Expectation as Motivation

In watching this long campaign, it is clear that one's performance is much less important than one's performance relative to expectations. Obama's victories in VA, DC, WI and others in the primaries, while huge, did not change the tone of the campaign because his big victories were expected. Hillary's HUGE victories in WV and KY were similarly meaningless. Sarah Palin "won" the debate with Biden by not crapping all over herself in a fit of panic.

If Barack Obama is going to do any of the things he's campaigned on, whether specific policy proposals or changing the tone in Washington, he will need to put up a big win. 270 is of course the magic number, but if he only wins, say, Kerry plus VA, IA, CO and NM, for a total of 286, many will interpret his victory as a squeaker, a failure of Obama to close the deal, and a reaction to all the "socialist" talk in the last weeks of the campaign. Even with 56-59 Dem Senators and a majority in the House, it will be difficult to reform health care, expand education funding, or anything else without an obvious mandate.

So this is why, despite my 100% confidence that Obama will win tomorrow, I will be out knocking on doors for Obama in Pittsburgh all day tomorrow (pushing the start of the liveblog back to 8ish). And to all my readers in Ohio, that's a vital 20 EVs. Anything with a 3 in front of it is immeasurably better than anything with a 2, and Ohio could very well be the difference. Obama wins in Ohio and Florida pushes McCain perilously close to something starting with a 1. In the perception game, that's a big deal. So get out and vote, and when you're done with that, call all your friends. Maybe knock on some doors. It's important.

Beaten to the Punch by FiveThirtyEight

I had planned an hour-by-hour preview of Election Night, but Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com has one up on Newsweek.com. There's no topping it, so I'll just link to it.

Fearless Predictions!

Obama will win 353 electoral votes. He will win, going from states I'm most confident about to states I'm least (Things in bold are things I looked up after finishing the post; the rest was from memory, a sign that I've spent way too much time with this stuff):

All the Kerry states minus Pennsylvania (231 EVs)
Iowa (7 EVs)
New Mexico (5 EVs)
Pennsylvania (21 EVs)
Colorado (9 EVs)
Virginia (13 EVs)
Nevada (5 EVs)
Ohio (20 EVs)
Florida (27 EVs)
North Carolina (15 EVs)

It's also possible, but unlikely (from least to most unlikely), that he'll win Missouri (11), Indiana (11), Nebraska's 2nd District (1), North Dakota (3), Montana (3), Georgia (15), Arizona (10), West Virginia (5), Louisiana (9) South Dakota (3), Arkansas (6), and South Carolina (8). Which gives Obama an absolute ceiling of 438.

That leaves Alabama (9), Mississippi (6), Texas (34), Oklahoma (7), Nebraska's other votes (4), Kansas (6), Wyoming (3), Utah (5), Idaho (4), Alaska (3), Kentucky (8), and Tennessee (11) for McCain's safe states, totaling 100 EVs.

(Note: Some bolds there. In my defense, these states are perfectly safe for McCain and therefore boring.)

The Democrats will pick up 8 Senate seats, leaving them, sadly, one seat short of 60, again starting with the ones I'm most confident about:

There are 39 Democratic Senators not up for re-election; Obama will be replaced with another Democrat

All 12 incumbent Democrats will win, including Biden, who will also be replaced with another Democrat, possibly his son, Beau.

Udall in New Mexico over Pearce
Udall in Colorado over Schaffer
Warner in Virginia over Gilmore
Shaheen in New Hampshire over Sununu
Begich in Alaska over Stevens
Hagan in North Carolina over Dole
Merkley (only bold for spelling) in Oregon over Smith
Franken in Minnesota over Coleman

I feel very, VERY confident about the first six, pretty darn good about Merkley, and better than 50/50 about Franken. They also have an outside chance at beating Chambliss in Georgia, McConnell in Kentucky and Wicker in Mississippi. Any one, along with winning the 8 above that they're supposed to win, would mean 60. Depends on African-American turnout in these red states.

I haven't really read anything about governorships or House races, so look elsewhere for predictions on those races.

So tune in tomorrow and see how I did. You better believe there's going to be a live blog.

What if All This Electioneering Was Irrelevant?

From Marc Ambinder:

Obama leads in 18 out of the 19 states with the largest recent declines in home
prices, whereas McCain leads in 13 out of the 14 states with the largest recent
increases in home prices.

I know, I know. Correlation does not imply causality. But that's some impressive correlation!

Does Obama Want to Bankrupt Coal?

At the hospital tonight, people are freaking out about a quote from Obama that was released today:

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it
will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all
that greenhouse gas that's being emitted

West Virginia (along with, more important in electoral terms, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Montana, among others) depends on the coal industry. 40,000 jobs in the state are directly in the industry. So even at a hospital in a non-coal region of the state, people are pissed.

So I've spent most of the past 6 hours or so trying to talk NICU nurses out of burning Obama in effigy. It's important, like with many political "gaffes", to look at the complete context of the quote. It's long, so I'll just post a link.

In short, Obama is talking about charging electric companies for the damage to the environment that pollution from their plants does. A traditional coal plant that pumps tons and tons of CO2 into the air would contribute to global warming. Obama wants to use a cap and trade system, under which companies are taxed based on how polluting their plants are, to encourage cleaner techniques, such as trapping CO2 instead of emitting it. So what he meant in the bad-sounding quote was if someone wanted to build a traditional, high-polluting coal plant, they can; it's just that it would bankrupt them..."

Obama is not suggesting ending the use of coal for electricity; he's just saying that consumers and producers should pay its true cost, instead of just releasing pollution for all of us to deal with.

Brilliant State-by-State Preview

Chuck Todd, NBC News Political Director, has a wonderful summary of what to watch for on Election Day. I was planning on doing something similar, but Chuck's is so good that there's no point. It's definitely worth a read.

Sarah Palin Talks With a Foreign Leader

Or, ya know, not:

Thanks, Bravo...

I was pleased to discover this morning that Bravo was having a mini West Wing marathon this morning; few things get the Democrat heart pumping three days before an election like some good liberal Presidential porn. They even included an episode featuring a wonderful soliloquy by Toby about not jinxing fate by celebrating before an expected outcome is final. But it ended on an awful note. The last scene in the marathon was of the President being shot by racially-motivated attackers.

I am absolutely terrified that Obama is going to be killed at some point during his (still-potential) Presidency. He is the first leader with both the ability and the (still-potential) political mandate to do all the things progressives want government to do. And it seems, I know this is crazy, like he actually believes in the issues he advocates. Like, Mrs. Doctor and I were discussing our federal student loans vis-a-vis the credit crisis the other day, and we wondered if it were possible that student loan programs might be cut. But then we realized that if Obama were elected, aid for higher education would be just about the last thing to be cut. How great is that? We're looking at the possibility of a talented leader fighting for a liberal agenda he truly believes in!

Which, if history is any guide, means that he's going to be assassinated. If there's any doubt that some Americans want to see it happen, check out a McCain/Palin rally.

Does the Right Know About Right-Wing Media?

Over on The Corner, the blog of the conservative National Review magazine, the NR's writers are lamenting the failure of the dreaded "Main Stream Media" to discover the existence of Obama's illegal immigrant aunt.

From The Corner:

[I]f Aunt Zeituni had settled in Wasilla - say, in lodgings across the way from Bristol Palin's boyfriend's ex-girlfriend's uncle's sled dog's veterinarian's ammunition dealer - the fact that she's an "illegal immigrant" might have come out a lot sooner, even if only from the Atlantic Monthly investigative unit driving by and asking her whether Joe the Plumber had ever serviced Trig's real mother's double-wide.

Rather than bitching about the "liberal" media not telling us about Aunt Zeituni before today, why don't they ask themselves why Drudge/Fox News/The New York Post et. al didn't find out about it themselves?

Just One Poll, But...

Drudge is reporting that in the Zogby national tracking poll due out in about twenty minutes shows a lead in yesterday's polling for McCain.

I'm officially freaking out. Obama's crushing McCain in big states like CA, NY and IL, while McCain has thinner leads in Texas and smaller states. So Obama has to win the popular vote by kind of a lot in order to win the Electoral College.

Breathe. Just breathe...

On the upside, one of my senior residents, who's a regular reader of this humble blog, showed me how to use the Google Translate function to bypass the SurfControl. Good ol' seniors

UPDATE: After a few minutes feeling like I was about to puke whilst doing some poking around the Zogby website, I am somewhat reassured. Zogby assumes that the Dem/Rep breakdown will be identical to the breakdown in 2004, when in fact there are a bunch more Dems now. He also only interviews 400 people a day, so it is by no means a large sample size. So this is a net positive for Obama, I think, cuz it might persuade some of his supporters that he doesn't really have it all locked up.