Last night I got an email from my bro in Houston questioning the assertion in the preceding post that Speedbump could win the Electoral College vote by holding Ohio and Florida and flipping Pennsylvania. When I first read about the Repub strategy to concede the popular vote and win it in the EC, I went to the various websites that feature interactive EC vote calculators and other toys and began playing around to see if the scenario was plausible. Lo and behold, I found that it was, provided that Speedbump also wins four states that are currently classified as tossups: Nevada, Indiana, North Carolina, and Missouri. In those states, Obama is ahead or behind within the margin of error, and all four have typically gone GOP in recent elections. In my mind, it was no stretch to award them to the Republicans again. Confusion, my bad.
Since 1968, Ohio and Missouri have voted for the ultimate winner in every single presidential election. These two states seem to be excellent predictors for election outcomes, and eventually the Dems need to figure out how to win at least one of them. As things stand today, Obama and Ace are neck-and-neck in both locations, and that's my single best reason for staying with my official position that Ace will win on November 4th.
A few weeks ago I subscribed to Slate Magazine's online daily newsletter. The other day, I read their article about the etymology of the word fail, currently used as a noun at virtually every blog I frequent. Fail (the noun) apparently originated in the world of arcade gaming, a world with which I'm totally unfamiliar but which is the breeding ground for many internet geeks. The term I frequently see is Epic Fail, the meaning of which is easy to discern: collapse of a high order of magnitude. The conventional wisdom is that Speedbump's campaign is an epic fail, but I can't shake my nagging concern that Obama's actually the one headed for epic fail.
A hot blog topic yesterday was the Associated Press national poll showing Obama with some ridiculously narrow lead, one point as I recall. This dragged his lead in all the poll averages way, way down and led to much glee at the rightwing blogs and much worried analysis at the liberal ones. AP, recently sympathetic to Speedbump, used "likely voter" variables that resulted in born-again evangelunicals being counted at a higher rate than they occur in nature. The conspiracy theorists on the left surmised that AP was administering a steroid injection to boost the spirits of Repub voters, hoping to prevent a "sitting-this-one-out" trend. The possible unintended consequence is that Dem voter alarm over reports that Ace is a hair's breadth from the White House may shake them out of the complacency that 10-point leads can generate.
Added 12:20 pm: From your lips to God's ear. Two new polls reported online this morning have Obama leading in Ohio by more than ten points. If Obama wins Ohio, it probably means he holds Pennsylvania and this bad boy gets put to bed early.
Am I dreaming things, or does it seem unusual that a campaign running on the slogan Country First is always comparing different parts of the country and finding some parts are more American (i.e., better) than others ?
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