Half-demolished Kitchen of the Soul

Dare I feel confident?

One thing my father taught me (though I don't know if it was intentional) was to not get my hopes up. Like they say, pessimists are seldom disappointed. But I've been looking at poll numbers and things are looking much better for Obama than McCain.

This map has only the strongly Democratic states in blue. These are ones with long histories of electing Democrats. Of course, the red states are Republican strongholds. The ones in yellow are either too close to call at this time or ones where Obama has only a slight lead. As you can see, Obama would need only six more electoral votes. That means he would need to win only one eastern state or Colorado or any two western states. Some pollsters have already put Virginia in Obama's column. Others are saying Colorado, Nevada, Florida and Ohio are as good as in the bag. Some say Georgia, Mississippi, South Dakota and Arizona are in play.

Meanwhile, McCain can afford to lose only one low-electoral vote state. He has to win all the others. It's not impossible. The '00 and '04 elections turned out that way. That's what keeps me from letting completely loose of my fatalistic skepticism.

Arizona up for grabs?

Oh, this is interesting. The McCain campaign has had to start running commercials in Arizona and the senator is having to make campaign stops there because the polls show a dead heat.

Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 10/28-30. Likely voters. Margin of Error 4%

McCain (R) 48 
Obama (D) 47

Early voters  (17 percent of sample)
McCain (R) 42 

  Obama (D) 54

On top of that, polls on a hypothetical race for McCain's senate seat in 2010 shows him trailing AZ governor Janet Napolitano (D) by eight points.

The view from here

A reporter for Slate spent time with campaign workers here in Charlotte. I think she got it right. Read it here.

Obama's thinking

The first step to solving a problem is to understand it. Few problems at the presidential level are simple matters right or wrong, Good® versus evil. Everything is multileveled and interconnected. The possibilities for wasted effort and unintended consequences are high, particularly if you're depending on the reality of the situation conforming to your ideology. So it's incredibly refreshing to hear Barack Obama talk about the situation in Afghanistan. He doesn't paint a rosy picture, but you sense he at least has a broader comprehension of the problem.

Vancouver up close

This is the Vancouver most of us imagine. The sparkling cosmopolitan center nestled between the mountains and the sea. What you don't see in photos like this is the traffic. No place is perfect, eh?

In dutch

 

The reason for my trip to Washington was to shoot interviews with homebuilders in Lynden, a small town north of Bellingham, which is a medium sized city north of Seattle. The names on my contact list, and the name of the building supply store where we would meet, were Dutch. Hmm, interesting. When we drove down Front Street it became obvious the cluster of Dutch names wasn't coincidence.

Over lunch I asked what brought Dutch settlers to this far corner of the country. I knew many immigrants to North America sought out places similar to their homeland. Was that the case here? I was told the rich alluvial plane, it's proximity to the sea and it's climate make the area very much like the Netherlands. Well, there you go.

What I didn't learn until I looked up Lynden's Wikipedia entry was its place in drug smuggling history.

Do they get it?

Polling shows that as the McCain campaign turns the dial up on its mud slinging machine unaffiliated and undecided voters drift away. So why do they keep doing it? I developed a theory while trying to sleep on the plane.

Perhaps conservatives believe moderates are like them, only slightly less conservative—sort of conservatives who don't know it yet. So instead of paying attention to the actual differences between the political right and the middle, they go on the assumption that all it takes to turn moderates into conservatives is inoculate them with bigger doses of the stuff that sends conservatives running to the voting booth.

My other theory, which doesn't preclude the first, is that modern conservatism is built on the foundation of attacking the "other." They're much better at being against things. As Eric Hoffer wrote in The True Believer, movements need a common enemy in order to stay motivated. Long lasting movements manage to find new enemies if ever the original one is vanquished. When that's how you motivate your partisans, you might assume that's the same way you enlist bystanders. Sometimes it works. Fear of terrorism won enough moderate voters over to Bush in 2004. That doesn't mean it will always work.

BC to BC

Over the years, in bits and pieces (some of them over and over and over) I'd driven the entire length of Interstate 5, except the bit north of Seattle. I did that last leg yesterday on the way back from visiting Vancouver. Now I've been border to border, British Columbia to Baja California. 

It's a very little thing, but now I can add it to having driven the entire length of Interstate 40, from Barstow to Wilmington, NC.

Guilt by association

The McCain folks have been trying to make a big deal out of Obama having served on charitable board with former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. Well two can play that game:

John McCain claims to be a maverick reformer, but he has been working along side a Convicted Felon for decades.  Yes, ever since he was first elected to the Senate, John McCain has been 'caucusing' with Alaska Senator Ted Stevens who has been convicted on seven counts of corruption in a longterm bribery investigation. Not only that, McCain's running-mate has also worked with this felon in her role as the so-called reformer governor of Alaska.

Who do you trust to bring change to Washington?  A trusted family man still married to his first wife, or a Senator still haunted by his own ethics scandals who 'pals around' with a convicted felon?

And don't forget the years McCain spent "paling around" with communists in Hanoi. Maybe he's the one who's the secret brainwashed terrorist. (In case you didn't get it, this is satire.)

It was bound to happen eventually

Game 5 of the World Series was cut short last night because of rain. It won't be continued tonight because there's a chance of snow. Snow!

As the baseball season gets longer and longer it's in jeopardy of becoming a winter sport.