As my esteemed and occasionally reviled editor has pointed out, now is not the time to get lazy. I know people here in Texas who are plowing through registering voters all weekend in advance of the cutoff on Monday. Everyone in every other state should be doing every little bit. If early voting has begun for you, encourage your registered friends to get it done. If you haven't gotten involved at the grassroots level, getting your next-door neighbor to register helps more than you may think. It's the only pyramid scheme I'm behind 100%.
I've stolen the current expected electoral map from Electoral Vote explicitly to prod people to not just sit back and see a day dawn with President of the Walking Dead and VP PageantSarah SquareGlasses having won out of your, mine or our complacency. Looking at this map and the current trends, it could be magnificently easy to sit back and forget to vote or register or be active.
If the above map holds, it's thanks to people who've registered not sitting back and assuming Obama-Biden doesn't need your vote. If the above map holds, the Democratic ticket could have the election called for them before results start coming in from the West Coast, taking for granted California is a solid Obama state. By my math, the states pencilled blue from the East Coast through the Central Time Zone at the moment (which include Florida, Ohio, and Virginia) come out to a little over 220 electoral votes, with California's solid 55 a lock putting Obama over 270 handily.
I want that to actually happen. If anything, the chance McCain will go down in a resounding defeat means a lot, like the fact we could see revisions to the Electoral College and FEC that make it easier for people to vote and feel like that vote matters in "the most Democratic country in the world." There are plenty of people in Texas and other "Solid Red" states who choose not to vote because the Electoral Map exists as it does. The Civil War is the ancient past now, and States' Rights are no longer an issue related to which state wins the pissing match and gets a more disproportionate influence on who leads the country.
John McCain is employing the people who W. used to smear him in 2000 and they still can't manage to proof web ads before they run. First the "McCain Wins Debate" banner ad running before the first Presidential Debate happened, and now the towering opinion of famed celebrity Famous Person has called the VP debate for Palin. He's decided to pull out of Michigan to his running mate's chagrin, and if the Obama grassroots ops can keep him on the run in Florida and Ohio, it's over.
Sarah Palin did a catch-up interview with some guy from Fox News where she slipped in the answers to the Couric questions she avoided a few days ago regarding papers she reads and Supreme Court cases. Even the Fox News guy called her on treating it like an open-book test. On top of that, she's about to have the Troopergate thing finally explode in her face when the investigation findings are made public, which she currently has people trying to block as "unconstitutional."
On top of that, the GOP is picking up on the fact that all the poor people out there who vote go colorblind and turn on their "protectors" when things finally crash down all around them.
Where was all of this sense-talking Mainstream Media in 2004?
The above-cited details are grains of sand compared to the precipitous downslide the McCain campaign has begun, but again, don't underestimate him with a month left to go under any circumstances.
To get back to laughs, here's a clip of Brian Williams, former SNL guest host, Daily Show regular and apparent anchor of the NBC Nightly News. It never been a secret to me that Brian is an ardent Democrat, having on a long-ago school trip read his letter to LBJ that's prominently featured here in Austin at his Presidential Library. He articulates "what happened" on Thursday night.