Instead of posting tonight, I thought I’d run an encouraging letter that I just received from a man by the name of Rob Rowe. Rob, I believe, will be at our event tomorrow night, in case you have any questions.
Over the past several months, the press has been using color coded battleground maps of the U.S. to show which states they believe to be “up for grabs,” and which states they believe to be safely in the column of one of the candidates. Interestingly, the different media sources have disagreements over how many, and which states are to be categorized as battlegrounds. It is also interesting to note the way the battleground maps have been evolving.
The original thirteen states most media outlets acknowledged as battlegrounds were: Florida, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, Wisconsin.
Soon, many media sources were adding states. Arkansas and West Virginia were now appearing as battleground states. Bush won both states in 2000 and he was originally considered a strong favorite to win them both again, but now they were being considered “up for grabs.”
In addition, some media have since dropped certain states from their list of battlegrounds. Maine and Washington are two such states that have been taken off some lists. Both were Gore wins in 2000. Kerry hasn’t visited them much at all in this campaign.
CNN’s Carlos Watson has recently released a new battleground map which drastically changes the looks of things. On this new map, Maine and Washington are dropped, and 8 new states are added to the original 11 states considered battlegrounds. Every one of the states added to the list are states Bush won in 2000. These are Arkansas and West Virginia as I mentioned above, as well as Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Nevada, Tennessee, and Virginia.
In 2000, Gore had accumulated 266 electoral votes. He was robbed of Missouri’s 11 votes when, on election day, John Ashcroft assembled the Missouri Supreme Court in a matter of minutes to overrule a St.Louis Court’s ruling to allow the right to vote to all voters waiting in polling lines by 8pm. (That’s a little info for you folks who wonder how Ashcroft got that surprise appointment.) Florida’s 25 electoral votes were also stolen, through multiple methods of vote suppression, exclusion, confusion and destruction. Exit polls (which used the exact same methods which predicted every other state’s final outcomes within a couple hundred votes or less) showed Gore won Florida by a margin in the tens of thousands. Without Missouri or Florida, Bush had accumulated only 235 electoral votes.
This year, if Bush manages to win every state he won fair and square (as far as I know) in 2000, he will have accumulated 240 electoral votes. If the voters in St.Louis fail to get out to the polls and finish voting before 8pm, or are blocked again in some new way, Bush will bump his tally up to 251. If the Republicans once again outmaneuver, outwit, and overpower Democrats in Florida and steal it’s 27 electoral votes, Bush will narrowly exceed that 270 needed, once again, with a tally of 278.
Bush can win with a repeat of 2000’s results. But Missouri and Florida must be won or stolen for him. In fact, he can win even if he loses one of the very small battleground states; Arkansas (6), Nevada (5) or New Hampshire (4). But he can only afford to lose one of the very small states…he absolutely cannot lose any combination of two small battleground states. And the truth is that, if he does lose any one of these states, it’s almost certain that he will lose another, because it will indicate a general nationwide trend.
That’s why I will say it now that if Bush loses a single one of the following dozen battleground states, you can bet he has lost the election: Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, or West Virginia. Recent polls show Bush in serious trouble in half of them where he is in a dead heat or lightly behind Kerry. 3 more are well within striking distance for Kerry….
The most telling evidence of how things are going can be seen in where the candidates are campaigning. Bush and Edwards are both campaigning in Colorado today. It’s simply a fact that if the race is close in Colorado, Bush is losing!
As I said the other day, if Kerry wins just one medium sized state like Colorado (9), and holds on to the states Gore won in 2000, it’s over for Bush. His corrupt buddies in Florida, Missouri and Ohio can fix as many votes as they want in those states and it won’t make a damn bit of difference…Puppetboy goes down!!!
UPDATE: Not ones to give up power without a fight, it would appear that every Republican scumbag in a position of power has been asked to do his or her part. Most recently, that’s meant shredding the voter registration forms of Democrats in Nevada.
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Re: Voter registrations being ripped up – this shit just makes me sick. This is supposed to be a Democracy! You know, for the people, by the people, whathaveyou! Not for the Republicans, by the Republicans. And you know if the Democrats were doing that (which we wouldn’t because we are complete fucking scumbags), the Republicans would be on every news show/channel out there. My heart hurts again.
I liked Rob’s reading of the polls. I don’t know that I’m as confident as he is though. Part of me wants to get really excited by the fact that things seem to be turning, but part of me realizes that polls aren’t good predictors and that anything could still happen between now and election day. We just need to stay focused on the task at hand, which is turning out the Democratic vote, even in the most Kerry-friendly states.
Update on Nevada:
“WE WILL PAINT NEVADA DEEP BLUE OR DIE TRYING!!!!! Speaker of the Nevada State Assembly (House) Richard Perkins and State Committee Chair Adrianna Martinez held a press conference at 8:00 PST outlining the case much as it was earlier stated in the earlier KLAS Report which I posted. Tomorrow the Democrats will be launching a new NEVADA VOTER PROTECTION PROJECT, the specifics of which will be outlined tomorrow. Speaker Perkins noted that every effort will be undertaken to assure that all Nevadan who have registered have the right to vote on Election Day. So the gauntlet has been laid down. WISH US LUCK AND OREGON AS WELL!!!!”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/12/225838/51
Shit! “we are NOT complete scumbags…”
Make up your mind, Kathleen. Are we scumbags or not?
You’re a flip-flopper just like Kerry.
Awww, but I *like* flip-floppers, so it’s OK, Kathleen.
Mark, Chris and I are going to try to make it out tonight to the debate watch. Hope to see you there!
The main point of my post above was to draw attention to the evolving battleground state maps, and to what it suggests about what is going on beneath the surface. What it suggests is that the “center of gravity” in this campaign is in Kerry’s favor, and it is required of the Republicans that they keep doing things which disturb the settling of public opinion against them. There are still important variables upon which the entire election may turn. Some big ones are the new voter registrations, the get-out-the-vote organizations, the weather on election day, and an October Surprise(s), (or as I expect, a November 1st surprise).
One good thing that Kerry did – he met with President Musharraf and assured him that his administration would be just as generous with Pakistan as Bush had been. Kerry didn’t want to give him any reason to feel as though he should help Bush win this thing through such tactics. At least, that was my reading.
I had to re-register this year. I’ll let you know if anything happens to try to stop my vote.
Good luck, Collin. We need every vote we can get in Colorado this year.