As Allahpundit likes to say, "Here we go...."
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: Republicans lose 20 seats to fall to a 222-213 majority. Would lose the House altogether if not for red state-friendly re-districting.
SENATE: by state (incumbents in CAPS)....
ARIZONA: Flake 53.5%, Carmona 46.5% (GOP hold)
CALIFORNIA: FEINSTEIN 55.9%, Emken 42.1% (Dem hold)
CONNECTICUT: Murphy 50.7%, McMahon 49.3% (Dem hold)
DELAWARE: CARPER (either unopposed or might as well be - Dem hold)
FLORIDA: NELSON 49.4%, Mack 48.6% (Dem hold)
HAWAII: Hirono 57.9%, Lingle 42.1% (Dem hold)
INDIANA: Donnelly 51.9%, Mourdock (aka Dumbass #2) 48.1% (Dem pickup)
MAINE: King 46.6%, Summers 36.2%, Dill 17.2% (Ind - which is to say, Dem - pickup)
MARYLAND: CARDIN 51.4%, Bongino 27.1%, Sobhani 19.5% (Dem hold)
MASSACHUSETTS: Warren 49.3%, BROWN 48.7% (Dem pickup)
MICHIGAN: STABENOW 52.5%, Hoekstra 45.5% (Dem hold)
MINNESOTA: KLOBUCHAR 61.2%, Bills 36.8% (Dem hold)
MISSOURI: McCASKILL 50.4%, Aiken (aka Dumbass #1) 49.6% (Dem hold)
MONTANA: Rehberg 51.9%, TESTER 46.1% (GOP pickup)
NEBRASKA: Fischer 56.2%, Kerrey 43.8% (GOP pickup)
NEVADA: HELLER 51.6%, Berkley 46.4% (GOP hold)
NEW JERSEY: MENENDEZ 54.4%, Kyrillos 43.6% (Dem hold)
NEW MEXICO: Heinrich 53.7%, Wilson 46.3% (Dem hold)
NEW YORK: GILLIBRAND 66.9%, Long 31.1% (Dem hold)
NORTH DAKOTA: Berg 55.1%, Heitkamp 44.9% (GOP pickup)
OHIO: Mandel 49.3%, BROWN 48.7% (GOP pickup)
PENNSYLVANIA: Smith 49.7%, CASEY 48.3% (GOP pickup)
RHODE ISLAND: WHITEHOUSE 57.9%, Hinkley 40.1% (Dem hold)
TENNESSEE: CORKER 66.6%, Clayton 31.4% (GOP hold)
TEXAS: Cruz 70.1%, Sadler 29.9% (GOP hold)
UTAH: HATCH 66.6%, Howell 31.4% (GOP hold)
VERMONT: SANDERS (See Carper - Ind, meaning Dem, hold)
VIRGINIA: Allen 51.0%, Kaine 49.0% (GOP pickup)
WASHINGTON: CANTWELL 56.1%, Baumgartner 41.9% (Dem hold)
WEST VIRGINIA: MANCHIN (See Carper - Dem hold, unless Manchin pulls a Jeffords later)
WISCONSIN: Thompson 50.8%, Baldwin 49.2% (GOP pickup)
WYOMING: THOMAS, all by his lonesome (GOP hold)
Republicans overcome the dumbass factor and pickup a net of 4 seats, regaining - barely - the 51-49 majority necessary to shove ObamaCare up Dirty Harry Reid's ass sideways.
And now, THE MAIN EVENT, by state....
ALABAMA (9): Romney 65.0%-34.0%
ALASKA (3): Romney 64.1%-33.2%
ARKANSAS (6): Romney 63.4%-34.2%
ARIZONA (11): Romney 58.1%-40.2%
CALIFORNIA (55): Obama 56.3%-41.7%
COLORADO (9): Romney 49.4%-49.0%
CONNECTICUT (7): Obama 55.9%-42.9%
DELAWARE (3): Obama 57.2%-41.6%
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA (3): Obama 16,000,000,000,000%
FLORIDA (29): Romney 52.8%-46.2%
GEORGIA (16): Romney 56.9%-42.3%
HAWAII (4): Obama 67.2%-31.3%
IOWA (6): Obama 49.2%-49.1%
IDAHO (4): Romney 66.0%-31.3%
ILLINOIS (20): Obama 57.2%-41.5%
INDIANA (11): Romney 53.6%-45.2%
KANSAS (6): Romney 61.2%-36.9%
KENTUCKY (8): Romney 62.1%-36.5%
LOUISIANA (8): Romney 63.3%-35.2%
MASSACHUSETTS (11): Obama 57.1%-40.7%
MARYLAND (10): Obama 57.2%-41.2%
MAINE (4): Obama 55.2%-44.8%
MICHIGAN (16): Obama 52.7%-45.6%
MINNESOTA (10): Obama 51.5%-47.0%
MISSOURI (10): Romney 54.1%-44.6%
MISSISSIPPI (6): Romney 60.9%-38.3%
MONTANA (3): Romney 54.1%-42.5%
NORTH CAROLINA (15): Romney 54.1%-45.0%
NORTH DAKOTA (3): Romney 57.8%-39.8%
NEBRASKA (5): Romney 61.2%-36.9%
NEW HAMPSHIRE (4): Obama 49.4%-49.2%
NEW JERSEY (14): Obama 52.6%-46.4%
NEW MEXICO (5): Obama 52.2%-46.5%
NEVADA (6): Obama 50.5%-47.4%
NEW YORK (29): Obama 58.2%-40.7%
OHIO (18): Romney 51.6%-46.8%
OKLAHOMA (7): Romney 70.4%-29.7%
OREGON (7): Obama 52.1%-45.1%
PENNSYLVANIA (20): Obama 49.8%-48.9%
RHODE ISLAND (4): Obama 58.2%-39.8%
SOUTH CAROLINA (9): Romney 58.6%-40.2%
SOUTH DAKOTA (3): Romney 57.9%-40.1%
TENNESSEE (11): Romney 61.6%-37.1%
TEXAS (38): Romney 60.1%-38.9%
UTAH (6): Romney 67.0%-29.5%
VIRGINIA (13): Romney 51.0%-47.9%
VERMONT (3): Obama 62.8%-35.2%
WASHINGTON (12): Obama 53.2%-45.2%
WISCONSIN (10): Obama 49.4%-48.5%
WEST VIRGINIA (5): Romney 60.3%-37.8%
WYOMING (3): Romney 69.5%-27.8%
------------------------------------------------
Based upon a D+1.4 turnout model, the final talley (drumsticks, please):
POPULAR VOTE: Romney 51.0%, Obama 47.6%
ELECTORAL COLLEGE: Romney 275, Obama 263
Red Barry steals Iowa, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin via massive voter fraud, but falls just short of stealing Colorado as well and, therefore, the election. Ergo, Mitt Romney will be elected the 45th President of the United States, and America will have averted national suicide by a margin of approximately 9,500 votes.
Looks like what we'll need is Drammamine....
Q Jay, some of the utilities are saying that the power is going to be out in some areas for up to 10 days, which would obviously include Election Day. Is there any contingency planning to alter the Election Day schedule because of this?
MR. CARNEY: I think that is not something I'm able to address. The fact is the storm is just taking effect now and having an impact now and making landfall I believe tonight. We have to focus on not the campaign and not the election, but on making sure that all federal resources are both prepositioned and in place to help states and localities respond to the storm, to help Americans who are affected by the storm. That's our focus right now.
Q Would the President have the power to adjust Election Day?
First things first: No, Barack Obama does NOT have the power to "adjust" Election Day. Not according to the law, anyway. Section 7, Chapter 1, Title 2 of the United States Code clearly, unambiguously, and unequivocally states:MR. CARNEY: I don't know the answer to that question. I think you're getting way ahead of yourself here.
The Tuesday next after the first Monday in November in every even-numbered year is established as the day for the election in each of the states and territories of the United States of representatives and delegates to the Congress commencing on the third day of January next thereafter.There's no wiggle room in that verbiage. It's been in place in every election going back to the beginning of the republic, through the Civil War, World War I, and World War II, times of national emergency far, far worse than a hurricane. It's the law. Period.
But...since when has the law ever stopped Red Barry from illegally ruling by decree? He imposed the Cap & Trade scheme he couldn't through the last Donk SuperCongress via EPA regulations; he imposed the DREAM Act he also couldn't get through that Congress via Executive Order; he made recess appointments despite the Senate not being in recess. Clearly he has established a pattern of lawlessness and abuse of executive power without precedent in American history, and he hasn't even gotten to a second term yet. Would "postponing" next Tuesday's election really be all that far-fetched?
And by "postponing," I mean, of course, "canceling". If O were to try this, there's no way he would set a new date for the election; it would, instead, be postponed "indefinitely". Since this would be widely seen as precisely what it would be - a coup de tat - he wouldn't dare allow the election to take place, because this would destroy both him and the entire Democrat Party - permanently. It would be a one-way trip; once the proverbial trigger was pulled, he, and they, would be committed, and could not possibly turn back.
What the country could do about it? Not much. Sure, the GOP House could and would impeach Obama, but does anybody seriously believe that the same Senate Democrats every one of which voted to ram ObamaCare down the throats of the American public would muster up twenty votes to convict The One and remove him from office? And even if, by some miracle, they did, why would he not simply ignore that like he has every other legal hurdle and simply entrench himself in the White House like a badger in its burrow? When the man whose constitutional responsibility is to execute the law(s) of the land refuses to abide by them, who would enforce them on him?
Yeah, it sounds like something out of the X-Files. But I can't help noting that Carney didn't categorically deny the press queries, as any presidential spokesman with three brain cells to rub together should have. He said, "We're getting way ahead of ourselves here"; which implies that it's something they would, or have, or are, considering.
I"m not predicting it. But desperation and aspiring totalitarianism are a very, very dangerous combination, and make it impossible to completely rule out.
In short, we will not be able to begin to relax until President-Elect Romney finishes reciting the oath of office after noon next January 20th. And maybe not even then.
If you wanted to score last night's Battle of Boca Raton as a standalone technical debate contest, you'd have to give it to Barack Obama by a clear margin. He was the aggressor for most of the evening, whereas Mitt Romney was surprisingly passive. Indeed, to a significant degree the two men were the reverse of what they were three weeks ago in Denver. But to understand why this was, you have to look at where each candidate is in the race going in.
For Obama, he began this campaign over a year ago with only one strategic avenue open to him: "Kill Romney". With a disastrous record of failure, with no popular accomplishments, preemptively nuking his challenger was the only option he had, and that's what he did, to the tune over between $150 million and $200 million in smear ads over the spring and summer. The problem? That hypercane of negativity didn't move the needle one jot or tittle. He started the campaign more or less tied with Governor Romney and he was still more or less tied when he got to Charlotte the first week of September. Indeed, the only time this year that O actually got a legitimate lead was after Bill Clinton put over his "It was so bad, nobody could have turned the country around in only four years" excuse. The media took that handoff and tried to deploy the same "inevitability" gimmick they used to great success in Sick Willie's 1996 re-election romp. But it ended the moment Governor Romney walked onto the same stage with the Chicago Cherubim and calmly, expertly dissected him like a frog in high school biology class. For the first time ever, Red Barry was exposed before over seventy million people as the stuttering clusterbleep of a miserable failure he's always been. The media couldn't save him, and more to the point, he couldn't save himself. In that moment, Mitt Romney went from Snidely Whiplash to Ward Cleaver in the eyes of most of the voting public. Indeed, I think Mitt Romney's victory will be traceable back to that very evening. For all intents and purposes, the election was decided then and there.
And that's what explains The One's antics ever since, culminating in last night's exercise in sneering ignorance. His fringe, lunatic, Resident Evil/Walking Dead base freaked out after the Denver Debacle and he's been trying to reel them back in off the ledge ever since by being a trash-talking jerk. And in the process, he's combusted the one asset he had left: his supposed "likeability". Which is itself a bill of goods and always has been, but was sold dazzlingly to low-information independents in 2008 and has propped him up ever since. That's gone now, and explains what is becoming his freefall in the polls.
For Romney, you have to understand how he looked at the campaign from the start. Mitt is a planner; he doesn't focus on the tactical, but on the strategic. His focus isn't to win each daily or weekly news cycle, but to win the election. This is why he didn't engage in the TV ad war back in May and June and July when Team Messiah was outspending him three and four to one, but instead raising boatloads of dough and saving it for the home stretch when it would have maximum effect. And it explains how he's approached this "debate" series.
Romney's purpose for Debate #1 was to neutralize the "Kill Romney" gambit and present himself to the American people as the President the incumbent has never been and can never, ever be. Mission accomplished. Romney's purpose for Debate #2 was to not undo what he accomplished in Debate #1; mission accomplished. Romney's purpose for last night's finale was to close the deal by appealing to the one group he had left to lock down: low information moderates.
This is why he didn't directly engage all that much last night. Mushheads don't like conflict and confrontation and rough & tumble verbal fisticuffs; they like civility and kumbayah and "can't we all just get along?" That's what Mitt gave them last night: reassurance that he was "reasonable" and willing to "work across the aisle" and all that nausea-inducing rotgut. Did he miss numerous hanging curveballs last night? Sure. He gave King Hussein a total pass on Libyagate; he punted on Egypt and Syria, and his Iran proposal differs from Obama's only as a matter of degree. But this was his conscious choice. It rankled us, his base, but we weren't his target audience. He's got our votes; he needs the mushheads to clinch the big prize. And judging from focus group reaction afterwards, once again, it was mission accomplished.
But that's not to say that Governor Romney didn't have his moments; he smacked O on his sotto voce "flexibility" assurance to Dmitri Medvedev, his 2009 Middle East apology tour, his giving the finger to Israel, and the looming trillion dollar Defense sequestration cuts, which elicited The One's "bayonets" gaffe. And he successfully differentiated himself from George W. Bush by invoking the Reaganite "peace through strength" mantle. So I don't think we really have to worry that Mitt will be a foreign policy squish or patsy.
Besides, remember what Governor Romney is: a pragmatic problem-solver. Look at all the Obama overseas problems he'll be inheriting; I seriously doubt that a President Romney would have abandoned Iraq or stood by and let the Muslim Brotherhood take over Egypt or bombed Khaddafy out of Libya without having a pro-Western alternative to fill the resulting power vacuum. But what can he do about these things now? Given the damage Obama's done to U.S. military capabilities, we wouldn't be able to intervene in any of these places to affect regime changes, and even if we could, there'd be neither the resources ($16 trillion debt, remember?) nor the public support for doing so. All he'll be able to do is try to rebuild our forces (particularly the Navy) and revive our alliances (particularly Israel) as best he can. And, as President Reagan once did, revive the idea of America as a symbol, bastion, and defender of freedom.
Suffice it to say, last night, Barack Obama won the debate; but Mitt Romney has already long since won the election. And that's the victory that matters.
UPDATE: Sorry if it sounds like I cut the post short abruptly; that's because I did. Ran out of time to get out the door to a men's Bible study where I was bringing the bread (somebody else was bringing the soup - had meatballs in it, too. And as we all know, even a pile of dog crap tastes decent if it has meatballs in it.
Some additional thoughts:
(1) The limitations on our military capabilities created by Barack Obama's reckless cuts especially hamstrings any conceivable military options vis-a-vie taking out Iran's nuclear weapons program and/or arsenal. Which, of course, was most of why O has cut the Pentagon so recklessly.
(2) Dr. Chicago acted like a dick in the last two debates to try and fire up his wacko nutbag "Deliverance" base, but let's be candid, it really didn't require much "acting". That arrogant, preening, strutting, megalomaniacal narcissist 30% of the U.S. population saw last week and last night was pretty much the real Obama. The amazing thing is that it took that long for the media-hoisted mask to slip off his smug, sneering face.
(3) When BO responded to Governor Romney's taking him to task for his 2009 apology tour by saying, and I quote, "Everything Governor Romney just said is not true," the following scene from My Cousin Vinny came instantly to mind:
Let history know that as Barack Obama's "My Cousin Vinny moment."
4) It's difficult to pin down what really constitutes The One's shark-jumping moment, because there have been so many of them over the past five years, since he starting officially running for president. Suffice it to say, though, that whether or not the following clip is it, or simply the latest hideously redudant encore, it certainly qualifies as one of the most singularly stupid utterances in the history of televised debates at any level:
Yes, Li'l President, everybody knows that horses, bayonets, and multi-kiloton naval vessels are completely interchangable. But nobody knew that aircraft carriers and submarines are "ships" too until "Professor" Obama enlighted us. Or maybe we know that but he doesn't but thinks they're something else. It's really kind of difficult to tell. The only thing we can say for sure is that it's the kind of addle-minded, incoherent twaddle that we usually get from this guy when he's deprived of his prompter. The fact that the comment is so pathetically ignorant and yet delivered with such contemptuous arrogance is classic Obama, though. It's very thoughtful and considerate of him to vomit up such a choice brick of it for the entire country to enjoy a mere fortnight before the election.
5) Note to Barry: Ten million or so voters called; they want their 2008 votes for you back.
6) According to Michael Medved today, Governor Romney was sicker than a dog last night, and went ahead with the debate anyway. You could tell he was a little raspy, but otherwise you'd never have known it. Or at least I couldn't tell. Says a great deal about his toughness and commitment, though, as I can't imagine President Putting Green not begging off if he'd had so much as an ingrown halo.
Not to be a killjoy, but that's the reality. We would do well to remember the incontrovertible reasons why.
1) Polarization. This is still 50/50 nation. When I think of landslides, I think of Johnson-Goldwater in 1964, Nixon-McGovern in 1972, Reagan-Mondale in 1984. 60%-40% popular vote blowouts. Electoral Vote totals near, at, or over the 500 mark. The days when Democrats weren't radical, extreme, hyperpartisan zealots and were open to bipartisan voting in significant numbers. Those days ended a long, long time ago. Since 1984, no popular vote winner has exceeded 54%, and that was Bush41 four years later. Barack Obama's 53% was the largest total since then, and that was the biggest Donk wave year of my lifetime (if you exclude my first four days outside the birth canal). Unless the term is to be redefined into meaninglessness, landslides are no longer possible on the national level.
2) The polls don't show it. I'm not talking about the RCP average (which today has Romney up 1). RCP includes all the polls, all but one (Rasmussen) of which are Donk-oversampled garbage. They even include officially partisan surveys like PPP, which they never used to do. I'm talking about Rasmussen, the gold standard of polls over the last three presidential election cycles. And as of today, Rasmussen has Romney up 2. Two points is not a landslide in the making.
However, I am constrained to point out that even Rasmussen has succumbed to the temptation to oversample Dems recently (moving their sample weighting from D+3 to D+5). Which brings me to Dave In Florida's Poll Analysis, a blog that does what I used to have time for: drill to the core of multiple polls and adjust the samples to more realistic proportions. Per Dave's analysis yesterday, here is The RCP average under the following turnout scenarios:
O+0.42% - Current RCP Average
O+0.81% - Average using the 2008 turnout model
R+1.94% - Average using the D+3 turnout model
R+4.14% - Average using the 2010 turnout model
R+4.20% - Average using the 2004 turnout model
R+5.88% - Average using the Rasmussen Party ID turnout model
Even if the turnout mirrored the Rasmussen Party ID (R+2.6), which is highly unlikely, Governor Romney's popular vote margin would still be a point and a half less than Obama's was four years ago.
Or, as I said above, Mitt Romney will win the popular vote; but he will not, because he cannot, win in a landslide.
We're as vulnrerable to drowning in our own existential cloture bubble as is the Left. We would do well to maintain the grip on reality that they heaved overboard long ago.
And part of that reality is the very real likelihood of voter fraud on an unimaginable scale.
I don't have the poll-spelunking time I used to, but I have created a spreadsheet that takes the state by state popular vote numbers from 2008 and adjusts them equally by the difference between the 2008 national popular vote margin and the current Rasmussen margin as well as splitting the difference between the Rasmussen Party ID and 2008 turnout models (which yields a very realistic D+2.2 sample), then projects the popular vote result assuming undecides break 2-1 for the challenger (Romney), and finally adjusts the margin two points toward Obama to account for the ACORN factor.
As of today, that projection indicates Mitt winning 50.8% to 47.8% nationally. But the Electoral College result is Romney 266, Obama 263, with Colorado a flat-footed tie. That would make the Centennial state the Florida of 2012. Given that Dems run the show there, I'm less than sanguine about Mitt's chances of averting having the election recounted away from him.
But leave aside those hypothetical specifics. The bigger point is the popular vote theshold Governor Romney needs to clear to be reasonably assured of going over 270 Electoral Votes. If he doesn't win by at least three points nationally, the likelihood is that Team Messiah will cheat themselves over the top in enough swing states to steal the election.
All of the above stipulated, there does appear to be a preference cascade underway. If I had to prophesy, I would soothsay that we're looking at a scaled-down version of 1980, where the race was neck and neck until the GOP challenger pulled away at the end.
Bottom line: This is a pipedream; but this will be more than sufficient.
So...who won? As always with campaign debates, it depends on factors having nothing to do with technical debating criteria and everything to do with the needs of the respective candidates at the time of the event. Or, put more succinctly, think strategic, not tactical.
If you WERE to think tactically, you would have to score it a draw, more or less. King Hussein actually showed up for this one rather than his department store mannequin stand-in, which was all his Resident Evil supporters were looking for. Which, again, is consistent with his megalomaniacal psychological profile; I think he thought that all he had to do in Denver is literally just show up and his blinding transfigurational radiance would so dazzlingly terrify all present, including Governor Romney, that all could not help but bow down to him, after which he'd still have time for eighteen
That definitely came out in his performance, which was otherwise described as far more "energized" and "aggressive," which is to say he was scarcely any less of a prick than Biden was last Thursday, minus overt symptoms of the onset of senile dementia. And in, turn, the post-debate snap polls reflected it with the CBS and CNN results more or less evenly split between Obama, Romney, and "draw". As O's primary task was, as with Slow Joe last week, to bring his Walking Dead base back in off the ledge onto which his Denver non-performance sent them (break out the Crisco, "Mr." Sullivan!), you'd have to call that "mission accomplished".
But that's all The One accomplished Tuesday night. His only attainable goals were tactical, because the strategic cast of this race has been set from day one. With a disastrous record of across-the-board failure on which he cannot run, no popular accomplishments and a buttload of unpopular ones, and most Americans having tuned him out several years ago after none of his ridiculously overgrandious BS promises panned out, Barack Obama's only possible avenue to re-election always was as his strategists "civilly" quipped a year ago: "Kill Romney". However, a hundred and fifty million dollars of smear ads over the summer never moved the needle at all; from St. Patrick's Day forward, the race remained either tied or a slight lead for Governor Romney. Only twice has that dynamic changed: (1) the Democratic National Convention, when Bill Clinton's speech put over Dr. Chicago as the victim of circumstances too traumatically adverse even for a god to "transform" all at once, giving O a small lead to which the Obamedia tried to apply the same "inevitability" gimmick they used to pre-emptively bury Bob Dole in 1996; and, of course, (2) The Denver Debacle, where a president sure as shinola showed up, and he wasn't wearing mom jeans. Or, put another way, somebody else had to sell Obama (and backhandedly at that) because he can't sell himself. Whereas Governor Romney (for whom, thanks to Team Messiah's crap-hurling, the task of direct self-salesmanship was gobsmackingly simple) had to merely appear on stage and not drool on himself to be a plausible, acceptable alternative.
And, of course he did much, much more. And the preference cascade began.
The Mitt who took the stage on Long Island (Since when is New York a swing state, BTW?) was the same one who dominated the first debate (despite the [GASP] high altitude), proving that Round #1 was no fluke. Was he perfect? No. He had a missed opportunity here and there. I, personally, don't include the Libyagate question among them because of "Miss" Crowley's blatant and mendacious interference on BO's behalf (kind of like when the babyface is whaling on the heel in the corner and the heel referee low blows him from behind), but your mileage may vary. Besides, that simply set the table for next Monday's foreign policy-oriented, blessedly non-Town-Hall formatted finale.
So....who won? Well, on specific issues, Governor Romney ran the table in those same post-debate snap polls, including nearly three to one on the economy. Which helps explain who got a quick-turnaround campaign commercial out of it (that didn't mention "binders full of women"):
This presumeably helps explain why so many Obama 2008 voters are turning from the Dark Side this time around:
So yes, the Li'l President was more energized; yes, he was more aggressive; yes, he was in there swinging away with his entire arsenal of lies ("Read the transcript!", "I've laid enough pipe to encircle the planet" or words to that effect) and smears (47%!!!!! BAIN!!!!! $5 TRILLION TAX CUT!!!!!). But the truth is, there is nothing Barack Obama can personally do to change the stategic direction of this campaign because his 2008 overpromising and complete failure to deliver in office has laid waste to any ability he ever would have had to influence it.
The 2012 election is Mitt Romney's to lose. If he performs in Boca Raton, Florida next Monday as he has at Denver and Hofstra, the deal will be sealed. That's the reality.
And as has been the case for the past 1,366 days, reality is not Godbama's friend.
Last night, Joe "Chia Pet" Biden was a dick.
And that, of course, was precisely what Slow Joe was trying
to accomplish. After Red Barry
sleepwalked through last week's contest, to the outraged chagrin of the zombie
lynch mob Donk base, they wanted Biden (and Radditz) to bend Paul Ryan over the
table and gang anal rape him. They
wanted to see Ryan's entrails ripped out and force-fed to him. And (figuratively speaking) Biden (and
Raddatz) did.
In other words, Biden's strategy was ***entirely
defensive***. Remember what I said a
year ago: With no record or positive domestic accomplishments to defend, and
Libyagate having negated their "We got bin Laden!" touchdown dancing,
all Team Messiah can do is wage the dirtiest, nastiest, most disgustingly
despicably negative campaign in American political history. When The One didn't shove an IED into Mitt's
magic underwear, the MSNBC crowd wasn't going to settle for anything less than
[ahem] blood on the walls. Biden really
had no choice.
What's Red Barry gonna do in next week's rematch with Romney? Stride triumphantly onto the stage with a steel chair and below, "I'm Spartacus!!!", and then level Mitt with a chairshot? I bet Tingles Matthews would cream himself.
Most voters - particularly low-information "independents" - like to claim that the don't like negative political campaigning/advertising. It's transparent halo-polishing, because if their proffered sentiments were genuine, then negative campaigning/advertising wouldn't work, and political campaigns wouldn't employ it so eagerly.
The reason it works is simple: it raises doubts about "the other guy". Take Bill Clinton's Mediscare fusillade in 1996. Its point wasn't to actually make voters believe that Bob Dole was the devil incarnate, come to abolish Medicare, take away Granny's Alpo, a flame-thrower to her snow bank, and drag her off to hell. The point was to make people hesitant to give New Gingrich and the GOP Congress cart blanche to *maybe*, *possibly* "cut" Medicare. For low-information voters, such doubts are all you need to plant in their sterile minds. That wasn't the only reason that Dole lost - there were a panoply of them - but this was near or at the top of the list.
Red Barry has been trying to do this to Mitt Romney - or "kill" him, in Obamunists' "civil" parlance - but it hasn't worked. Why? Because what they consider to be epithetical - "Rich," "Businessman," etc. - isn't axiomatically negative outside the extreme Left. Actually, to most Americans, having a successful CEO with what even Sick Willie called a "sterling business record" in the White House sounds pretty darned good compared to the SCOMF "occupying" it now.
That's what makes what Jim Geraghty called O's "unholy trinity" of Kinsleyan gaffes the other side of that same coin. Rather than "vet" Romney as the mustachioed plutocrat from "Monopoly," what The One has actually done is vet himself as he never was four years ago. Coming on top of his disastrous record of over three years of (in reality) double-digit unemployment, de facto permanent depression, cosmic debt, all of it shoved down the collective throat of the public against its will - or what I like to call "governance by the double-extended-middle finger" - paired with all the bullshit pie-in-the-sky promises he made, it's the final nails in his electoral coffin.
There's only three months and change until Election Day. Far from it being just too late to turn around, the economy is actually deteriorating, and at an accelerated pace. Now he's given us a tripartite window into his Marxist-Alinskyist soul. And his forfeiture of credibility long ago caused the public to tune him out, depriving him of his erstwhile greatest strength: his supposed oratorical eloquence, and thus any chance to repair this critical self-inflicted damage. Not eve TOTUS can save the Obamidency now.
This election is over. The only remaining questions are by how much Governor Romney will win, and will the Li'l ex-president go willingly.
Quietly won't be an option.
It's Pavlovian with these Obamalists. The barrel of James Holmes' guns hadn't even cooled before Brian Ross and George Stephanopoulos were reflexively tying him to the Tea Party.
Yeah, it's shameless, yeah, it's despicable. But I'm growing more and more convinced that they don't even realize their motivations for doing so anymore. The press is so submerged in the Obamunist kool-aid, so lost in the lunatic haze of their rancid, extremist, hate-mongering faux-religion, that they unconsciously take it as a given that any atrocity like this just HAS to be the result of "right-wing extremism". It isn't that they *want* to opportunistically smear and scapegoat their political opponents - they just do it because they can't conceive of the need to consider any other conclusion.
Early twenty-first century liberals have completely lost the ability to think.
Hence, the irony of James Holmes' (*not* the 52-year-old Tea Partier who now has to fear for his and his family's safety after ABCCCP publicly defamed him) impression of Heath Ledger's Joker from "The Dark Knight". I was watching TDK last night and was reminded of the pseudo-philosophical underpinnings of Ledger's character's anarchic insanity. Particularly his murderous pitting of two boatloads of people - one of upstanding citizen commuters, the other a prison barge - against each other. Why did he do it? As a psychological experiment. The Joker believed that everybody in Gotham - EVERYBODY - was as depraved and nihilistic as he was, and it was simply self-serving conceit for non-criminals to claim otherwise. Thus, his self-perceived purpose and mission: to sew chaos and destruction in order to rip away that civilized facade and force the city's people to confront and acknowledge what, in his view, they really were. Indeed, he saw it as a public service, and himself as the only honest man in town.
I can see Heath Ledger's Joker pulling what his real-life imitator did yesterday for much the same purpose. And unlike in the movie, where the commuters and convicts *don't* turn on each other, he'd have proven his point in spades.
It's not likeability that's keeping The One afloat - he hasn't been likeable since he took office. Every day of his term has been characterized by one dislikeable act after another - his arrogance, his condescension, his sexism, his racism, his dismissiveness and intolerance of dissent - which, contra what his media fanboy protectors and acolytes imagine, they haven't really been able to camouflage. Nor do I think it's primarily fear of being called "racist" that's cutting him this inordinate amount of polling slack, although that's part of it.
Barack Obama appears close in this race when he should be thirty points behind for one over-arching reason: because he's black.
His is the Affirmative Action presidency.
But it only appears that way.
When the votes get tallied on Election Day, the Li'l President will lose by approximately the same margin he won in 2008 - mid single-digits (52-48, 53-47). The 1980 dynamic is at work in this cycle even more than it was thirty-two years ago. Just as Jimmy Carter appeared to be neck and neck with Ronald Reagan but seemed to collapse in the campaign's final days, so it will be this November. Because in reality, neither Mr. Peanut then, nor Red Barry now, was really ever all that close. It's simply that there were voters who were leaning against the incumbent who didn't want to admit it. How much moreso today, when we're under the thumb of not just a stuttering clusterbleep of a miserable failure, but one with delusions of Castroite godhood as well?
Here's the real food for thought: Will The One accept the voters' verdict and relinquish power, no matter how badly he loses? Given his growing string of unconstitutional power grabs and usurpations, I have serious and mounting concerns about even bigger constitutional crises to come.
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