MSNBC projects:
Obama: 207
McCain: 135
CNN projects:
Obama: 207
McCain: 95
Florida is looking better all the time for Obama.
Chuck Todd for MSNBC is saying they are not going to attempt to call Indiana until all poll numbers are in.
And Chris Mathews is suggesting that there is not hard evidence that race has really harmed Obama.
With all the chatter about The Bradley effect (I’d link her but there are just too many articles to choose from, and besides if you don’t know what it is by now than you must have your head up your ass, which begs the question: how the hell are you reading this anyway?) and now McCain’s pollsters claiming that the race is actually, much, much closer than the signs indicate, I wonder if perhaps there is something that is being missed.
An X effect. By which I mean a GenX effect.
Please allow me to attempt to explain, even though I’ll probably fuck it up anyway.
Recently I posted that I was pretty much burnt out on this election. And it was true. I just felt as if I couldn’t take it anymore, and only wanted it to be over. Since then I have been plagued by bad dreams. Seems like I am waking up just about every night between 4 and 5 am. At least it isn’t 3:15am every night (a prize to whomever guesses that reference — here’s a hint James Brolin NOT Ryan Reynolds). Sometimes they’re just surreal; I dream about Maureen McCormick/Marsha Brady, no doubt because I’ve been reading her trash memoir, but they’re not the teenage boy wet dream kind of dreams, but that’s for another post. Just as often, if not more, I dream about the election in some way. Usually I don’t remember specifics, just vague impression. But not last night. Last night I remembered my dreams pretty clearly: I’d watched elections results and Obama won, then I went to bed, and when I woke up later in the night and checked the news breaking news reported that he had been assassinated, killed, whatever… It really freaked me out, even after I realized it was just a dream, and I’ve been on edge ever since.
I’m not sure why I’m having these dreams. Perhaps just because the election is getting ever closer. But I can’t escape this anxiety, not just about Obama losing, for whatever reason, but about him winning. In some ways, that scares me even more. And not because I secretly believe that Obama is or was or will be one day a Muslim. That has nothing to do with it.
I really think it has more to do with him being a GenXer. (And I know, I know. I can already predict the self-important Boomer response, insisting that he is not. But that is such a losing argument, I don’t even know where to begin. So skip that shit.) Yeah, now that it looks as if Generation X might actually have it’s first president I’m having a hard time dealing with it. I’m having a hard to believing it is possible. Something got to go wrong. Something will fuck things up. I just know it. Thus serving the biggest collective disappointment to Generation X yet.
Believe me. I know how whiny that sounds. I do. But I can’t help suspecting that I’m not the only one who feels this way.
How do I feel exactly? It’s hard to explain, really. I know I’m not doing a very good job of it. But I feel like participating in this election, casting my vote for Obama, wanting him to win so badly, is dooming his campaign to failure. Yeah, how fucked up is that? As if my wants and desires and participation has shit to do with anything. And yet….
Recently a fellow GenXer expressed a similar kind of ennui, for lack of a better word. And as a result is considering NOT voting. I confess I’ve considered this myself. Just not voting.
And so I got to thinking. Could there be a significant number of GenXers afflicted with this vague sort of doubt? Could there be some kind of GenX effect at work? I realize that we are small generation, much smaller than Boomers and Millennials, but still just possibly big enough. Boomers vote, we know that. And I got to tell you I think the Millennials are going to really turn out on election day, if they haven’t already. I already know at least a few that have voted absentee. Remember, the young vote that didn’t turn out in previous election cycles was Generation X.
But maybe I’m just wigging here. I don’t know.
Perhaps it seems strange that what I’m talking about here is not complacency but rather — what? It almost feels like a fear of finally getting what you want, you know. A fear of success. Something like that anyway. Do other GenXers suffer from this sort of mind set? Maybe it’s just me.
In any case, it’s got me thinking that it is time to stop whining, and stop moping. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to run out and start knocking on doors for Obama. Believe me I am not the guy you want doing that anyway. But I can at least make sure that I cast my vote. And let it never be said that I didn’t do the least that I could, one of my mottos, I suppose.
I suppose it is rather ridiculous to take the possible results of this election so personally, as if Obama’s failure, if he were to be elected, as my own failures. And yet, I can’t help feeling as if I will in some way. He’ll be the first GenX president, and so in addition to carrying the hopes of many African Americans into the White House and before the world, he’ll be carrying the hopes of a generation, at least as far as I am concerned he will.
Check out some of the comments made by a McCain supporter in Wisconsin:
“When you have an Obama, [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and the rest of the hooligans up there going to run this country, we have got to have our head examined. It’s time that you two are representing us, and we are mad. So, go get them,” one man told Sen. John McCain at a town hall meeting in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
Read full article here.
This people are pissed because they just can’t believe that they’re candidate has fallen behind, in danger of losing the race. To which I say:
Only it isn’t going to be funny if this kind of mentality escalates beyond ugly words.
McCain and Palin aren’t doing anything to quell it. In anything, they’re egging these people on. You jerks in the crowds yelling things like “treason” and even “kill him.” That’s just wrong. And is something bad happens it will be on their, McCain’s and Palin’s, heads.
But still some are blowing it off, like the Republican shill on the Diane Rheem show this morning. He said it was a few unfortunate incidents being blown out of proportion by the media. Of course. Thankfully, Juan Williams was ther to call it was what it was: Offensive! And Elinore Clift, who said, rightly, that McCain and Palin were playing a dangerous game with inflamatory rhetoric.
Stands for: Bradley Effect Induced Stress Disorder
This is the anxiety experience by ardent Obama supporters — as opposed to wish-washy types who will, yeah, ok, vote for the guy if they happen to get around to getting to the poles on election day, that is if they happen to be, by some chance, actually registered to vote — whenever anyone even suggests that Obama might not win because of his race, citing specifically Tom Bradley, a black candidate for mayor of LA who was well ahead in the polls but ended up losing the race, because supposedly white people, for fear of seeming racist, said that they intended to vote for Bradley but then didn’t.
Symptoms include:
- A sudden drop in optimism coupled with a sudden rise in pessimism.
- Inexplicable urge to accuse a random white person of racism, preferable someone you don’t know personally and/or who can’t hear your accusation and thus can’t respond to it directly, but definitely a white that is either widely known or at least believed to be, racist, or, you know, obvisouly is, I mean just look at them and listen to the way they talk. Please.
- Persistent paranoia directed at certain select friends and/or family members who say they are going to vote for Obama but you just know they’re talking out of their ass. Like your high school friend or your cousin who is an avid hunter, has dozens of plastic NASCAR car models that he has carefully constructed himself mounted on the knotty-pine walls of his basement, laughs himself stupid over Larry the Cable Guy, and still insists on driving a gas-guzzling 4×4. Or, like your Silent Generation grandparents who may be life-long Democrats that voted for Truman, Kennedy, Johnson and Carter (they never did and never will trust that Bill Clinton character, and don’t get them started on that wife of his), but who also still regularly employ the term “The Blacks.”
- The shakes, mainly in the form of suddeny, violent hand tremors, which of course could be explained by the 8 to 10 cups of coffee that you drink daily, but you just know this feeling is more than an over-indulgence in grande lattes.
- Heart palpitations. Could also be a caffeine induced, but there’s not documentation to support that, no reliable stats, no fucking witnesses dammit!
- Obsessive need to check and re-check poll results. At first daily, and then semi-daily, then hourly, until pretty soon your mouse clicking from political blog to political blog like a compulsive masturbating shut-in nymphomaniac that jumps from pron site to porn sit. Click click click click click click. Ooohhhhhh oohhhhh ohoh yeaahhhh babeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyy.
- Delusions in the form of seeing elephants (and not the cute Disney Dumbo kind either) or giant gorillas (and not the friendly purple Hanna-Barbera 70s cartoon Grape Ape kind either) sitting in the room.
- Inability to be consoled except by watching The Daily Show with John Stewart, Countdown with Keith Olberman, and The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert, and even then it is only temporary.
- Plagued by the presistant fear that upon entering the voting booth you yourself will inexplicably be unable to cast your vote for Obama. Related to this are nighmares that involve a voting ballot so confusing that, if filled out wrong, might not only cause you to mistakenly vote for McCain for president but there it the very real chance that you could participate in changing the rules that disallow anyone from serving more than two concsecutive terms and Bush wins an actual third term, or, alternately, so that Cheney becomes president or Tom Delay, John Ashcroft, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh NNnnnnooooooooooooooooooooooo! Another variation on this dream is that the ballot is in Arabic or Farsi or French or Sanskirt is actually a highly complex mathematical equation that only a three people in the world can solve, and one of them isn’t Matt Damon as Will Hunting.
Because it is so new there is no established therapy to treat such a condition, including no pharmaceutical treatment, unless you count various self-medicating substances. Perhaps the only real way to assuage this “ailment” is for Obama to be elected the 44th President of The United States of America.
Obama is doing well. But is he doing well enough?
I just spoke with a colleague who was fretting over a conversation she oveheard by another Obama suppoter, who claimed that he can not win because of racism. I responded by saying that such talk really bugs me too but at the same time I think a little pessimism is healthy. Why? It keeps people becoming overconfident. If Obama seems like a “shoe in,” which he so clearly is not some people will not vote. And we don’t want that.
Donklephant makes the same argument, citing polls that have Obama up by 5 points instead of 10 or more, as dailykos and others are claiming. Donklephant is not being a doomsayer, but he does argue that the Bradley effect cannot be ignored. And he is right. It can’t. Slacking off, even a little, could lose Obama the race. Take that from a life-long slacker.
Important to note: there is also the cell-phone only user factor in polling, which I have blogged about previously. Cell-phone only users tend to be younger and skew for Obama. It is reasonable to assume that these voters may cancel out the Bradley effect voters. But of course, nothing is certain. Yet another reason to maintain focuse and committment.
This has been a rather politically agitating weekend.
First, all this whining from the McCain campaign. McCain basically dares Obama to visit Iraq and then when he goes and it goes well — three point swish — McCain bitches about that as well, complaining that the press is giving him too much press. Waaa waa waa! Sounds like someone is a little cranky. Not getting enough sleep, are we grampa? Then the McCain camp accuses Obama of “playing the race card” and of being a narcissist or full of himself or whatever. Blah blah blah.
What really pisses me off is this bickering is nothing but a fucking distraction. I want to hear someone talk about what they are going to to about the crumbling infrastructure in this country. I mean, we just had the anniversary of collapse of that bridge in Minnesota. There are a lot of bridges across the US that are badly in need of repair. Also, the electrical grid needs updating. Does anyone else remember the summer of 2003, when we had the rolling power outages the reached from the East Coast all the way up into Michigan? That was fucked up. Power out for like three days. And has anyone done anything about it? Not that I know of.
Then I read this frustrating article in The New Yorker about Tavis Smiley’s beef with Obama. Like Rev. Wright and Jesse Jackson, Smiley seems to be PO’d that Obama is doing what he cannot. And that Obama is not paying full and unwavering deference to his (Smiley’s) views on issues. Well, excuse him for not kissing the rings of the black elite.
Then there is Maureen Dowd’s column in the New York Times this Sunday about still-bitter-just-can’t-let-it-go Hilary loyalists who still refuse to support Obama. But not because they actually like what John McCain stands for — what does he stand for exactly? for about an hour or two before he needs to sit down to rest his weary old feet — but because they just don’t like Obama, despite his attempts to win them over.
Despite Obama’s wooing, some women aren’t warming. As Carol Marin wrote in The Chicago Sun-Times, The Lanky One is like an Alice Waters organic chicken — “sleek, elegant, beautifully prepared. Too cool” — when what many working-class women are craving is mac and cheese.
Bullshit! What woman craves fucking man-n-cheese? Only kids crave it. Poor grad students eat it because it is cheap, but they sure as shit don’t like it. I sure didn’t when I was eating it all the time.
Maybe Hilary didn’t deserve to be tagged with the b-word by Ludacris but these women just might.
According to Dowd’s column…
The Los Angeles Times reported that Hillary die-hards want to enshrine a whine in the Democratic platform about how the primaries “exposed pervasive gender bias in the media” and call on party leaders to take “immediate and public steps” to denounce any perceived bias in the future. That is one nutty idea.
Yeah. That’s what we need. Another fucking distraction that will hinder Democrats from gaining The White House. But what do the fucking care? Obama loses and Hilary can run again in 4 years.
Yeah, well. How about this — Obama loses and it looks like bitter Hilary supporters helped make that happen then you can forget about this Obama supporter at least supporting Hilary. I will vote for whatever dipshit the Republicans put forth. I don’t care who it is. And do you think I’ll be the only one? Think about it. No you won’t. You’re too god damn bitter to think, too hysterical.
And that’s not all. The McLaughlin Group was practically an entire show dedicated to dissecting Obama’s supposed mistakes this past week, especially that little Barbie Republican they got wiggling her ass in Tony Blankly’s old seat.
On top of all that, despite Obama’s trip overseas scoring a three pointer, figuratively as well as literally, he received no bump in the polls. If anything, he may have lost a little ground. Some polls have McCain and Obama in a dead tie, while others put McCain ahead of Obama.
Why? Apparently Americans don’t believe it is important that the US President be well liked abroad. Especially them cranky blue collar white guys that don’t give a rats ass what a bunch of towel heads, Krauts and Frogs think. They got no business commenting on American politics.
Am I the only one sick of hearing about whining blue collar white guys who can’t relate to Barack Obama? I mean, you got to love the irony of a bunch of big, strong, tough men crying like little girls because they aren’t being related too properly buy a guy they couldn’t give to shits about under any other kinds of circumstances. More than that, a guy they wouldn’t want much to do with because of his race, never mind his education and taste for arugula.
I just love how these big manly men have suddenly developed feelings that bruise like a grape, so you better not say mean about them ore the might cry. Yet these are some of the same knuckled-head pricks that seem to feel entitled to toss around all kind of invectives about Volvo-driving, cheese-eating, New Yorker-reading, liberal faggots.
I grew up in blue-collar Warren, Michigan. I knew people like this. They are hard working. But you know what? So am I. Just because I work in a library doesn’t mean I work just hard as they do. And fuck if I’m going to guilty or bad or somehow less American because I happened to bust my ass to get an education. You want to talk fucking hard work? That was hard work. And I’ve busted my hump at my share of labor jobs too. I mowed lawns and cleaned gutters and window wells when I was still fucking twelve. I delivered newspapers, all three major ones in my area — The Freep, The News, The Macomb Daily. I bussed tables. I cleaned up shit in bathrooms at Metro Beach Metro Park.
But now I have an undergraduate and graduate degrees. In fucking English too, Creative Writing. And I have owned a Volvo. And I like cheese and wine. And I love to read The New Yorker.
And any schmo who thinks that somehow makes me less of an American than him, because he turns a wrench or uses his back or gets dirty doing his job, can fuck off! Go cry to your mommy. Don’ cry here.
Ah. Fuck it!
In any case, my hope/pessimism index had plummeted. It was really soaring there for a time, at close to 70/30. But now I’d put it almost a dead lock, maybe a tad higher. Something like 51/49. And that is me being as optimistic as I can be.
I’m not sure I can believe that this country is really ready for change. I think that those cynical people that say that this country is not ready for a black president may be right.
And for believing otherwise, I feel duped, not by anyone else but by myself. I duped myself. I forgot a very important Generation X — don’t get your hopes up about anything, because chances are you’ll just end up disappointed in the end. And that seems to be where things are headed.
Even if Michigan goes for Obama — recent polls have him up by 4 points, and I’ve seen three Obama signs to zero McCain signs, and I live amongst many a Republicans — I doubt the country as a whole or at least the key battle states, such as Ohio, will.
My wife and I have a subscription to The New Yorker but we have yet to receive out copy of the magazine with the so-called constorversial cover that depicts Barack Obama as a Islamic Muslim Extremist and his wife, Michelle Obama, as an angry black woman radical toting a gun. Whether this cartoon cover art is offensive or not, I’m not really interested in debating anymore, but I want my copy, dammit! And I want it now.
Colleen emailed The New Yorker tha we had not yet received our copy of this issue. And this is the reply we got:
Dear Mr. Lopez:
We are sorry to inform you that the issue you requested is no longer available.
We have extended your subscription one issue for each issue requested.
The new expiration date will appear on your address label in the near future.
You may visit our website to access your account online at http://www.newyorker.com/
Simply click on “Subscription Questions” in the upper right corner of the main page, and you will be directed to the Customer Care page to access your account.
Your account number will be required for entry: 540707932
If you should need further assistance, please be sure to include all previous e-mail correspondence.
Thank you again for your interest in The New Yorker.
Sincerely,
Jayme
Customer’s email address: Colleen.Carlin@marketstrategies.com
Case id: 5988847
No longer available? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? I tell you what it means. That The New Yorker editorial board is bunch of pussies. It wasn’t as if they didn’t know what they were doing when they put this cartoon on the cover of their magazine. And now that it has garnered negative press they pull it. Talk about your journalistic integrity. I am fucking disgusted.
Now, I’ve been reading The New Yorker since I started college, discovering it when I was in community college — what can I say? I grew up in a very blue collar neighborhood and in a household where we read the two Detroit newspapers and maybe Michigan Out-of-Doors, Field and Stream, Fly Fisherman, House and Garden and Family Circle — and began subscribing when I was an undergrad at Eastern Michigan University. I’ve had lapses in my subscription, at times when I could ill-afford to pay for a magazine because I had to pay rent and bills and eat, but I’ve always reupped ASAP. Now, I’m seriously considering just cancelling my subscription and ditching the magazine for good.
Perhaps that’s petty and reactionary. But I really don’t give a shit. If, as a journalistic entity, going to go out on a limb like they did with that cover, they need to stand by it. Or don’t do it to begin with.
After Obama won the long, hard-fought Democratic Primary, I admit that my attention on the election waned. Was it complacency or just a weariness of politics? Perhaps a bit of both. But either way it was not good. It is the kind of attitude that can help lose this election for Obama. I’m not being arrogant. I get it. I’m just one fucking vote, and really there is no way to know that my one vote will even be counted. But that is not the point. The point is that for any given individual to make any kind of difference they need to stay tuned in, keep up, spread the word in any way that they can. Perhaps few people will read this blog. But if just one person other than myself is reading then that’s one person that can be reached and influenced and there is the chance, slim thought it might be, that that influence can spread. And grow.
What knocked me out of my stupor? Someone standing before me an insisting that Barack Obama was a Muslim. I knew that there were people that held this view. But it is quite a different thing when that false accusation is thrown in your face. Of course, I responded by saying that, No, he was not. And in response this person argued that his father was Muslim. To which I countered, that does not make him Muslim.
The mistake I made after that was to walk away from the argument, without further pointing out that even if Barack Obama was a Muslim, full or half, it would not disqualify him from being President of the United States. One of the main reasons people came to this country was to escape religious intolerance. Freedom or religion is paramount to our American Democracy.
I should made this and other points. I should not have walked away. I allowed my emotions, my anger, to get the better of me, and since I did not want to “go off” I simply removed myself from the situation. Perhaps I was caught off guard because I’d grown to confident in my belief that Barack will win the election in November, even if I didn’t admit it to myself.
I evaluated the number of people that I know that might not vote for Barack Obama because they “believe” he is Muslim, which — I’m sorry — sounds too much like code for they don’t want to vote for him because he is black, and it occurred to me that there could be quite a few, perhaps even more than I thought.
So it’s time to get my head back in the campaign. I’m not planning to quit my job to work on the campaign or anything like that. I’ve never really been that kind of person. The most active I usually get is to put up a lawn sign and perhaps donate a few bucks here and there. And to keep abreast of news so that when opportunity to have a discussion or debate arises I am prepared to participate in a reasonable and rational way.
And that is what I am vowing to do. But who knows I maybe be inspired to do more. Few things motivate me more than being pissed off. And that is what happened when I was confronted with such a reactionary and ignorant attitude toward Barack Obama. So far from discouraging me, this person reignited my desire to help get Obama elected the next President of the United States.
This CNN article quotes Nader thusly:
Whether that will make any difference, I don’t know. I haven’t heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What’s keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn’t want to appear like Jesse Jackson? We’ll see all that play out in the next few months and if he gets elected afterwards.
Did Ralphy learn nothing from Bubba shooting off his mouth in South Carolina and, well, pretty much everywhere else.
If I had been the journalist interviewing Nader my follow up question to him would have been to ask him what it means to speak white? Or to speak black?
And what the fuck’s up with the reactionary association of black people with ghettos anyway? Because of course when old, out of touch white guys think black people they think ghettos. Clearly the dude has watched too many episodes of Good Times and never even heard of The Cosby Show.
Hey, Nader. I’m a white guy and I’m supporting Obama and guilt doesn’t have shit to do with it. What does is keeping haggered old hacks like your dumb ass out of Washington. You jerk!
Previously my H/P Index* was a 60/40. Over the past week or so it’s been climbing, by at least 5 points, putting it at 65/35, especially with polls showing Obama leading in swing states like Pennsylvania. But then this morning on CNN there was report on some flap over Obama staffers telling a woman with a head scarf that she would be able to sit in view behind Obama because “of all the problems in the world right now.” What the fuck is that all about? Of course, the Obama campaign apologised ASAP and released photographs of Obama with women in headscarves, plus every other concievable kind of religion. I think there was even a druid in there somehwere. Anyhoo… Along with the report was a Musilm spokesperson jumping at the opportunity to pressure both Obama and McCain to speak out against anti-muslim sentiment etc. The guy claimed that Obama has yet to do this sort of thing but then they showed a clip of Obama doing precisely what the guy said he hadn’t yet. It was a bone head move and it’s good that the Obama people moved quickly to address it. But this is the kind of thing that worries me, because it could grow legs, and there seems to be a frightening number of people out there willing to pretend to believe this sort of crap and then perpetuate it.
So that knocks my H/P Index down several notches because, well, I’m a GenXer and that’s pretty much the way we roll. So I set it now at 59/41.
Come on people, let’s pick it up. No more dumb mistakes.
*Hope/Pessimism Index weighs my hope vs my pessimism of Barack Obama’s chances of being elected President of the United States.
