Month: November 2012

One last “prank” from Ole Mitt

by digby

Republicans have always insisted that Ronald Reagan wasn’t dogwhistling when he chose Philadelphia Mississippi (the site of the murders of three civil rights workers) to launch his 1980 campaign. And maybe he wasn’t. But you’d think that Republicans would be a little bit more conscious of echoes of his visit if that were true:

The state of Florida is embroiled in controversy because of incredibly long early voting lines and wrangling about how long the polls can be open.

In the midst of this crisis, Republican governor Rick Scott made time to campaign alongside GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney in Sanford, Fla., the town where unarmed African-American teenager Trayvon Martin was killed earlier this year.

“We need every single vote in Florida,” Romney told the crowd in Sanford today. “We can begin a better tomorrow, tomorrow.”

Mitt. A class act to the very end.

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Elections in Idiocracy


by digby

If you want to see why our electoral system is both a laughing stock and a travesty, take a look at this, courtesy Huffington Post‘s live update page:

That’s a real sign outside a Pittsburgh polling place. Philadephia is reportedly a mess for a dozen different reasons.

It’s idiotic. If they don’t need the photo ID, the only reason to ask for it is to slow down the process.

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Money well spent?

by digby

Normally one would assume that hard-headed realistic businessmen would do a post-mortem and ask where all that money went and whether it was worth it.

Unfortunately, we are talking about vastly wealthy Randian nincompoops who are so deluded they truly believe Obama is a socialist because he called one of the a fat cat once — who have nonetheless made so much cash in the last four years that this is tip money to them.

This is what we’re talking about:

The Koch brothers have 50 Billion. Do you think they miss a hundred million or so?

Moreover, they are building infrastructure, something which they disdain when the government does it but which they highly value for their own personal ends. It’s a very cheap investment. I wouldn’t expect them to shift gears any time soon.

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Tonight’s drinking schedule

by digby

Helpful notes from the AP:

Here’s a timetable for armchair election watchers on how the night will unfold, based on what time the last polls close in each state. All times are EST.

—7 p.m.: Polls close in six states but all eyes will be on Virginia, the first of the battleground states to begin reporting results. If either candidate is comfortably ahead in Virginia, with 13 electoral votes, that could be a leading indicator of which way the night is going.

Virginia typically has been fairly fast at counting ballots. But there’s a new voter ID law in the state that could complicate things this year. Voters who don’t bring identification to the polls still can have their ballots counted if they produce ID by Friday. If the race in Virginia is super tight, it could come down to those provisional ballots. On Election Night, no one will even know how many of them are out there.

Virginia is especially important for Romney. In 2008, Obama became the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry Virginia since 1964. Keep an eye on turnout in northern Virginia’s Democratic strongholds for an early idea of which way the state will go.

—7:30 p.m.: Polls close in three states, including all-important Ohio (18 electoral votes) and competitive North Carolina (15).

If Ohio is particularly close, and polls suggest it might be, there’s a chance the outcome there won’t be known until after Election Day, and the presidency could hinge on it. In the last several elections, between 2 percent and 3 percent of the state’s votes came from provisional ballots, which aren’t counted until later. In 2004, after a long, tense night counting votes, the presidential race wasn’t decided until 11 a.m. the next day, when Democrat John Kerry called President George Bush to concede Ohio and the presidency.

Romney desperately needs Ohio; no Republican has won the presidency without it. Without Ohio, Romney would need victories in nearly all the remaining up-for-grabs states and he’d have to pick off key states now leaning Obama’s way, such as Wisconsin and Iowa. Obama has more work-arounds than Romney if he can’t claim Ohio.

In North Carolina, the most conservative of the hotly contested states, Romney appeared to have the late edge in polling. Obama, who narrowly won the state in 2008, has paid less attention to it recently. An Obama victory there could point to broader troubles for Romney.

—8 p.m.: More pieces of the puzzle will start falling into place as polls close in the District of Columbia and 16 states, including battlegrounds Florida (29) and New Hampshire (four).

Democratic-leaning parts of Florida tend to be the last places to report, so be careful about jumping to a conclusion if Romney looks strong early on. Most of the polls in Florida close at 7 p.m. Eastern, so by 8 p.m. Eastern, when the last polls close, results will start to roll out quickly. But fully 4.5 percent of votes in Florida weren’t counted on election night in 2008, so if things are tight, no one’s going to be hasty about declaring a victor in the state. Especially after the 2000 fiasco in which the winner in Florida, and thus the presidency, wasn’t determined for more than a month. If you want to get really granular, Hillsborough County, home to Tampa, is widely considered a bellwether for the state.

Tiny New Hampshire is another competitive state to watch closely.

Also keep watch on Pennsylvania for any signs of a Romney surprise. The state has long been considered safe for Obama, but Republicans started running ads there in the final week of the campaign and the GOP ticket was campaigning there Sunday. No Republican presidential candidate has carried the state in nearly a quarter century.

—8:30 p.m.: Polls close in Arkansas (six), where Romney is comfortably ahead in surveys.

—9 p.m.: Polls close in 14 states, including battlegrounds Colorado (nine) and Wisconsin (10). Democrats have carried Wisconsin for six straight presidential elections and Obama had the edge in polling going in, so a flip here would be especially noteworthy.

Colorado, where almost 80 percent of voters cast early ballots, could be a straggler because it’s so close. Historically, as much as 10 percent of the state’s vote doesn’t get counted on election night, and those ballots could be decisive in a close race.

Information from exit polls could help flesh out the Colorado picture: Young professionals and Hispanic voters were central to Obama’s victory there in 2008, but the sluggish economy has hurt his standing.

Two more to watch: Minnesota and Michigan. The states long have been considered safe for Obama, but the Republicans made late moves there.

— 10 p.m.: Polls close in four states, including the last of the battlegrounds, Iowa (six) and Nevada (six).

Iowa’s been leaning toward Obama, but watch how the vote breaks down geographically. Can Romney’s advantage in GOP-heavy western Iowa overcome Obama’s edge in eastern swing territory?

If Obama wins Ohio and Wisconsin, Romney would have to have help from the West, in places like Nevada and Colorado. Nevada, where two-thirds of the electorate votes early, has been moving Obama’s direction in recent weeks, powered by strength in huge labor and Hispanic voting blocs. A Romney incursion there would really mean something

—11 p.m.: Polls close in five western states, but most are foregone conclusions for Obama. He gets 78 electoral votes from California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington; Romney gets four from Idaho.

— 1 a.m. Wednesday: The last of the polls close, in Alaska. Romney gets three electoral votes. Will many people still be up?

Political junkies could well be waiting to see how things play out in one or more battleground states.

It would be really cool if they didn’t call the race before the polls close on the west coast. We may not be Real Americans out here, but e do have some important business to take care of for tens of millions of people.

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Their cheatin’ hearts: True the Vote

by digby

Here’s just one little story about attempted vote suppressors being hoist on their own petard:

A Houston-based group that wanted to monitor 30 Franklin County polling places for potential voter fraud was thwarted yesterday by the county elections board.

True the Vote – whose Ohio branch is called the Voter Integrity Project – was denied status as official observers because most of the candidates who supported the organization’s effort withdrew their backing. State law allows groups of at least five candidates to assign poll observers, and the group originally had obtained signatures from a bipartisan group of six candidates for county office.

“The Franklin County Board of Elections did not allow Election Day polling location observer appointments filed by the True the Vote group,” said board spokesman Ben Pisctelli in a statement. “The appointments were not properly filed and our voting location managers were instructed not to honor any appointment on behalf of the True the Vote group.”

There were charges yesterday that the candidates’ names had either been falsified or merely copied on forms requesting observer status for the True the Vote at several Franklin County polling places. Many are in predominantly African American neighborhoods.

The irony of them cheating in order to monitor election fraud is just too delicious.

Elections Director William A. Anthony Jr. said the group may be investigated for possibly falsifying documents after today’s election. The forms themselves warn that elections falsification is a fifth-degree felony…

One person told the elections board that she attended True the Vote training sessions and the observers were instructed to use cameras to intimidate voters when they enter the polling place, record their names on tablet computers and send them to a central location, and attempt to stop questionably qualified voters before they could get to a voting machine.

Just a reminder that the entire party, from Romney on down, is counting on these “poll watchers” to alert their legal team to anything they deem suspicious.

But you have to admire True the Vote’s chutzpah:

“These allegations by the Ohio Democratic Party are dangerous and offensive,” True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht said in a statement. “The facts are simple: no citizen volunteer — including…anyone else trained by True the Vote — took any action that was either illegal or unethical, particularly as it pertains to the placement of poll watchers.”

The statement added: “This is a final, desperate attempt to deny citizens their right to observe elections. The Ohio Democratic Party has projected paranoia on an international scale by promoting the idea that concerned citizens would dare observe elections to ensure a fair process. If the Ohio Democratic Party thinks True the Vote-trained poll watchers are legion, wait until it meets our lawyers.”

I know you are but what am I?

Oh, and I’m sure this will shock you, but True the Vote seems to be spending at least 80% of its time observing in African-American and Hispanic precincts:

A partial list of precincts targeted by a Pittsburgh Tea Party group working on behalf of the Republican Party shows that nearly 80 percent of the voters in those precincts are African-American, compared to 13 percent countywide, according to civil rights and union groups who on Monday called on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate.

An Ohio political blog is reporting that forms submitted to election officials by Tea Party spin-off group True the Vote in Franklin County — which includes Columbus — show poll watchers heading to 28 precincts, where most voters are African-American. Overall, the county electorate is 20 percent African-American.

“We’ve been concerned from the beginning that the efforts of True the Vote and aligned groups were going to be targeted largely in communities of color,” said Eric Marshall, manager of legal mobilization for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “We’ve seen in the past where these kinds of tactics can lead to intimidation and harassment of voters.”

A potentially even greater concern now is that the groups will use the voter challenge process “for the express purpose of creating lines and confusion,” Marshall said.

Prohibitively long lines, particularly where Democrats are in the majority, are a net plus for Republicans; extraordinarily long lines for early voting in South Florida resulted from Republican Gov. Rick Scott’s rollback of early voting days there.

Update II: I think we know why Romney has been putting such aseemingly quixotic effort into Pennsylvania:

An Allegheny County judge on Tuesday issued an order to halt electioneering outside a polling location in Homestead.

County officials received a complaint shortly before 10 a.m. Tuesday that Republicans outside a polling location on Maple Street in Homestead were stopping people outside the polls and asking for identification.

The order states: “Individuals outside the polls are prohibited from questioning, obstructing, interrogating or asking about any form of identification and/demanding any form of identification from any prospective voter.”

Of course, what legal is also almost unbearably stupid:

Poll watchers will ask for photo ID, but voters need not show identification for this year’s election.

They can ask, but voters have to know that they must tell them to go to hell.

Update III: Fergawdsakes

Here’s the thing: it’s an African American precinct. Are they suggesting that this black panther is intimidating black Romney voters? I don’t think that’s a serious problem.  Every last black Romney voter either works for the Republican Party or Fox News so it’s highly unlikely they’re voting in this precinct.

No, for Fox’s charges to make sense, these “black panthers” must be Romney supporters. Just sayin’.
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Election Day Gossip: tainting the victory, faithless electors and more

by digby

Take the conversation related at the beginning of this article with a grain of salt since it’s a “my sister’s best friend’s brother told me” sort of thing, but I think it’s a fair representation of the way the conservatives are gaming out their strategy in case it’s close and Obama wins the electoral college but not the popular vote:

Romney has began airing commercials and ramped up campaigning in states not considered battlegrounds such as Pennsylvania and Oregon. Some political observers say this is being done to gather stray undecided voters in these states and increase the chance and margin of a popular-vote victory.

There is also speculation that Romney may apply a strategy reportedly considered by George W. Bush’s campaign in 2000 if he lost the electoral vote to Vice President Al Gore, but won the popular vote–the opposite of what actually happened in the election.

Romney may be preparing a set of talking points that the Electoral College is essentially unfair and back this argument with a massive Fox News and talk-radio blitz that would fuel doubt in the legitimacy of an Obama win… In fact, Bush’s campaign advisers in 2000 contemplated creating a “Democrats for Democracy” group to make this point, if necessary.

I remember all that talk in 2000. It was quite open (not that they showed even the slightest compunction about taking the opposite tack when they ended up fighting for an electoral college win while Gore clearly had won the popular vote.) They were also plotting to turn some “faithless electors”:

In 158 instances, electors have cast their votes for President or Vice President in a manner different from that prescribed by the legislature of the state they represented. Of those, 71 votes were changed because the original candidate died before the elector was able to cast a vote. Two votes were not cast at all when electors chose to abstain from casting their electoral vote for any candidate. The remaining 85 were changed by the elector’s personal interest, or perhaps by accident. Usually, the faithless electors act alone. An exception was the U.S. presidential election of 1836, in which 23 Virginia electors conspired to change their vote together.

I think that in close elections this talk always comes up. But with a professional propaganda apparatus at their disposal, I could see a serious attempt being made on bogus claims of vote fraud under the right circumstances.

Anyway, it’s highly unlikely that it will come to that. This is, by far, the more important strategy:

No incumbent president seeking a second term has ever won the electoral college and lost the popular vote. And a win in the electoral college for Barack Obama that is not accompanied by one in the popular vote could cast a shadow over the president and his ability to govern. Republicans have already been fussing about perceived voter fraud to this end, but a popular-vote victory for Romney will further support this cause.

“This is the point she was trying to make,” said the donor who declined to give to the PAC. “I don’t think they want to steal the election by saying ‘the popular vote should be counted instead of the electoral vote,’ I think they want to cut the nuts off a second term for Obama.”

I am one of those who sees little chance that the GOP will be chastened by this loss regardless of the numbers. But recalling that 20 years ago GOP House leadership standing on the floor declaring that Clinton was not their president at least partially because he’d won with only a plurality of the vote, I can easily see them rationalizing their obstruction in this way.

The Republicans are a very, very effective opposition Party.

Update: A National Review post called “Crush Them” has been making the rounds and it really is worth reading, if only because it so perfectly exemplifies the conservative belief that liberalism is fundamentally illegitimate.

Maybe I’m wrong and all the alleged wise men of the GOP will emerge from their underground bunkers and take the party back from the crazies and we can go back to the glory days of Tipnronnie and have ourselves one Grand Bargain after another. But I doubt it.

The fight will go on. And that’s ok. As long as people aren’t killing each other over it, we’ll get by.

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Too jaded to vote? Too cool to help? You’re full of it.

by David Atkins

There are 364 days of the year to argue about policy and lobby legislators. But today, all of that goes out the window. Grand Bargains, foreign policy errors and corporate policy are all important topics of conversation and action tomorrow.

But today only one thing matters: the vote. Unless you happen to be one of the deluded few who believe that there is no difference between Romney and Obama, you know that preventing a Republican takeover of the Presidency, the Congress, state and local governments is absolutely crucial. We can work on backsliders in our own fold, but there’s almost nothing we can do to influence the actions of the fevered Right.

So please, even if you haven’t taken any direct action for the election until now, take the time to vote and help get out the vote. If you would like to help the President, here’s how you can do something to help no matter which state you live in.

Don’t want to help the President? That’s more than OK. I haven’t done much for the President this year, either. My focus has been on keeping Tea Partiers out of Congress locally, electing a local climate change and progressive champion to Congress instead in one of America’s top tossup districts, making sure that California gets a 2/3 majority in the State Senate (remember that we were 2 votes shy of that for single-payer healthcare in the state), and keeping local city and county elections out of the hands of Republicans and conservadems in the pockets of big developers and oil interests. And then there’s the Millionaire’s tax, Proposition 30, which sits on a knife’s edge and determines whether we’ll suffer billions of cuts to schools; Proposition 32 which would strangle labor unions in California if it passes; Proposition 34 to end the death penalty; Proposition 37 to label genetically modified foods; and much more.

And that’s all just in California alone. No one is so jaded so as to believe that none of those things matter enough to get involved or to vote just because they’re unhappy with some politician somewhere. If they say so, they’re full of BS.

Chances are that there is at least one important race having in your backyard. Look at your ballot. Check your local Democratic Party’s endorsements, and read up on the candidates and issues.

And please get involved to convince people and turn out the vote. It’s all that matters today.

Rulzizrules: Republicans truly believe that allowing people to vote is undemocratic

by digby

So, I’m seeing a lot of retweets of this line from David Frum on twitter, and I think, “right on.”

Here’s what doesn’t happen in other democracies: Politicians of one party do not set voting schedules to favor their side and harm the other.

Indeed. We should all want every citizen, regardless of party, to be able to cast a vote and have it counted.

Frum goes on to demonstrate just how heinously undemocratic our system really is:

Here’s a story from the 2000 election.

Excellent example. GOP Vote caging, purging of voter rolls, inconsistent counting rules, a partisan election apparatus run by the candidates brother ruling in favor of their own Party, a Partisan Supreme Court decision. You name it, it had it.

But wait: here’s the example he chooses:

Like many old cities, St. Louis has not invested in modern voting equipment. Voting delays are notorious. At the scheduled poll-closing time, voters were still lined up throughout the city. Al Gore’s campaign, desperate to win the state, asked a judge to extend voting for three more hours in the heavily Democratic city — but only in the city. A state judge agreed. Republicans appealed, the state judge was overruled, and the polls were closed after remaining open a total of 45 additional minutes beyond the legal closing time.

Republicans won Missouri’s 11 electoral votes by a margin of 78,786 out of the almost 2.4 million cast.

Ok, first of all, let’s just contemplate the bloody absurdity of Frum picking this as his example of political tampering with the vote at a time when the Republicans have made an industry out of vote suppression for the past decade.

Moreover, this isn’t a case of Democratic operatives rigging the system so the other side can’t vote fergawdsakes, something which is happening all over the country as we speak. This was about allowing people to vote. Is he truly so obtuse that he can’t see the difference? Because the city is poor (due to the fact that there are many low-income people who don’t have a lot of money to pay in taxes and the rich people, as usual, are selfish assholes who refuse to contribute) that means the citizens are just out of luck if they happen to be in long lines at closing time?

The point is that people should be able to vote. If the creaky, poverty stricken system isn’t capable of allowing everyone who is standing in line to cast a ballot before the arbitrary poll closing, it’s not their fault. Nobody should be punished for it by not being allowed to cast a legal vote if they got to their polling place before it closed. I honestly cannot understand how someone as smart as Frum can make this argument with a straight face.

But he does.

When local Democratic officials saw themselves disadvantaged by the existing rules, they appealed to a judge for special treatment for its (likely) voters — and only for those voters. (Good news: In Missouri, circuit judges are appointed by the governor and then confirmed in office by nonpartisan vote. In many states, however, judges are themselves elected in partisan elections.)

The other party demanded that the existing rules be upheld, and the case was litigated on the fly, ending in a weird compromise that only failed to become a national scandal because the events in Florida were so much more dramatic.

Yes, they were “dramatic” weren’t they? But no need to talk about that.

This example of politicians allegedly rigging the system to their own advantage is yet another “rulzisrulz” right wing strategy, which consistently holds that in this one case and this one case only, arbitrary bureaucratic regulations must be followed to the letter.

Honestly, the Democrats do suck in a million ways. But I honestly do not believe that they would go to court to oppose holding a crowded polling place open longer even if it might benefit the Republicans. I could be wrong about that, but since the Republicans tend to live either in cow country or wealthy suburbs, this is unlikely to be tested.

This is a truly shameful, shameful attitude and apparently it’s so entrenched in the Republican worldview that even semi-apostates like David Frum don’t even question the idea that taking away people’s ability to vote because they are poor or because they happen to be standing in line when a crowded polling station closes at an arbitrary time might just be a little bit undemocratic. They really are that far gone.

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Last pre-election hissy fit

by digby

I say last pre-election day hissy fit, rather than election hissy fit, because if this goes into overtime, you can expect full blown demonic possession on a minute by minute basis.

But for now, I’d guess this will be the last call for the smelling salts from the very delicate rightwingers whose fragile sensibilities have been repeatedly assaulted by the Animals in the Democratic Party during this campaign. I suppose it was inevitable that they would have to suffer one final insult so vile that they must retire to the fainting couch for the evening with a large bottle of Laudanum and a bowl of bonbons to console themselves:

Rapper Jay-Z while performing at an Obama campaign rally in Ohio Monday substituted the name “Mitt” for the word “b-tch” in the lyrics to his song “99 Problems.”

Before doing so, he told the crowd he didn’t get it vetted by the campaign

On Fox, the Lavyrle Spencer ladies quilting bee society was practically speaking in tongues from all that horrible testosterone in one place:

The humanity!

I wish I could say that this will all end when the election is over. But it won’t.

Update:  This is just sad:

(The Blaze) – New York Times best-selling author Brad Thor, based in Chicago, tells TheBlaze that the Obama campaign may be planning to preemptively announce victory in the presidential election based on early voting numbers in an attempt to “demoralize Mitt Romney supporters.”

Citing a “very solid source” in Chicago, Thor says the Obama campaign is looking to make it appear to voters that they have “this thing sewed up and are less than 24 hours to victory,” according to his source.

Meanwhile, team Obama will also urge voters to get out and vote so they can say they were part of the important 2012 election that resulted in a second term for Obama.

While Thor can’t reveal his source, he told TheBlaze multiple times that the source is very reliable.

The flip side of the coin, the author explained, is that the Obama campaign is counting on the mainstream media to drive home their narrative should they implement this strategy.

“They are so invested in Obama,” Thor said of the media. “I don’t see how any truth loving person could look to the mainstream media ever again. This election should be the final nail in the coffin with the mainstream media.”

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My Presidential Electoral Prediction

by David Atkins

Since it would be unfair to conservative analysts projecting a big Romney win without going out on a limb myself, here is my final prediction for posterity:

Obama 294, Romney 244. Obama wins popular vote by 1.2 percentage points. My one hedge is Colorado which I consider an ever-so-slight edge for Romney, but could easily land in the President’s lap, turning the margin into a 303-235 landslide.

You can play with your own map at here. Here’s mine:

As we go through the states I’ll begin geographically with the Southeast in Florida, and move northwest from there.

Florida (29 EVs): Romney. The TPM poll average is R+1.5. The early vote numbers are looking good for Obama, but the voter suppression efforts combined with residual damage among seniors over the lies about the Affordable Care Act stealing money from Medicare will likely be enough to keep Florida in Romney’s column.

North Carolina (15 EVs): Romney. The TPM poll average is R+1.2. North Carolina only tilted toward Obama by half a percentage point in 2008. While early vote efforts in North Carolina by Democratic and allied groups have been nothing short of heroic, it’s hard to imagine that the President can withstand the GOP push.

Virginia (13 EVs): Obama. The TPM average is O+1.8. Virginia perhaps more than any other heavily contested swing state has been surging in Obama’s direction in recent polls. The unemployment rate in Virginia is low by national standards, and north Virginia Democrats are among the best organized in the country. Virginia is going to be increasingly reliably Democratic and progressive in the new national realignment. Keep in mind that the loss of Virginia alone essentially dooms the Romney campaign. When the media call Virginia for Obama comes in around 10-11pm Eastern Time, that will be the guarantee of Obama’s electoral college victory nationwide.

Pennsylvania (20 EVs): Obama. The TPM poll average is O+4. Only the laughable outlier Republican pollster Susquehanna has shown Romney within real striking distance of Pennsylvania. So why is it part of the national conversation? Because Romney desperately needs it to be, and because Pennsylvania doesn’t vote early. Romney’s path to 270 is so fraught with peril everywhere else the he needs a miracle in PA to make up for losses elsewhere. But since Romney’s only real chance at 270 comes from systematic polling failure and a last-minute surge, the fact that Pennsylvania doesn’t vote early means that it’s actually more reasonable ground for hope than other states where early voting has made Romney’s needed comeback margin more difficult among the shrinking populations of Election Day voters remaining. Still, the Democratic lean of the state makes this is a very tough play for Romney.

New Hampshire (4 EVs): Obama. The TPM poll average for NH is O+2.8. New Hampshire is famously quirky and difficult to poll. As a Massachusetts Rockefeller Republican, Romney might have been poised to take the state. But Romney’s “severe conservative” move to the right in the primaries will have made New Hampshire difficult ground. Also, immigration to New Hampshire from surrounding areas has made the state more in line with its fellow New England progressive states in recent years.

Ohio (18 EVs): Obama. TPM poll average is O+3. The crown jewel of the national race, Ohio also has 1 in 8 citizens who work in the auto industry or ancillary jobs. Romney’s callous disregard for auto industry jobs and call for Detroit to go bankrupt, combined with Obama’s successful bailout of the American auto industry, is putting Ohio largely out of reach for the challenger and keeping that way. Romney’s desperate lies about Jeep sending jobs to China have been smacked down by the auto companies themselves, leading the press to get off their usual objectivity fence and excoriate the Romney campaign for its mendacity. Combine that with the Obama campaign’s vaunted Ohio ground game and labor anger against Governor Kasich, and you have the recipe for a narrow but clear Obama victory in the state. Romney has very few paths to victory that don’t include Ohio, obviously.

Michigan (16 EVs): Obama. With a TPM average of O+4.4, its liberal lean plus Romney’s abandonment of the auto industry not including car elevators means that Michigan has never really been credible as a swing state.

Wisconsin (10EVs): Obama. TPM poll average of O+5.3. Wisconsin shifted strongly toward Romney after his inclusion of Paul Ryan on the ticket, but it won’t be enough to matter. Conservatives have been given false hope in Wisconsin by Scott Walker’s wins, but it’s false hope in the presidential cycle. The exit polls during the Walker battles showed a large number of crossover Obama-Walker voters. The GOP had hoped that those Obama-Walker voters would become Romney-Walker voters. Not so. Public distrust of the labor movement in some areas and demographics doesn’t necessarily translate to acceptance of the GOP economic and social program. Wisconsin will stay comfortably in Obama’s column.

Iowa (6 EVs): Obama. TPM poll average of O+2.3. While Iowa’s predominantly white demographics makes it theoretically fertile territory for a Republican winning 60% of the white vote nationally, Iowa is the state that launched Obama’s presidential career and has shown a strong disinclination against abandoning him. The President doesn’t need Iowa’s votes to win, but he’ll get them by a narrow margin, anyway.

Colorado (9 EVs): Tie/Romney. TPM poll average of O+2.8. So if Obama has a nearly three-point average lead in Colorado, why give it to Romney? For a few reasons: 1) PPP has been considerably more bullish for Obama in Colorado than other pollsters, leading me to question its methodology there; 2) Romney’s early vote numbers in Colorado are looking impressive with a current Republican lead there (in other states Republicans are crowing somewhat amusingly about their improved early vote performance versus ’08. In Colorado, however, they’re actually ahead in the early vote); the state has been considerably more Romney-leaning than other western states with similar demographics, which leads me to think there’s something cultural happening there. If Obama does win, it will be due to undercounting of the Latino vote in the state combined with the potential pull of Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.

Nevada (6 EVs): Obama. With a TPM average of O+4.7, an incredibly powerful Nevada Democratic/labor GOTV machine, a sizable Latino population, and thousands of California volunteers flooding into the state, Nevada has never really been in serious play for Romney desperate its significant Mormon population.

Oregon (7 EVS): Obama. Despite certain Republican fever dreams, Oregon and its O+6 TPM poll average aren’t swinging anywhere.

And there you have it. If I’m wrong and Romney wins, I’ll happily eat my share of crow. I suspect I won’t be, and that it will be the George Wills and Peggy Noonans who will be embarrassed by Tuesday’s results.

Except that they won’t be embarrassed. The media organizations that pay their bills will still publish their drivel as if they had insight worth the paper they’re printed on.

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