A few days before the election, DailyKos ran a feature where they asked participants to guess the outcome of the election. Here are mine:
The House and Senate races haven’t settled yet (and I should add, for the Senate I wasn’t counting Lieberman or Sanders). But as of today (November 19, 2008) here’s the score:
How did you do?
The percentages aren’t final yet, but it looks like it’s a six-point spread with Obama beating McCain 52% to 46%. In terms of delegate count the current count stands at 349-163. If current trends hold, MO’s 11 delegates will go to McCain and NC’s 15 will go to Obama, for a total of 364-174 (for the record, on the DailyKos vote prediction contest, I pulled out of my ass predicted 365-173 — so suck on that Nostradamus!)
In the next few days, the talk will inevitably go to the nebulous concept of mandate. The Republicans, naturally, will be grasping at anything that can bring that into question (never mind the fact that Bush claimed one after beating Kerry by a mere 51%-48%). Since it’s hard to argue with the reality of population and delegate counts, we are certain to hear arbitrary metrics like the proportion of red vs. blue states (there are unconfirmed reports that Tom Brokaw was taking that one out for a spin this morning). This might have probably held more water four years ago:
But even that’s turned weak this time around:
Nevertheless, you can bet that the total land-mass argument will be trotted out, to which we submit this counterpoint:
As of this writing the Democrats have a clear 54-seat majority in the Senate with 4 seats as-yet undecided (and two sorta independents). There has been a lot of talk about the fillibuster-proof 60 seat magic number, but this ignores the fact that reaching sixty (and not, say, 61) means that a single Democratic senator can wield an awful lot of power over all others, merely by threatening not to show up to break a fillibuster.
So be careful what you wish for.
The four elections still in question are Alaska, Georgia, Minnesota, and Oregon. In Alaska, Ted Stevens may very well be forced to resign even if he does win so the whole thing will go to a special election. Georgia may end up going to a runoff vote, and Oregon and Minnesota will probably have to go through a recount. In the unlikely scenario that the Dems end up taking all these four, they’ll still be short two votes.
Vermont’s Bernie Sanders is technically an independent, but in reality, he’s even farther to the left than most Democrats, so you can effectively put him in the Dem column. So that’s 59. The pivotal 60th vote, once again, would then go to — you ready for it — Joe Lieberman.
So be careful what you wish for.
Somewhere along the night, it looks like Senate leadership looked at the tea-leaves and decided given where those four races stood, that the chances of reaching 60 are slim. So it’s with great delight that we read this morning that Harry Reid is going to meet with Lieberman this week — hopefully to drop-kick him out of the Democratic Caucus and relegate him to the scrap-heap of backbench irrelevancy where he belongs.
Given that returning GOP minority leader Mitch McConnell was responsible for so much of the fillibuster action this last session and that many of the GOP seats lost were moderates, we can expect a great deal of legislative gridlock.
No big surprises there. But at least, we won’t be seeing the whole Senate being held hostage again by a single petulant (Lieberman) back-stabbing (Lieberman) self-involved (Lieberman) Senator, which is a Good Thing.
Beware the kiss of death.
You have to give Liddy Dole credit for being a team player. As she prepares to lose her Senate seat next Tuesday, she’s bravely sacrificing herself to make John McCain look like he’s running a clean and respectful campaign by comparison.
Having cut a desperate ad implying that Kay Hagan, her Democratic opponent in North Carolina, had made some sort of secret deal with atheists (to do… well, God only knows what, you might say) — and having been blasted by Hagan’s outraged response — Dole decided to return to the scene of the crime with another ad essentially restating the initial innuendo (video above, via TPM).
Now, it’s entirely possible that Dole’s campaign knows the intelligence level of the voters it’s targeting better than I do, but I find it hard to believe that even famously stupid low-information undecided voters are going to put any stock in the over-the-top hysteria of these ads. I think Matt Yglesias‘ words of a few days ago are applicable here:
Someone ought to tell these people, though, that there’s some kind of baseline level of plausibility that your attacks need to reach if you want them to be effective. You can say a candidate’s health care plan will cost your family money, you can’t say that a candidate’s health care plan involves chopping up babies and serving them as medicine.
There’s still a couple days left for some frantic, soon-to-be-unemployed Republican to prove Matt wrong, though.
(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)
2000:
2008:
Obama rally in St. Louis (2008):
Kerry rally in Oregon (2004):
Remember, it ain’t over till it’s over.
Found on Flickr (larger size):
