Minority rules

Karl Rove wanted a permanent Republican majority. How passé!

Republicans have long known how to cripple the Senate with a minority of votes, exploiting the filibuster in complete departure from tradition and custom. They've taken a tool of respect and politesse and rendered it as a pillory on the Capitol lawn for ideas they don't like - that is, most of them.

Republicans have figured out how to win the House of Representatives without winning a majority of votes.

The report credits gerrymandered maps in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin with allowing Republicans to overcome a 1.1 million popular-vote deficit. In Ohio, for instance, Republicans won 12 out of 16 House races “despite voters casting only 52 percent of their vote for Republican congressional candidates.” The situation was even more egregious to the north. “Michiganders cast over 240,000 more votes for Democratic congressional candidates than Republicans, but still elected a 9-5 Republican delegation to Congress.”

Republicans are now working to exploit their successful 2010 gerrymandering in the 2016 Presidential election:

Earlier this week, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus endorsed a Republican plan to rig the next presidential election to make it nearly impossible for the Democratic candidate to win the White House, no matter who the American people vote for. The election-rigging plan, which would allocate electoral votes by congressional district rather than by states as a whole in a handful of states that consistently vote for Democratic presidential candidates, would have allowed Mitt Romney to narrowly win the Electoral College last November despite losing the popular vote by nearly four points.

If you think the GOP won't try their damnedest to make this happen, despite the obvious likelihood of perennial "victories" by the minority of voters over the majority, you really haven't been paying attention. Were you living in an alternate universe with President Gore?

What do Republicans mean when they tell us we live in a republic, not a democracy? Republicanz rool! Democrats have to be beaten by any means necessary.

Now, about impeachment of President Obama for the completely ordinary act of issuing Executive Orders...

Pretending

Yet another case of the so-called liberal media bending over backward to pretend that conservatives have a valid argument:

[O]rganizers are working to get individual states to join a compact changing the way they select their own electoral votes — an idea that was first floated several years ago based on the conviction that the Constitution gives states the right to determine how their own electors are chosen. [emphasis added]

Reporter Stephanie Ebbert is unwilling to make note of the plain language of the Constitution (Art. II, section 1):

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.

The unwillingness to state simple, incontrovertible facts if conservatives dislike those facts is a maddening feature of our senescent big media and an existential threat to our nation.

A tisket a tasket

... a red and blue Nebraska, where the second Congressional district is poised to give its electoral vote to Obama!

(The New York Times describes the EV allocation that Nebraska uses, though inaccurately. Nebraska, like Maine, gives its two Senatorial EVs to the statewide winner and the votes of each of its Congressional districts to the winner in each district. The word proportional doesn't begin to show that.)

What I liked best from the story:

“You can either get instant results or quality results,” [Douglas County’s elections commissioner, Dave Phipps] said this week. “We’re going with quality every time.”

Sounds like a Democrat, but he's not. Maybe there's hope for the Republicans yet.

Seductive prognostication

After the polls closed on Tuesday, a friend and local legislative candidate called me to get the results from my town. I didn't have them yet, but I told her my guess: Narrow loss in one precinct and slightly larger win in the other, adding up to a narrow win for her here.

Fifteen minutes later, I had unofficial results, and I had been spot on. What a rush to have my finger on the pulse! (Or is that my pulse noticing when I'm given the finger?)

Predicting the Electoral College, I had the benefit of reams of polling, well explicated in many places, especially at fivethirtyeight.com. Buoyed by Nate Silver's confidence there, I put my marker down at 353-185. Of course, it is true that I suffered for days after with flopsweat and fear of dark deeds. It's also true that I titled my prediction "Wild-ass guess."

True, I'm proud that, with Missouri still out, the only state I missed was Indiana going for Obama. If Mizzou eventually votes for McCain, I'll be 50 of 51, though anyone who knows the word 'predict' should be able to call D.C. for the Democrat well in advance. In fact, let me be the first to declare that Obama wins D.C. in 2012.

It feels great to be right with so little effort, and that, I think, is the attraction. It's why big media spends so much time gazing into crystal balls instead of reporting actual events which have already happened. Not only do they spend time predicting and outlining what a prediction will mean when it comes true, they also argue about each other's predictions, as if they could settle the question inside the half hour.

Looking into the future is a mook's game. Despite movies like Déjà Vu and Minority Report, it's not possible to know what's going to happen for sure. We'd be much better served by the media if they would concentrate on what is instead of what might be tomorrow.

Wild-ass guess

Guessing the number of electoral votes in the coming election is like guessing the number of jelly beans in a big glass jar at the county fair. Televised pundits do it in self-serious tones that suggest they get paid waaay too much. Bloggers have a lot more fun with guessing, for instance, this contest (now closed) at KnoxViews.

Since I was slipping in my own silly guess at the last minute, I was out of time to try to figure an advantageous guess in the contest, and I just said what I thought. Using the CNN electoral map calculator, here are the states and how I called them:


That's 353 for Obama and 185 for McCain. I awarded Obama all the big toss-ups - Florida (27), Ohio (20), and North Carolina (15), but I just couldn't see him taking Indiana (11) or Missouri (11) even though he may, and North Dakota (3) - are you kidding me? Even if McCain takes all six of these, he loses unless he turns around Pennsylvania (21) and another state.

The last is no doubt why Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com is so optimistic:


The mode of his simulations is about 380! This is so optimistic it scares the hell out of me.

I only realized this morning that my Obama total of 353 is one of Silver's model's most likely outcomes.

In any case, this looks like an election that's not close enough to even try to steal.

Forty percent solution

Why would the RNC fight to hold traditionally Republican states if they think McCain is still going to lose? What difference does it make if Obama takes 370 electoral votes or "only" 320?

If you fail to hold your base, you're less viable - or not viable at all - in the next election. The RNC is looking forward to 2012. McCain may be burnt flesh (in the electoral sense), but the RNC still wants to preserve Sarah Palin and the rest of its potential candidates by this triage of resources.

It also doesn't want its voters to get into the habit of staying home or voting for Democrats.

Update (10/17): More tacit surrender:

After quick forays to the traditional battlegrounds Thursday, McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin headed south to states President Bush carried handily in 2004 and ones that haven't voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in more than four decades.

Then there's this:

According to CNN's latest analysis of the electoral map, only six states are up for grabs (Nevada, Colorado, Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina and Florida) and they were all won by President Bush in 2004. That means even if McCain were to go 6-for-6 in the current tossup states, he would still fall short of the 270 electoral votes needed to capture the White House.

Shut up and go away

No, not you Hill. Your husband.

I'm not one of the majority of Democrats who want Hillary as VP. I have to admit my opposition is not reasoned; it's instinctive (what we call it when we choose by gut). I'm ready for someone new. I'm tired of Bill and his perpetual media circus (even though it's not all his fault).

Jennifer Granholm would be perfect. Would Canada cede her birthplace, Vancouver, to allow it? They'd have to do it retroactively.

Nah, still not Constitutional, though I'm sure the Republicans would consider it. After all, they ran two Texans in the last two elections, despite the Electoral College rules about that.