Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is up by three points among all voters, but down by two points among likely voters. Michael Bennett looks to be narrowly leading among his constituents, but decisively losing among those who plan to actually cast ballots. Polls find Democratic upstart Joe Sestak either up by four or down by seven, depending on how many voters show up. Poll after poll finds the same result: Americans prefer to have Democrats in charge right now... they just don't plan to vote for them today.
With nearly a quarter of the House of Representatives in play, this gulf between registered voters and likely voters has never been so significant. A three or four point swing or pollster miscalculation in either direction moves projected results from continued (though slim) Democratic control of the House to an 80-seat Republican victory that it could very well take decades for Democrats to overcome.
Luckily for optimists on both sides, there is one group that trumps both registered and likely voters: Actual voters. Actual early voting numbers have been mixed and occasionally surprising. If I were a Democrat this morning (and it turns out I am), I would do everything in my power to make sure that every legal, registered voter I knew became an actual voter today.
I absolutely understand why independent or culturally-conservative Obama 2008 voters might want to sit this election out or vote for Republican candidates. The economy is still in shambles and the rather timid Obama administration has done little to address the immediate needs of the nation. I also firmly believe that is the height of foolishness for them to do so.
At first blush it seems hard to believe, but they have even more to lose under Republican control than Democrats. At least partisan Democrats will end up looking pretty good after two years of 90s-style government shutdowns and Republican grandstanding. All middle-of-the-road voters will get out of it is two more years of nothing. The new Republican majority will not suddenly come up with all those ideas they haven't put forward during the past two years. Nor will they suddenly become interested in bipartisanship. No, if recent history is any indication, they will simply make sure that the government comes to a halt while they ham their way to nothing, hoping to oust Obama in 2012 with some mysterious, electable candidate who will never materialize. (All the while, of course, they will be boosting Obama's popularity among independents.) But "undecided" voters are rare in midterm elections, which very often hinge on turnout.
What I have a most difficult time wrapping my head around is the purportedly sizable group of disaffected liberal Democrats who just don't feel like they've been given enough by the Obama administration to make another two years of government worth half an hour at their polling place.
I know, I know. There's a rather popular notion among some liberals that not voting is the new voting and that removing oneself from the political process somehow makes one morally superior. They dislike President Obama because he's too soft and doesn't get enough of what he wants. They loathe Speaker Pelosi because she's too hard and gets everything she wants. They'd rather write angry comments on blog posts than go out and vote. They want everything their way, gift-wrapped with a nice bow and the word "bipartisan" worked into the card, if at all possible.
Sadly, Santa Claus is not now, nor has he ever been, on the ballot.
Also unfortunate for Democrats is that this mindset is uniquely liberal. Republicans never come close to getting any of their biggest goals met, and still they vote. After decades of Republican control of Congress and the presidency, abortion is still legal, Social Security still exists, we still have a minimum wage and Big Bird is still brainwashing their children on the teevee box. All we ever seem to get out of Republican presidencies are floundering economies, ballooning national debt and wildly ironic lectures about how they are the party of economics and fiscal responsibility.
Could a sizable number of Democrats really have expected so much more from this government that they genuinely believe it is now better to just hand it back over to the Republicans? If you were convinced (to paraphrase Hillary Clinton) that Barack Obama's arms would spread and the heavens would open, your expectations were simply never rooted in reality. The Blue Dog Democrats serve at the leisure of constituents who reach for pitchforks every time they hear the name Obama. The president, though bizarrely embraced as some sort of lefty messiah in 2008, never at any point showed himself to be more than a corporate centrist with all the political cowardice and none of the insider know-how of more seasoned nominees past. I would humbly suggest that a center-left, sometimes amateurish government was all that anyone could have reasonably expected. If you were surprised that there was poison in the Kool-Aid, you probably shouldn't have joined the cult.
If you're a liberal who isn't voting because you feel like not enough has been done to advance the causes you care most about, I probably actually agree with you on those points. I agree that it is vitally important to continue to work toward truly universal health care in America and to end DOMA and DADT and the passage of ENDA are long-overdue moral imperatives and that energy reform is desperately needed for the future of this country. But that doesn't mean that it is anything short of idiotic to help Republicans capture Congress just to teach Democrats a lesson. Are we really to believe that losing to more conservative politicians is going to make Democrats more liberal?
I also don't think I need to remind you that allowing Democrats to lose control of the House of Representatives is the easiest way to make sure nothing we care about gets done for years -- maybe even decades, if some forecast models are right.
The Democratic agenda and quite probably the federal government will shut down as soon as Nancy Pelosi hands over the gavel (I write to Republican applause). When Harry "Couldn't get the votes" Reid and Barack "I'll just let Congress do its thing and check in when it's done" Obama wanted to scale back or scrap health-care reform, it was Pelosi who managed the Herculean feat of getting the Senate version of the health-care bill through the House, word for word. While the Senate struggled for years to make the most modest advances, Pelosi passed every piece of her 100-hour plan with 13 hours to spare. Love her or hate her, at every step of the way it has been Pelosi, not Obama and certainly not Reid, who has driven Democratic accomplishment over the last two years.
"What accomplishments!" I hear some of those sit-at-home Democrats sneer. Well, if a health insurance overhaul half a century in the making, unprecedented consumer credit protections, historically low tax levels, a draw down of US forces in Iraq and Wall Street reform aren't a good enough start for you, what exactly would it take to get you to vote? A pony? A public flogging of Karl Rove?
Take two minutes to seriously consider what would have been accomplished by this country during the last two years if Republicans had been in control. Really think it through. If Republicans had had their way, four million more low-income children would be without health insurance and the ones lucky enough to afford it could still be refused care for preexisting conditions. If Republicans had their way, millions (if not billions) of future Americans would suffer economic ruin and/or go without health care entirely if they happened to commit the criminal offense of becoming ill. If Republicans had had their way, the toughest financial reforms since the Great Depression would never have been enacted. If Republicans had had their way, we may well have found ourselves in a depression so great we'd have to give "the economic downturn of 1929" a new name.
In 2010, we simply cannot afford the delusion that we are somehow teaching the Democrats a lesson by not voting. Moreover: Elections are for deciding who runs the government, not who needs a little spanking.
So, please, Democrats: Vote. In fact, don't just vote and call it a night. Voting isn't quite enough this time. Call up a few friends who might be sitting this one out and make sure they made it to the polls. Drive people to the polls if you can. Volunteer, if you are able, at your local campaign HQ -- I'm sure they'll be glad to put you to work. Call up some other friends who you know will be voting and make sure they're doing the same. Strongly urge your moderate and independent friends who are occasional voters to come out as well. They probably won't be voting for sideshow attractions like Sharron Angle.
Ask your more hesitant friends (more politely than I phrase it here): Would you rather go to the polls and keep Republicans out of power, or sit at home and feel smug?
If Democratic voters can be bothered to show up, they could very well keep control of the House. If they don't, they're unlikely to see it back within their grasp for a very, very long time.
But for the rest I'm voting Green. "It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it."
I don't want heath care "reform" bills that make insurer stocks skyrocket. I don't want financial regulations that make Wall Street profits and unemployment skyrocket. I don't want Democrats.
Every cycle, I'm like for all humans to be treated fairly, except according to my vote...... Palestinians.
But I never blamed Jim Jones. He was obviously crazy, but the real problem was that his followers were stupid enough to to go against their self-interests. Similarly, I don't blame Christine O'Donnell, Sharron Angle, Joe Miller, Rand Paul, etc. They are obviously not fit to run for dogcatcher, much less Senator. The real problem is all the Rednecks and other minimum wage types will vote for these incompetents, and essentially work against their own self-interests. How do you protect people from their own stupidity?
What have I seen in my 71 years? Wars, endless wars, and more and more of them.
Guess who's next? Yemen! A no-brainer. Yes, it's time to invade Yemen. Those nasty Yemenites have been itching to mix it up with the CIA/Marines/Recon./Seals/Special Forces, any U.S. government organization dedicated to killing people. First the hidden war, then drone bombers which kill mostly women, children, and other civilians, including wedding parties, followed closely by a U.S. Marine invasion, followed by U.S. Army occupying forces.
Will the American people ever wake up? No. Why should they? They let foxnoise and other media outlets who push the government line do their thinking for them.
Do the American people really care? No. If they would care, they wouldn't vote for the same tweedledee and tweedledum parties that give them all their wars.
One would think that after 30, 40, 50 years of wars the American people might wake up and see a pattern.
Nope. Not a chance. They're asleep at the wheel, and nothing will ever change.
Most Liberals think voting alone is all the friggin thing they need to do. I don't know a single ( and there maybe one) not one single right we enjoy in this country that required people to just vote and leave it at that. If in fact on Climate Change, there was a massive civil disobedience campaign wired directly into candidates to vote for in favor of positive action you'd have a point. But because at the present time their isn't a movement you are guaranteed to have most of the democrats you voted for today, continue to ignore you and the major issues of our day.
And give big business, every frigg'in thing they've ever wanted. I'm co-signing my man cavallo on this thread, after you've guys have voted it's back to a gluttonous consumer lifestyle that's destroying the eco systems of this planet, driving extinct 120 species aday. All the while enjoying without protest a high standard of living predicated on the absolute misery of billions of people, who work like slaves to make your life feel free in the west. Without so much as a second thought about it.
So celebrate you political victories, go out drinking and dancing as 25,0000 children a day starve, as 2billion live on less than 2 dollars a day, as one billion have no clean drinking water,as the United States continues to torture thousands of people (it's called extraordinary rendition) in black sites all over the world, even when Obama lies to you and says it's over......and you don't even care enough to research and findout yourself.
So good luck to you in making the world a better place, by simply voting without doing anything much else of consequence. The Koch brothers will be happy to know, nothings really changed.
Here's to you Mr. Cavallo, maybe after voting you could join me in the streets, to fight for what I just voted for. FANNED & FAVED!
Two years should never define a presidency. What a shame people couldn't have more patience.
Don't ask, don't tell, don't vote, don't donate.
Enjoy!
All three are completely hopeless and ineffective. With the House, the Senate, and the White House - they did absolutely nothing.
Don't ask, don't tell, don't vote, don't donate.
I wash my hands of them all.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-herrington/the-invisible-six-point-d_b_757555.html
The numbers have drifted a bit since then, but the fact remains that, among registered voters, the Democrats are preferred, turning the numbers upside down to a 4-6 point Democratic lead. Some of the community and press have been picking up the meaning of that in the last few days. So get out and vote.
Don't bother chiding me about how disappointed you are. If you aren't voting you have already decided that you have nothing worth saying.
Not voting at all is a vote for keeping things the way they are. Low voter turnout is not a message that anyone will listen to.
A perfect example of a holier-than-thou comment from someone who does not get it. It is a fact that the Obama administration used the liberal segment and then threw them under the bus.
"I know, I know. There's a rather popular notion among some liberals that not voting is the new voting and that removing oneself from the political process somehow makes one morally superior. They dislike President Obama because he's too soft and doesn't get enough of what he wants. They loathe Speaker Pelosi because she's too hard and gets everything she wants. They'd rather write angry comments on blog posts than go out and vote. They want everything their way, gift-wrapped with a nice bow and the word "bipartisan" worked into the card, if at all possible. "
No...you DON'T know! None of the liberals are looking for bi-partisanship. We are sick and tired of being given a Republican administration when we voted Democrat. Obama has succeeded in not only being the first black President we have had, but also in being the first black Republican President we have had.
The Obama admin is right when they imply (as they have several times) that the left is nothing but a bunch of perpetually miserable whiners for whom nothing is ever enough.
On the other hand, the left's disappointment in Obama is not entirely unreasonable either. He promised so very much and was rewarded with the largest congressional majorities any POTUS has enjoyed in decades, and yet he has delivered mostly "scorecard" wins like HCR (which ended up looking nothing like anyone actually wanted) and Stimulus (which has not fixed the economy) while failign utterly to deliver on DADT, Gitmo, or most importantly, jobs.
What both sides miss is they NEED each other. Obama does not get elected w/o the pro left and will not get re-elected w/o them, but if the left thinks sittinit out will "teach Dems a lesson" or that Republicans will somehow be more likely to push the left's agenda, they have lost any grip on reality they may have had.
I'm not going to participate in voting for a party (either one) which continues (or furthers) failed foreign policies and conflicts, denies rights to American citizens, and has failed to live up to many of the progressive promises made in the campaign.
The House passed a repeal of DADT. The Senate put it in the defense authorization bill. But the REPUBLICANS filibustered it. How is that the fault of Democrats?
Most House and Senate Dems actually oppose the war. Why stay home and punish them? Do you honestly think the GOP will take actions like de-funding it? No, they'll continue to support the war.
This absurd notion that unless the Democrat is Dennis Kucinich then he's not a real democrat needs to end. By holding on to this absurdly high liberal standard, you're in effect saying you want permanent GOP rule. There's NEVER going to be a Democrat that will meet this litmus test AND get elected President. Obama is about as close as you're going to get.