
AG
You don’t get it. Being real and serious about anyhing is not ‘cool’. Does anyone remember that word anymore?
What is “being real and serious” in your mind, Quentin? Are you smart enough to hear the “real and serious” stuff that is going on behind the work of many of the MSNBC and Comedy Channel/HBO/Saturday Night Live comic efforts. I am and I guess that you are too. But…how many of us are smart enough to understand the humor, and how badly are we outnumbered by the clop-clomp-clomping, mainsteam TV watching white public of this country?
5 to 1?
10 to 1?
100 to 1?
Something like that, I fear.
I do not have the time to dig out the numbers, but if you consider MSNBC, CNN and Fox News to be the left, middle and right of cable news, take a look at a picture of where the American people are presently headed politically based on their news spin preferences.
Now you and I know that O’Reilly calling the MSNBC people “gutternsipes” is equivaent to a sewer rat complaining about pigeon hygeine, but stilll…what percentage of the population has he smarts to know that?
A small one, I am guessing…a guess based on extensive personal observation as I travel through the country by road, train and air.
The real majority? They see weak, elitist assholes…many of them of questionable sexuality… mocking the long and noble traditions of this great slave state.
So it goes.
Hunker down.
It’s a hard right rein going to come to the bit and bridle of this country.
Watch.
AG
You evidently know what Mae West was talking about. So why not openly accept the reality and the ernestness of this great American lady who took nothing seriously in public but in private had other priorities. A very real and serious lady.
Heading out the door this morning for some GOTV here in NKY.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
Good luck on that. i cannot believe that Paul will win. He is such a toad.
Well, NKY is still NOBAMA country. Lot of Rand Paul and Geoff Davis signs as well as local district judge and other races.
Only a few John Waltz signs. No Conway signs at all. Boone and Kenton Counties are rough for the D’s.
Did some phone banking too for OFA. Got some good responses, some folks said they were going to vote for sure on Tuesday. John Waltz got some good buzz for being a veteran.
Jack Conway on the other hand, a lot of folks around here were turned off by the Aqua Buddha ad. On the other hand, had people tell me they were going to vote Paul until the headstomp happened.
It’s going to be close.
I am going to go D-2-D this afternoon for Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin and the Democrats in SD.
Why DONT YOU DO THE SAME?
It’s not that hard – in fact, it’s pretty easy. In SD, we concentrate on Democrats. We don’t give expensive door hangers to republicans. So, when you go, you talk to Democrats, and you get out their votes. We are not convincing anyone of anything right now – people have made up their minds.
GOTV!!!
The true insanity is that the unconscious objectors to the Obama presidency are angry because they choose to believe the lies. All that anger ginned up and aimed at the lies not the reality on the ground.
On the Rachel Maddow show when she was in Alaska, the few minutes she was able to have outside Miller’s campaign and asking supporters why they supported Miller was simply heartstopping. There wasn’t a shared fact amongst them, simply fear based on nothing more than malinformation.
And if Sharon Angle can’t read a policy paper what makes her supporters think she’ll find it necessary to read an actual Bill?
The press is bored with democracy and its processes. They have tried hard to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, whether out of honest support for the far right, the desire to create an “interesting” story, or a set of journalistic practices which leave the media unable to distinguish insanity from sanity. When Anita Dunn tried to point out that Fox wasn’t really news, all of the other “responsible” media shouted that it was, and the White House put Dunn back in her box.
Mid-term elections are base elections. The President and the Senate immediately ran to the center and have continued doing so. Whether Obama actually campaigned as the “progressive” candidate or not, that is how he was perceived by the vast majority of young people and progressives who voted and worked for him. But somehow, we have managed to maneuver ourselves into being the party of the big banks in public perception while the big banks in fact are supporting the other side. Republicans know how to dog whistle to their base and appeal to other voters too. We know how to piss off our base without appealing to other voters.
From the SF Bay Area things always look a little different, but part of the doom and gloom of Democratic chances is because of bad media behavior. I saw an AP article citing all the gains the Repubs would get, including lots of governorships. Among them was the California governorship. Billionaire Meg Whitman poured $160 billion of her own money into her campaign.
By now, after seeing her ugly mug on every commercial break, everyone hates Whitman. She went from tied with Jerry Brown to ten points back. She’s become the butt of jokes.
Likewise, Carly Fiorina is falling behind Boxer. Even races down the ticket look good for the Dems. After years of Schwarzeneggar Californians are looking for change, but not back to the stone age.
I’m guessing that a majority of Californians won’t be falling for the likes of a Rand Paul or Rich Iott, but I worry about a few in the congressional races.
Actually, these are my concerns:
I could go on. Tuesday is anger and fear against disillusionment.
It’s very odd that Nate has his latest column with a “magic number” for the GOP to win. I realize the opposite is true – that if they don’t achieve that then the Dems retain the House. Still, in the baseball world the “magic number” in September is counted for the team that is in first place to stay in first place. Since the Dems already control the House you would think that he would have presented it that way.
Where’s Mule Rider when you need him?