WaPo – Palin’s Red Menace

Richard Cohen writes in the Washington Post today about the similarities between Sarah Palin and Joe McCarthy. Cohen touches on the frequent and casual lying, the demagoguery and the constant demeaning of knowledge. It’s a comparison that occurred to me while reading Robert Caro’s excellent third volume on LBJ, which has a couple of chapters on Joe McCarthy.

Why Obama-Biden will win, and win HUGE (390).

I’ve heard way too much worrying than warranted from friends and colleagues who lean the right way but fear the election will be lost due to hidden racism or just plain stolen. Well here’s why we’ll win and win HUGE (390 electoral votes)!

Here’s why we’ll win (big picture):

  • The mood in the country is to throw the rascals (republicans) out.
  • The republicans made a huge mistake forcing McCain hard right, pairing him with Rove’s underlings, and making him pick Palin. Not to mention changing the message every other day. I feel sorry for McCain, especially since I supported him in 2000, he didn’t deserve this.
  • The Obama campaign is very enthusiastic and extremely well-run. I volunteered for Kerry and that was amateur hour compared to this one.
  • The polls are underestimating two things, young voter turnout (since many pollsters don’t call cellphones) and many of them are using 2004 stats to figure out how many newly registered voters will vote. Newly registered voters are extremely motivated this year, with high percentages having voted early.
  • The army of lawyers and volunteers that has been dispatched by the campaign will protect voters from disenfranchisement.

A few words about how I get to 390:

  • The media’s claimed Pennsylvania, Virginia, Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada are battlegrounds to look fair. Anyone who’s looked closely at the polls knows Obama will win big here.
  • Florida and North Carolina will break for Obama, the early voting seems to confirm that, people in Florida are worried abou the bad housing bubble there and their investments, Obama is much clearer on these issues.
  • I think Ohio and West Virginia will break for Obama, economics trumps everything else. Obama and McCain both like clean coal, Fox fails!
  • In Missouri folks will vote with their better selves in mind, and vote against the divisiveness of the McCain-Palin campaign.
  • Georgia has seen record early-voting, and record African-American turnout. This will be a surprise and good riddance to Chambliss who ran those despicable ads against Max Cleland.
  • Montana voted for Bill Clinton and will come home. Go Tester! Go Schweitzer!
  • North Dakota, just to round things out. They’re too close to Canada not to have the good sense to vote for Obama-Biden!

Oh and hey Lou. Here’s why we’ll win Montana