So there’s this election tomorrow, and the Republicans have consistently screwed the pooch for years, and people are starting to wake up and get more vocal about the incompetence, corruption, and dumbassery of this administration…but I am not sanguine about our prospects for getting rid of the villains. Tom Tomorrow explains why: even if these people were shown to be literally demons from hell, we’d still have to cope with…the undecided voters.
I lost all confidence in the American electorate in 2000 and 2004. I’ll be doing my part on Tuesday, voting and helping to turn out the vote, but I anticipate the election returns with a sense of dread.
If New Jersey comes down to just the one vote winning it for the democrats, I will have done my bit to help. (I couldn’t get my parents to move to Ohio….)
(signed) marc
To be fair, we did vote for Gore in 2000.
This year I’ve invited friends over to watch the returns with me (as well as The Manchurian Candidate). That way, we can drown any potential disappointment in alcohol.
I have worries that the overblow pre-election self congratulations by the Dems are going to cause a backlash. I’ll reseve my glee until after the election.
Of course, I’m in S.C. so I can pretty much figure out the outcome here.
Hopefully Karen Floyd and our idiot Gov lose. I have hope on Floyd, not so much on the Gov.
I would have been an undecided voter, except for the fact that “not Bush” has become more important than any other consideration.
I blab at length about it here : http://brahms.phy.vanderbilt.edu/~rknop/blog/?p=115
Harold Ford isn’t a candidate I get excited about, but this is one of those potentially balance-tipping races, so….
I’ll be out getting Patty Wetterling’s voters to the polls. If nothing else happens that I like, I will consider Michele Bachmann’s defeat a personal victory.
I keep hearing that voters want to turn out the bad guys, but that voters are also pretty much happy with their OWN represenatives – so I’m not very big on hope just yet.
And what the F%@! is wrong with Georgia?
Voters aren’t that happy with their own guys, esp. if their own guy is a Republican from outside the South. Look to see ancient GOP strongholds like upstate NY collapse.
The undecided voter is a real asshole. Since he never responds in any rational way to campaigning, I figure the best tactic is to insult him openly. (OK, that bit is just self-indulgence speaking.)
Connecticut is going to be a debacle, as Republicans turn out in droves to elect a Senator pretending to be a Democrat, even though he lost the Democratic primary. Republicans will not vote for their own candidate, an actual Republican. Voters are nutty!
I don’t think the US voters are nutty, merely numb from five years of unrelenting fear-mongering. US citizens, as a collective, haven’t been able to make a rational choice about anything since 9/11.
Given that, if there’s no sign of a potential sea change in Tuesday’s results, I can’t say that there will be much hope for the next presidential election, and by extention, for the health of the country over the next decade.
You’re all welcome to move here to Canada. Montreal is a wonderful cosmopolitan city.
i sense some sort of strange connection between our shared apprehension of another election of croooks, and the later post uphill here in pharyngula, about intelligence and health outcomes. maybe, as a country, we are too dumb to survive.
tho i do think that the conclusion of the lse guy is an interesting sign of cultural arrogance.
PZ and Tom Tomorrow are dead right about some of those “undecided” voters. Digby had a great piece some months ago with links to serious studies of the people who can’t seem to make up their minds and are therefore likely to vote on a whim, and some of them are scary strange. Ah, yes, here’s the piece.
Menendez has a comfortable lead and the Dems always turn out in New Jersey. If he loses, you may assume that the votes were manipulated.
And GRRRRR… Lieberman has a huge lead in Connecticut as an independent.
As a Connecticut voter, I’ll be spending as much time as I can at the minimum distance from the local polling place with a big sign saying “JOE LIEBERMAN VOTED FOR TORTURE”, and in smaller letters, “ask me how!”. Hopefully it’ll be a conversation-starter. (For me, the Military Commissions Act was the inarguable Rubicon that the Republicans and their enablers crossed that convinced me that I’d vote for a warm zucchini over a Republican. I think I can articulate that to random passers-by.)
Mike and PZ: I hate to even mention it, but the most recent poll I’ve seen puts Bachmann ahead by 7%. Ick.
Calladus: I dunno what’s wrong with Georgia, but I agree with you…something is. I was there for a (car) race about a month ago. Watching TV that night, saw a sappy, happy, puppies-and-kittens-and-happy-children ad for Mark Taylor (Democratic Lt. Gov, running for Gov), listing off all his wonderful achievements helping kids and capping it off with…a call for the death penalty for repeat child molesters.
What do we do if we can reasonably suspect vote fraud by the Republican right? Democratic MO so far seems to be to just sulk about it.
I’m not advocating rioting in the streets (although I believe that conservatives might do that if the situation were reversed.) But what can we do? Better exit poll organizations? A march on Washington?
Thanks for the offer Jim Royal, but this is MY country, and I’ll do my best to help fix it.
You should see the betting on the who will win the house and senate…
House outcome
Senate outcome
You’re all welcome to move here to Canada. Montreal is a wonderful cosmopolitan city.
Montreal is too damn cold, but I hear Vancouver is very nice. I may start reviewing my college French and looking at the job market up there.
Alas, I am unable to vote tomorrow, as my spectacular organizational skills came into play yet again and I didn’t get my registration in on time.
So, bad me. However, I know how things are going to bounce down here in Texas; Perry will be re-elected with something like 33% of the vote (nothing like a 5-way race to reinforce why I prefer a two-party system), my local congressman’s job is safe, and something about the Lege just makes people insane, regardless of party.
Nationally speaking, I do not expect the Democrats to win majorities in either house of Congress. I expect them to gain seats, but not enough to take control. And that was before Kerry’s open-field fumble (grrr).
It’s not like undecided voters have a monopoly on whimsy. Decided voters can be idiots too. My favorite was a women who voted for George W. Bush simply because she didn’t like Theresa Heinz Kerry. Nothing to do with either of the actual candidates, nothing to do with party policy or philosophy. She just didn’t like Mrs. Kerry. And on that basis alone, she voted to re-elect President Bush.
We get the government we deserve.
Yes, go out tomorrow and vote liberal/progressive/Democratic at every opportunity. It’s an important civic duty. But I’ve become too jaded for words. Even if the Dems take the House and the Senate, we will still have the silly, evil man and his team in the White House for two years. We will still have campaign funding and lobbying designed to distort any attempt at good government. I don’t agree with Nader that there is no difference between the parties. The Dems are obviously the better choice. But Ralph has a point — Big Money is now the master. So let’s vote for group that will offer some resistence while trying to find a way to kill the real beast.
Montreal is too damn cold, but I hear Vancouver is very nice. I may start reviewing my college French and looking at the job market up there.
No, Edmonton is too damn cold. Vancouver is a nice place, but I prefer to actually see the sun more than three days a year. And Vancouverites have no clue how to dress up. Montreal is famous for gorgeous, elegant women, and none of them have ever even heard of intelligent design.
Speaking of tomorrow’s election, we had a candidate for state rep speak at the office today (http://www.joecarr48.com/). I asked how he felt about attempts to teach ID in high school science classes. Not surprisingly, he thought it was a good idea because “ID is based on science” and he felt we should offer “competing ideas”. Ouch.
Deepsix: from Carr’s website:
Oh wow. None of them thar “librul” influences! So much for ‘competing ideas’.
Montreal is too damn cold, but I hear Vancouver is very nice. I may start reviewing my college French and looking at the job market up there.
You don’t actually need know how to speak French here at all. And Vancouver is a nice place to live – if you like rain.
So what would a US citizen have to do to get permanent residency in Canada? I’ve heard it is not easy.
Well, it seems to me that the electorate is really stupid. That is unless they vote the way the liberal jerks here want them to. I give the American people more credit than that and so should you. The will of the people is just that, whether you agree with it or not and whether it turns out the way you want or not. There are plenty of screwed up liberal societies in this world you can move to if you want to experience it first hand.
Whatever you do, don’t vote for Bush yet again… Oh! Never mind. Good luck, then!
Why wouldn’t you? The Democrats refuse to say what they stand for. Tom Tomorrow gets it wrong: it’s not that the Democrats support gay marriage, but that they keep having no position on it, even though civil unions poll in the 60s. Alternatively, 83% of Americans would like to see the minimum wage hiked to $7.15, and 60-something percent consider it a top priority of the new Congress. Where are all the ads telling people what each party’s position on the minimum wage is?
SASKATOON!!!!!
Ok, that’s out of the way.
Who wants to lay odds that this will be a democrat win and according to Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh it will be because of rigged voting machines? The buffoonery will of course eat it up because that’s exactly what they want to hear.
A letter I received from a fundamentalist friend just after the 2004 elections ‘ The USA elections turned out the way we hoped as we have a very resolute leader in Bush and one the rest of the world would do well to emulate’.
He is an Zimbabwian immigrant. I live in New Zealand and am horrified by his(Bush) rediculous actions and am worried that you Dems won’t succeed in the election tomorrow. Good luck
Ok Jake T I’ll bite:
Which ones?
Seems like the Texas governor’s race could use runoff elections. Or better yet something like Instant Runoff Voting. First-past-the-post or plurality voting is an antiquated relic — and isn’t even mandated in the Constitution.
And yes, I’m concerned about vote fraud. It’s only necessary to throw a few percent of the vote for Republicans to win, as I’ve calculated from the poll numbers.
Let’s see if the Democrats show some guts this time instead of being whimpering cowards.
Dumbassery? A new word to use. Great word.
I’ve thought for a while that an outbreak of demonic possession would certainly explain a few things about our leaders’ actions…. On the other hand, that’s not directly relevant to the elections, and the known Republican electoral-fraud campaigns are surely sufficient to explain those.
Alas, I am unable to vote tomorrow, as my spectacular organizational skills came into play yet again and I didn’t get my registration in on time.
Uh, what? Can’t you register at the polls?
Honestly, I just can’t wait for it to be over. Every other ad on TV is somebody’s smear campaign these days, and I’ve gotten SO damn tired of it (four races, and nothing but negative ads. UGH.).
And the undecided voters? On the one hand, I’ve put off looking at school board and county council candidates until tonight, so I can’t criticize too much. On the other hand…. what do these people decide on? I had a classmate who voted for Bush, not because she supported his policies or liked what he had to say, but because he was “cuter”. ::wince::
Depends on state law, I imagine. Where I live, you can’t. You have to register by mid-October.
depends: you can take a test to see how you score in terms of getting landing immigrant status (which allows you to work). you can also apply for jobs, then the employer has to do the paperwork to get you a visa.
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/skilled/assess/index.html
I got a 92! (AND my wife’s Canadian)
Bear in mind, the current PM is the creepy bible-salesman type. But in general, they keep government free of religious ideology.
Undecided? Me? Nah, I decided long ago that my vote didn’t count in this election (here in PA at least). I can vote for an arch-conservative (Santorum) who I disagree with on enough to be wary, or a guy whose dad was popular (Casey). I can vote for a great football player (Swann), or a guy that is slicker than Clinton, and couldn’t care less about my “side” of the state (Rendell).
Maybe I could vote for one of the biggest pork-cultivators in congress, Murtha? So what if he’s as crooked as the caricatures of Bush (something Bush himself doesn’t come close to)? He got some money for roads and some fancy technology center and all sorts of stuff, he’s our man! I mean, sure, the economy in his area has been in the crapper since my Father graduated high school, but if those greedy Republicans got into office they’d probably just vote with Bush, which is like a mortal sin or something.
Then there are the other great races. I could vote for that one person who is running against R Melissa Hart… oh wait, I don’t even know that politician’s name, because the only tv ads I see (literally 12 times a night) make absolutely no mention of his/her name. So I guess the rallying cry is “anyone’s better than Bush”. I’ve seen a half dozen different commercials this election cycle making that point. Sorry, I don’t find that particularly helpful.
Why NOT?