Click HERE to see his final post before the election results came in.

Here is his final prediction map

Here is the final results map.

The only state he missed was Indiana, which he predicted to be a slight loss for Obama.

Scott

Four smart people write on whats next for the conservative movement at Slate.

Jim Manzi
Douglas Kmiec
Ross Douthat
Christine Tood Whitman

Scott

AWESOME!!

HT Megan McCardle

My son, Brig, who has Down Syndrome turned 18 at the end of October. He has been so excited about voting, but we have had to work hard to explain to him that he can’t vote for both Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, who famously has a son with Down Syndrome and whose names rhymes with his. We talked to him about the advantages of each candidate and how the election process works, emphasizing the whole time the importance of voting and how it really is HIS DECISION. We have said to him that its totally OK if he votes differently from his parents.

So we arrive at the polls this morning right when they opened at 7:00 AM, waited about 35 minutes in line, (I had never before waited longer than about 2 minutes), and handed the pollworker our IDs. I explained the need to provide assistance and so I had to sign at a couple of other places on the register indicating I would be assisting the voter and then we both took our ballots into the same booth. Brig made his decisions and in several instances, such as for a judge or an amendment, he voted differently from me. Before he ticked the presidential vote, I said to him one last time, “Remember, you can vote however you want”. He never hesitated, his decision was already made. Here he is with his completed ballot.

ELECTION DAY, NOVEMBER, 1884

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,

‘Twould not be you, Niagara - nor you, ye limitless prairies - nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,

Nor you, Yosemite - nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyserloops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,

Nor Oregon’s white cones - nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes - nor Mississippi’s stream:

This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name - the still small voice vibrating -America’s choosing day,

(The heart of it not in the chosen - the act itself the main, the quadrennial choosing,)

The stretch of North and South arous’d - sea-board and inland - Texas to Maine - the Prairie States - Vermont, Virginia, California,

The final ballot-shower from East to West - the paradox and conflict,

The countless snow-flakes falling - (a swordless conflict,

Yet more than all Rome’s wars of old, or modern Napoleon’s): the peaceful choice of all,

Or good or ill humanity - welcoming the darker odds, the dross:

- Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify - while the heart pants, life glows:

These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,

Swell’d Washington’s, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s sails.

by John Piper
LINK

Father in heaven, as we approach this election on Tuesday, I pray

1) that your people will vote,

2) and that they will vote with a sense of thankfulness for a democratic system that at least partially holds in check the folly and evil in all our hearts so that power which corrupts so readily is not given to one group or person too easily;

3) that we would know and live the meaning of

* being in the world, but not of it,
* doing politics as though not doing them,
* being on the earth, yet having our lives hidden with Christ in God,
* rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesars, and to God the things that are God’s;

4) that we would discern what truths and values should advance by being made law and which should advance only by the leavening of honest influence;

5) that your people would see what love and justice and far-seeing wisdom demand in regard to the issues of education, business and industry, health care, marriage and family, abortion, welfare, energy, government and taxes, military, terrorism, international relations, and every challenge that we will face in the years to come;

6) and above all, that we will treasure Jesus Christ, and tell everyone of his sovereignty and supremacy over all nations, and that long after America is a footnote to the future world, he will reign with his people from every tribe and tongue and nation.

Keep us faithful to Christ’s all important Word, and may we turn to it every day for light in these dark times.

In Jesus’ name,

Amen.

Last week Seth said

Scott thinks that Barack Obama is a great man. I think that Barack Obama is a great politician.
Over the next year(s) one of us is going to be proven right. I hope it is Scott.

Indeed. I do think Obama is a great man. Don’t get me wrong. He is a supremely gifted politician. Probably the greatest in a generation. But I sincerely believe he is also a great man. Before I go on, Let me say this, if you really believe that Barack Obama eats babies for breakfast, is a closet Muslim, a socialist or a terrorist sympathizer and intends to appoint William Ayers as Secretary of defense, this blog post isn’t really for you. You can move right along. On the other hand, if you don’t intend to vote for him but also don’t believe any of the ridiculous lies and smears about him, then hear me out. I probably won’t persuade you to vote for him but maybe I can help you to see what I see in him.

One of these days I am going to write a post called “The Orr Principle”. Arthur Orr is my state senator from Alabama. His name is even being bandied about to run for governor next time around. I disagree with Arthur on a myriad of political topics, especially his incessant going on about immigration with all the normal right wing anti-immigration talking points. But I know Arthur personally, and have for over a year. His wife is friends with my wife. And if there is anything that I believe to be true about Arthur Orr, it is that he is an immensely good man. An exceptionally fine, thoughtful and kind-hearted man with whom I disagree on numerous issues. If he runs for governor, I’ll be writing the first check. If he needs help on his campaign, count me in. I really, really like and trust Arthur Orr and think he would be a fine and fair, albeit more conservative for my taste, governor.

So the “Orr principle” is the idea that issues of personality and character will trump ideology and issues as I vote. “Trump” is probably too strong a word. Perhaps I should say “holds sway over” or “heavily influences”. I feel that I know Obama pretty well, for someone I haven’t met personally. Over the last couple of years, I have read both of his books as well as numerous articles written by and about him and probably hundred if not thousands of blog posts and I’ve listened or watched dozens of his speeches. And when it comes down to it, I believe he is the real deal. A great man and a true leader. Let me summarize what I consider to be his strengths and gifts as a man that would make him a great president.

Smart and Intellectually Curious
As for his smarts, all I will say is Harvard Law Review. As for his intellectual curiosity, remember Katie Couric’s “gotcha” question of Sarah Palin where she asked her what she reads? I thought that was a great question and it ought to be asked of every potential president. Obama is very well read and his reading tastes are very disparate. An article in Salon magazine concludes that, judging from his from his reading list, Obama “would be the most literary president in recent memory — and one likely to govern from the center.” But beyond his reading habits, Intellectual Curiosity is that attribute where you are keenly aware of what you don’t know and you have an insatiable desire to know more. Kind of like a scientist only more philosophical. I think its also involves a willingness to read and explore outside of your comfort zone and allow yourself to be influenced by people with whom you disagree. This is a very hard thing to do for most people. But Obama’s track record is that he does seek out and listen to opposing points of view. There is an anecdote I’ve heard where he was having to make a legislative decision on an important topic and before he voted he called a colleague and fellow lawyer that he know would hold the opposite opinion and talked to him on the phone for 30 minutes to get all the nuanced details of the opposing point of view. I think he really is empathetic and seeks to know and consider varying opinions. When you are smart but intellectually curious, you are more likely to surround yourself with other smart people that you expect to teach and challenge you and to then really listen to them. I feel very confident that is exactly what he will do. As Seth pointed out the other day, he has already said he intends to appoint Republicans to his cabinet.

Faith
My Christian friends will all be skeptical of Barack Obama’s faith and understandably so. He was raised in a skeptical and atheistic home and after years of searching wherein he read everything from Augustine to Nietzsche, when he finally did embrace faith in Christ, it was at a fiery black social-gospel church in the South Side of Chicago. An article in Newsweek about his Faith describes it thusly:

Obama’s organizing days helped clarify his sense of faith and social action as intertwined. “It’s hard for me to imagine being true to my faith—and not thinking beyond myself, and not thinking about what’s good for other people, and not acting in a moral and ethical way,” he says. When these ideas merged with his more emotional search for belonging, he was able to arrive at the foot of the cross. He “felt God’s spirit beckoning me,” he writes in “Audacity.” “I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.”

Was it a conversion in the sense that he heard Jesus speaking to him in a moment after which nothing was the same? No. “It wasn’t an epiphany,” he says. “A bolt of lightning didn’t strike me and suddenly I said, ‘Aha!’ It was a more gradual process that traced back to those times that I had spent in New York wandering the streets or reading books, where I decided that the meaning I found in my life, the values that were most important to me, the sense of wonder that I had, the sense of tragedy that I had—all these things were captured in the Christian story.”

I am not defending Obama’s faith as orthodox, but I do believe it’s sincere and heartfelt. Keep in mind that Obama was baptized, got married and had his girls baptized in that church and until this summer, had been a very faithful member of that church. The reason this is important to me is not because I believe a president needs to be a Christian, but because he needs to be someone who understands and valuea the role of faith and religion in American Life and I am convinced he truly does. One “advantage” to his faith being of the more liberal variety is that I have no doubt whatsoever that he is committed to the importance of pluralism.

Rhetoric
I don’t need to inform anyone of Obama’s extensive gifts as an orator and communicator. In that regard, he reminds me of Ronald Reagan. In light of the extreme challenges our nation faces in the coming years, we the people are going to need motivation, inspiration and hope to lead us through the valleys. More than just a useless tool, Obama’s ability to inspire could be just what we need as we negotiate the treacherous road ahead. No one can consider Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill or Franklin Roosevelt and say that their oratory was of no use to them in their leadership. Their motivating words made all the difference.

Pragmatism
The rightwing media and the McCain campaign has worked very hard, unsuccessfully it appears, to slap all kinds of labels on Barack Obama.Uber-Liberal, leftist, socialist, marxist, redistributionist. And even though labels are at times helpful and a campaign’s use of them makes perfect sense, I think one of the reasons these labels haven’t stuck to Obama is that he has been able to persuade the voters that at heart he is a pragmatist. This is something that is very hard for ideologues, and especially ideological conservatives, to grasp. I think Obama will govern principally with the goal of succeeding at the tasks he’s been given, rather than at implementing an ideological agenda. James Pethokoukis, in an article in US. News from last February, said

Obama, though, is a plausible pragmatist. His domestic policy advisers are hardly a radical bunch. One economic adviser, Jeffrey Liebman of Harvard, has coauthored an interesting compromise plan on Social Security that would raise taxes a bit, extend the retirement age a bit, and put a bit of money into personal retirement accounts.

Or look at Obama’s tax plan. In addition to new middle-class tax credits, it has a technocratic reform proposal that would make filing many tax returns easier by letting the Internal Revenue Service fill them out in advance. And the economist who devised the plan, the University of Chicago’s Austan Goolsbee, is no class warrior on taxes or China basher on trade. Don’t forget, too, that in his book The Audacity of Hope, Obama himself found a few kind words for President Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts, which slashed the top marginal rate to 50 percent from 70 percent, saying that the old sky-high rate did “distort investment decisions.” Sounds pretty pragmatic.

I agree it does. Or check out THIS article titled “Students saw in Professor Obama a pragmatist, not an ideologue”. I think we need a nose to the grindstone, work-accomplishing pragmatist in the White House.

Leadership
Check out this video of Obama speaking to his staff in June after he became the presumptive nominee.

Tell me he’s not a leader One other example I’ll give is the story of his meeting with General Petraus a few months ago, as related in an interview by Joe Klien at TIME.

Q] Let me ask you about a situation like that. I have been collecting accounts of your meeting with David Petraeus in Baghdad. And you had [inaudible] after he had made a really strong pitch [inaudible] for maximum flexibility. A lot of politicians at that moment would have said [inaudible] but from what I hear, you pushed back.

[BO] I did. I remember the conversation, pretty precisely. He made the case for maximum flexibility and I said you know what if I were in your shoes I would be making the exact same argument because your job right now is to succeed in Iraq on as favorable terms as we can get. My job as a potential commander in chief is to view your counsel and your interests through the prism of our overall national security which includes what is happening in Afghanistan, which includes the costs to our image in the middle east, to the continued occupation, which includes the financial costs of our occupation, which includes what it is doing to our military. So I said look, I described in my mind at list an analogous situation where I am sure he has to deal with situations where the commanding officer in [inaudible] says I need more troops here now because I really think I can make progress doing x y and z. That commanding officer is doing his job in Ramadi, but Petraeus’s job is to step back and see how does it impact Iraq as a whole. My argument was I have got to do the same thing here. And based on my strong assessment particularly having just come from Afghanistan were going to have to make a different decision. But the point is that hopefully I communicated to the press my complete respect and gratitude to him and Proder who was in the meeting for their outstanding work. Our differences don’t necessarily derive from differences in sort of, or my differences with him don’t derive from tactical objections to his approach. But rather from a strategic framework that is trying to take into account the challenges to our national security and the fact that we’ve got finite resources.
[Q] But you didn’t have to make that point.
[BO] No well I think that I did, I felt it necessary to make that point even though I tried not to talk about it publicly, not knowing sort of what the terms of our discussion were. Precisely because I respect the Petraeus and [inaudible], precisely because they’ve done a good job and because my job as a candidate is preparing myself to be commander in chief. And I want to make sure that I’m taking their arguments seriously, they understand I’m taking their argument seriously. I want our military brass and our mid level officers to all feel that I am going to be listening to them. This notion that I’m not paying attention to them is nonsense. I’m listening to them very carefully and I take their advice with great seriousness. I just want them to know that I’ve got a, I potentially will have a broader task at hand.
[Q] Right.
[BO] And I want to make sure that we establish a relationship of respect early on. Again not just with the joint chiefs but also with folks who align responsibly on the ground.
[Q] Now I’ve heard that conversation characterized as everything from angry to spirited to agreeable. And I kind of took it as
[BO] I would say it was between spirited and agreeable. That’s how I would characterize it.
[Q] And after you made that point, [Petraeus] said I understand now.
[BO]He did. I mean I think we came away sort of thinking that, let me put it this way, I’m glad Patreus is in Centcom. He now has to, has these broader response abilities of seeing what’s happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I think he’s a very, he’s not just an astute soldier, but I think he’s somebody who cares about facts and cares about the reality on the ground. I don’t think he comes at this with an ideological pre-disposition. That’s one of the reasons I think he’s been successful in moving the ball forward in Iraq. And I hope that he’s applying that same perspective to what’s happening in Afghanistan.

THATS A LEADER

Campaign

In her convention speech Sarah Palin made a wisecrack, saying

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organizer,” except that you have actual responsibilities.

. Well I have a prediction, tomorrow Obama is going to exceed the polling in almost every state. The reason is “the ground game” as they call it, is very hard to measure in polling and Barack Obama, using his experience as a community organizer, has built the most disciplined, structured, organized, motivated and effective ground operation in American history. Bar none. They are going to kick the ass of McCain’s Ground and GOTV efforts. Conisder all that this campaign has done. They have: 1) raised more than $600,000,000, mostly from small donors,2) created the most innovative social-networking-based campaign website ever, with hundreds of thousands of memebers, 3) used every technology available to reach supporters, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, IM, TXT. They even released an Obama app for the iPhone. 4) they made it easy to blog, schedule events, meet fellow supporters, plan organize and contribute. This campaign has been nothing if not revolutionary. FiveThirtyEight.com has had a terrific series called “On The Road”, where they have traveled to every state visiting the campaign offices of both campaigns. Over and over again, they have talked about empty McCain offices, empty phone banks, no canvassers and contrasted them with the super-busy and super organized Obama campaign. I know what you’re saying, “Yeah yeah so what. A good campaign does not make a good president”. I agree, but I think this campaign shows that Obama has real Executive Experience. And that he is a VERY EFFECTIVE EXECUTIVE, all stemming from his experience as a community organizer. I predict that come tomorrow night, Sarah Palin will be eating her words.

Race
Here’s a story told by an early voter in Indiana,

For me the most moving moment came when the family in front of me, comprising probably 4 generations of voters (including an 18 year old girl voting for her first time and a 90-something hunched-over grandmother), got their turn to vote. When the old woman left the voting booth she made it about halfway to the door before collapsing in a nearby chair, where she began weeping uncontrollably. When we rushed over to help we realized that she wasn’t in trouble at all but she had not truly believed, until she left the booth, that she would ever live long enough to cast a vote for an African-American for president. Anyone who doesn’t think that African-American turnout will absolutely SHATTER every existing record is in for a very rude surprise.

What else can I say? What a barrier to break down. What hope to give to African Americans. This will be a truly remarkable moment.

Scott

I would like to substitute Sullivan’s essay for my MY OWN.

LINK

PLEASE READ IT. HE ARTICULATES PERFECTLY WHAT I WAS TRYING TO SAY

Scott

My take in a nutshell:

• Registration fraud is way easy and when you pay people to register voters its likely to happen. Not for insidious election-stealing reasons but for economic ones.
• Voter fraud is way hard and not likely to effect the outcome of the election. Things such as voting twice or more, dead people voting, or ineligible people voting would be very hard to do in sufficient numbers to effect the outcome. Lets say you wanted to do this. If the election is not close, it wouldn’t matter. In a very close election, you would either 1) have to know in exactly which precinct in the nation the election would be coming down to or 2) fraudulently vote in very large numbers (tens of thousands), all over the country. The chances of being caught would be very high. Mathematically I think this is a non-starter.
• Disenfranchisement and voter Suppression, on the other hand is pretty easy to do. Some examples would be, 1) striking thousands from the voter rolls, 2) putting up signs in key neighborhoods that say, “If you have an unpaid parking or traffic ticket you cannot vote”, or 3) requiring that the voter’s ID match the information in the voter database EXACTLY, down to every last jot and tittle or 4) removing people from the rolls because their home was foreclosed on. All of these examples have happened this election cycle. If, in one fell swoop, you can prevent thousands or tens of thousands from voting, you can steal an election.
• I agree with Hilzoy that voter registration and polling could be done in such a way as to make everyone happy, eliminating voter registration fraud, vote fraud and voter suppression.

Scott

My previous posts in this series are

• HERE - Introduction
• HERE - Fixing What’s Broken

ON JOHN MCCAIN
In light of my argument that I’ve made on the evils of the Bush administration, my brothers and friends have reminded me repeatedly that our choice doesn’t include George W. Bush. Obama is running against John McCain, not Bush. I understand the point, but Bush and his administration does factor into this for one simple reason, which I will demonstrate by asking some questions. Which candidate in his demeanor, his campaign, his rhetoric and his voting can be trusted to wage the battle against the Bush Legacy? In other words, who is more likely to work vociferously to restore human and constitutional rights? Who is more likely to restore the Rule of Law? Who is more likely to pursue criminal and human rights charges against people in the highest levels of government? Who is more likely to show the rest of the world that America’s promise to be a beacon of justice and opportunity is not just a sham, but that America can live up to the IDEA of her greatest virtues. My Answer is - Not John McCain.

Before I tell you why, I would be remiss if I didn’t admit up front that there is much that I admire about John McCain. His record of service to our country as a Naval Aviator and the 5+ long years he spent as a POW must never be forgotten. Throughout much of his career, he really and truly has been a maverick, rejecting the ideology of his own party and reaching across the aisle in compromise. He has obtained some bitter enemies to his right over the years as a result, George W. Bush being one of them.

But something has happened to John McCain. I think he has wanted to be president for so long and with such determination that he literally made a conscious decision that he would do anything to win. He left his honor and his principles behind long ago. For example, in the last two years, he has voted with Bush 90% of the time in the Senate. There are many examples but to me there are two especially notable ones. First when he voted in February, 2006 to allow the CIA to use “Enhanced Interrogation” (i.e. TORTURE) techniques, some of which were used against HIM as a POW in Vietnam. A Boston Globe article said at the time

JOHN MCCAIN this week had a choice between his principles and propping up a failed president. He chose the latter.

The second obvious example is when McCain dropped support for his own immigration bill, that would’ve been a very good non-xenophobic compromise. But in the end he didn’t support his own bill because it was more important to appease the base than to stick to his principles. In a debate this February, he actually said that if his own bill had come to the floor, he would’ve voted against it. At the Carpetbagger Report (a liberal blog) a few days after that debate, Steve Benen wrote:

Over the last year or so, when John McCain was struggling to get his presidential campaign back on track, one of his more notable challenges was reinventing himself — again.

When he got to Congress, McCain was a rather conventional conservative Republican. After his role in the Keating Five scandal, McCain took on a reform-minded persona. By 1999, he was a self-described “maverick” and moderate, who would move the GOP to the center. By 2004, McCain was back to being a conservative again. By 2007, he had positioned himself as an establishment Republican, and when that didn’t work out, McCain decided he’d become some kind of hybrid of the various McCains of the recent past.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say McCain has very few core values, and is willing to shift with the wind to get ahead. It’s one of the reasons he’s flip-flopped all over the place throughout the campaign.

In addition to his more recent voting record, there are two more examples of McCain losing his principles and his honor for the sake of winning the election. The first one is how he has run his campaign. We’ve had a few arguments about this on this blog and in terms of who has run the less honorable campaign, with more smears, lies and distortions, I think McCain is the clear winner (although Obama’s campaign isn’t entirely without guilt). The really sad thing to me is that McCain used the exact same strategy (and even the same people and organizations) as was used against him in by the Bush campaign in 2000. I am just very glad that this time around this evil campaign tactics and smears have not worked against Barack Obama. I hope they analyze this thoroughly and that the experts conclude that that kind of campaigning doesn’t work anymore in this age of abundant information. I’m hoping.

The last reason I believe that McCain the maverick, McCain the reformer, McCain the centrist is actually gone, never to return, is because of his pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate. If he loses tomorrow, historians will look back and consider this to be one of the greatest campaign blunders of all time. There are two reasons. First, by selecting Palin, he made it clear he was making an appeal to the extreme evangelical right-wing of the party’s base, thereby destroying his credibility as a centrist. Second, by picking someone with so little knowledge and experience, he removed the most powerful argument he had against Barack Obama, which was his experience. His selection of Palin has pretty much sealed the deal for me.

ON SARAH PALIN

First I want to emphasize something very important. As we have discussed abortion on this blog, I have made the (admittedly cynical) case that the republican party is really disingenuous when it comes to abortion, that every four years they wave the pro-life flags, get the pro-life believers motivated and fired up and then don’t actually do much to end abortion after the election. I think there is a strong case to be made for that point, but I think the best example against it in this election is Sarah Palin. I think Sarah Palin is genuinely pro-life and has put her money where her mouth is. I love seeing Trig Palin at rallies and I don’t doubt one iota, Sarah Palin’s commitment to the cause. My own son, who has Down Syndrome and is named Brig, gets to vote in his first election tomorrow and we have had to work hard to explain to him that he won’t be able to vote for Barack Obama AND Sarah Palin. I am not sure how he will vote. When we talk to him about the election we have tried to be neutral, but on the other hand he does hear us every day speak admiringly of Obama, so who knows? Only Brig does.

That being admitted, let me just say that I can’t stand Sarah Palin. I think she represents all the worst things about the republican party. I’m talking about the christian evangelical, divisive, right-wing, xenophobic, liberty-hating, religiously intolerant, Culture warring, flag-waving, ignorant, unthinking, partisan part of the party. She fires up that group more than any other politician since Pat Buchanan. That group really makes me mad and I believe represents the biggest threat to our country in existence today.

The fact that Sarah Palin is one 72 year old heartbeat away from the presidency scares the crap out of me. Remember how I said that we must fix the colossal errors of the Bush Administration and many of you have pointed out that Bush isn’t running this election. My answer is yes he is, and his name is Sarah Palin. I think she is like Dick Cheney with lipstick, only way more ignorant, more partisan and more ideological than Bush. Not only do I not think she herself has the intellect to actually lead our country well, I think she will just be a tool of the worst kind of people in the Republican Party. She would surround herself with extremists, (her track record in Alaska bears this out) and then she would become their tool. Like the emporor in Japan before and during the second World War. Much like I believe Bush has been a tool of Dick Cheney. Now lets suppose that, for some reason (maybe the abortion issue), my brothers actually convinced me not to vote for Obama. I can tell you right now, I would do like a favorite blogger, Molly and vote third party before I would risk putting Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the Oval Office. If McCain wins this election, I will pray four hours a day for God to maintain his health and beg him to please keep Sarah Palin away from the White House.

Honestly, I may have hoped that John McCain would get into office and let his mavericky, centrist cream rise to the top of his ideological churn. Now the best I imagine is buttermilk, left in the garage, three weeks past the expiration date.

Scott

Nate Says:

Barack Obama’s position has become somewhat stronger since our update this afternoon. We now have him with a 5.8 point lead in the national popular vote, and winning the election 96.3 percent of the time. Earlier today, those figures were 5.4 and 93.7, respectively.

I continue to find a hair’s worth of tightening on balance in the state-by-state polls — even as Obama’s position in the national trackers seems to be roughly as strong as it has ever been. This, ironically, is the exact reverse of the position we saw earlier in the week, when the national polls seemed to be tightening even as the state polls weren’t.

However, Obama’s win percentage has ticked upward again for a couple of reasons. Firstly, he’s gotten some relatively good numbers out of Pennsylvania since our last update, with PPP and Zogby giving him leads of 8 and 14 points, respectively, and Rasmussen showing his lead expanding to 6 points after having been at 4 before. (The Zogby poll is probably an outlier, but may serve to balance out outliers like Strategic Vision on the other side).

Secondly, McCain’s clock has simply run out. While there is arguable evidence of a small tightening, there is no evidence of a dramatic tightening of the sort he would need to make Tuesday night interesting.

If McCain wins Nate Silver will have to go into hiding.

ELECTORAL COLLEGE

OTHER CHARTS

POLLING DATA

VIA FiveThirtyEight

Scott

Publius over at Obsidian Wings has written a very thoughtful and reflective post on Race and the significance of a potential Obama presidency.

That’s because if race has contradicted American ideals at times, it’s also exemplified them. Race has brought out the worst, but also the best. It’s interesting – if you ask people to explain what exactly about America makes them most proud, I bet most would offer something relating to the fight for racial equality. The end of slavery. The Civil Rights Movement. All of these loom large in our national self-consciousness. Yet all were the collective efforts of people who tried to hold America to the standards of “America” the idea – often at great cost.

And if Obama is fortunate enough to win on Tuesday, his victory will be a victory for all those people too. Don’t get me wrong – ending slavery and ensuring the vote ain’t small potatoes. It’s not like their historical actions would otherwise have been in vain. But Obama – as talented as he is – comes on the shoulders of these past giants. His presidency is possible because people for the past 200 years believed in holding America to its standards. And in pursuit of that goal, they were willing to fight, and get beaten, and get lynched for the sake of basic equality – an equality we today have the luxury of taking for granted.

And that’s what’s so exciting about a potential Obama inauguration speech. You can literally imagine the area being filled not just with overflowing crowds, but with teary-eyed ghosts too. Generations of them, from Frederick Douglass to Thurgood Marshall to nameless farmers to voting rights activists.

It’s a powerful moment – particularly considering the magnitude of the historical obstacles it faced. Not in vain, those dead.

Read it.

Scott

Before you read this post, I would like you to read the Intro.

You’ve probably never heard of Dilawar. He was a taxi driver in Afghanistan who disappeared. He then died a few days later at Bagram Air Base, having been chained to the ceiling in a standing position and beaten to a pulp. By American soliders. It turns out there was a tribal leader in Afghanistan who was routinely attacking an American outpost with rockets and then he went around gathering innocent people and turning them in to the Americans as the guilty party in an attempt to ingratiate himself to U.S. forces.

Did you know that 125 detainees have been killed while in American custody? 38 of those deaths have been ruled as homicides. Did you know that the authorization to torture prisoners was approved at the highest levels of the government, certainly Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, but probably president Bush himself? Yesterday, as inpiration for this essay, I watched the documentary Taxi to the Dark Side. I wept. I was filled with the sense that under President Bush, our nation lost its collective soul. I know that our enemies are evil and that the war we have to fight against terror is not easy. But if we win some of the battles by compromising our principles of goodness, justice and human rights and thereby lose our respect and standing in the world, then we’ve lost the war and the terrorists have won.

And its not just torture, as horrible as that alone is. There are many, many things this administration has done that are unconscionable and inexcusable. Just off the top of my head, here’s a short list of what this administration has done.

• torture
• murder
• extraordinary rendition (kidnapping)
• Patriot Act
• VP as unrestrained co-president
• unconstitutional expansion of the Executive
• unitary executive
• The Bush Doctrine
• politicization of the DOJ
• secret prisons
• Bush doctrine
• illegal eavesdropping
• due-process-less detentions
• the suspension of habeas corpus
• extreme and unprecedented secrecy
• general executive lawlessness
• complete disregard for the Rule of Law
• pre-emptive pardoning
• Our standing in the world.

(I’LL BE ADDING LINKS TO THESE ITEMS LATER)

This list doesn’t even mention economic and domestic policy. We all know how well that’s gone. Just look at your 401(k)

When I first started writing this , I titled it, We The Sheeple. That snark is infecting my soul right now because I am so angry at the complete and total lack of outrage at these atrocities. Especially among Christians. Implicit in all this is that these are muslim ragheads so they must be terrorists and don’t deserve things like good treatment or a fair trial or the right to challenge their detention in court. They’re muslims so let them rot in jail forever. I think most Christians actually think that way and that is so wrong. There are RIGHT NOW at Gitmo prisoners who have had all charges against them dropped but the Bush Administration still won’t release them. This isn’t three years ago this is RIGHT NOW.

And not everything on that list has to do with foreign terrorists. Some of it has to do with yours and my Constitutional Rights. They’ve been attacked. If you are an American, the government has vigorously asserted its right to deny you liberties and to spy on you, all in the name of the war on terror. I’m just glad I’m white and not a recent descendant of an immigrant. I’ll probably be OK. But if your father immigrated here and is named Abraham and your name is Hussein. I’d be worried. You’re probably being “watched” right now. You may be on a list somewhere.

And here’s the problem, the genie is out of the bottle. From a policy standpoint everything that has happened is now a precedent. If we want to restore our reputation and good standing in the world, the next president has got to work vigorously to undo what has been done. We have to hold people accountable, some people should probably go to court and some people need to go to jail. One of the big questions I have is this: Who is going to fix whats broken?

MY next post answers the question WHY NOT McCain / Palin. I can’t answer that question without you understanding this context.

BTW. Taxi to the Dark Side can be watched Instantly if you are a Netflix subscriber. Please watch it. Maybe you’ll start to feel some of my outrage. Also download and read the material you find HERE, by the Physicians for Human Rights.

My next essay is Why not McCAin / Palin?

Scott

********** UPDATE***********
Andrew Sullivan makes my point much better than I ever could. Please consider THIS to be part of your homework.