I'm going to play the devil's advocate here, and make the case for why we're going to lose again. I've saved this for the last day so it will have the least possible impact on our morale.
It has to be said so that if, god forbid, it should happen, someone will have predicted it at least. I hope I'm wrong, and I beleive I probably am wrong, but I'm just going to lay out my best case for the plausibility of the worst-case scenario.
Why we will take neither the Senate nor the House
1) Because of a major Election-Theft Infrastructure Upgrade - the "Quarantine Room". It shows bad faith on the part of the corporate-owned media. They seek to limit access to public data and thereby supress our ability to challenge the results. This will lead to smoother, less controversial election theft.
2) Last time I checked, the deployment of electronic voting machines had only become more widespread.
3) All it takes for us to lose is to gain less than 15 seats in the house and less than, what 6 seats in the senate? We could win 14 house seats and 5 Senate seats. We've made a gain, as we expected, but just not the landslide.
4) The corporate media is already managing expectations to reduce the shock of another unexpected Demcratic loss.
Pew Poll: GOP surging
The new Pew poll shows Republicans regaining some lost ground in the last week of the campaign.A nationwide Pew Research Center survey finds voting intentions shifting
in the direction of Republican congressional candidates in the final days of the 2006 midterm campaign. The new survey finds a growing percentage of likely voters saying they will vote for GOP candidates. However, the Democrats still hold a 48% to 40% lead among registered voters, and a modest lead of 47%-43% among likely voters.
The most striking findings - independents have warmed, slighly to GOP candidates, and Republicans are more engaged than they've been in months. Also, 19 percent of voters say the Kerry joke raise doubts about voting Democratic. Thanks again, John.
A late "surge" reported by the media is a key element in setting up the diebolding at the polls.
Do I think this is going to happen? Doubtful. The gap is still too wide (a polling gap wider than the MOE makes diebolding too difficult to explain). However, there is definitely some "expectation setting" going on today.
by Richard Cranium
Richard Cranium is right - this is called managing expectations.
The Republicans will say you Democrats were irrationally exuberant. Who are you to feel entitled to win back control? You won some seats right? Don't be sore losers, it was fair and square. You Democrats always whine when you lose. Now you're whining after you've won!
The Corporate-owned media has created it's quarantine room to control access to the last hope for electoral integrity - the exit poll data.
TIGHT LID KEPT ON EXIT-POLL 'VAULT'
Exit-poll data will be under lock and key Election Day to help networks avoid the Bush-Gore debacle of 2000 - and prevent bloggers from trumpeting results before the polls close.
The crucial info - which could provide an early hint if a Democratic wave is in fact under way - will be squirreled away in a windowless New York office room dubbed the "Quarantine Room," the Washington Post first reported.
...
Only two staffers from each of the TV networks and The Associated Press will be authorized to tear through the exit-poll data at the vote vault.
Those staffers will have to surrender their cellphones, laptop computers and BlackBerrys - it's the price of admission.
And they won't be able communicate with their offices until 5 p.m.
Remember this principle - in general, restricting access to public information to fewer people is bad. The fewer people have access, the easier it is for them to present a unified front if they choose to deceive us.
These few people who will have access to the exit poll data are selected by news corporations. Perhaps they'll be selected for their willingness to compromise themselves, their deference to authority, their ignorance of technical issues. They could be the dupes or worse, the willing servants of the election-theft engineers.
On Election Night, Networks Plan to Proceed With Caution
By Howard Kurtz
Two years ago, its sample was so skewed that the group's surveys showed Sen. John Kerry beating President Bush well into the night.
[Brian] Williams is acutely aware of that history. "I called Florida for Al Gore, too," he says, recalling his anchoring role on MSNBC. "It was a horrible moment." Now, he says, "we have all kinds of fail-safes built into the system."
Notice the way Howie Kurtz and Brian Williams remain in denial of the fact that George Bush stole these previous elections. It's as if the whole recount never began, and Katherine Harris and the Supreme Court never intervened to stop it. That should give you an idea of where these corporate media honchos stand on this issue.
We should be getting the message loud and clear from the corporate media - We're going to screw you again, of course.
Why should we expect the media to act any differently this time? We already know that the corporate media has become the propaganda megaphone for the Bush team.
Other's here feel exactly the same about the "Quarantine Room". moon in the house of moe was on the case immediately:
Media coverup is set to go national Tuesday
Independent organizations, i hope you're out there. The canary - exit polls which have been remarkably accurate for decades and have been relied on to predict election outcomes and monitor election fraud - look like they're about to be flushed down the toilet.
by moon in the house of moe
Seriously, I think we should get commitments from our key candidates that if the vote is close and/or there has been any degree of problem in their state - machines not working, long lines, etc: The Democratic candidates should refuse to concede!
by AskQuestions
Many of us have been saying this for a long time.
Now, even politically calculative, cautious people are saying it:
Pelosi warns: Republicans may try to steal the election
Nancy Pelosi says Republicans might try to steal it. I'll translate from her politically-sensitive language - Republicans WILL try to steal it and they MAY succeed.
I think they probably will succeed. Why? Because they've succeeded in the last three elections. If they fail this time, it would be an aberration. It is more conservative to extrapolate the continuation of the current trend.
Here's a little background on why the corporations and the aristocracy they support are not going to roll over and die, and what this means in the next election.
The corporations are not planning to give us back our democracy. Why should they? Greed is like a python wrapped around a pig. It never gives slack. It only grasps tighter.
Why would the trans-national corporations voluntarily relinquish their new guilded age? Their profits have never been higher. Regulations have never been less of an obstacle.
Look at the big picture - the trans-national corporations are essentially virtual totalitarian states. Democracy is the enemy of the totalitarian states. To trans-national corporations, national sovereignty is an obstacle and Democracy is entropy.
The trans-national corporations tithe a huge amount of money every election to suppress Democracy and preserve their unregulated status. The trans-national corporations gather together at WTO events to side-step national sovereignty, ignore regulations. Their agreements - NAFTA, FTAA, GATT, MEFTA and the like, are given fast-track approval by sell-out leaders.
The truth is, Democracy and Socialism are not mutually exclusive. Unregulated "Free Market" Capitalism and Democracy are, in fact, mutually exclusive.
Karl Marx understood this when he said "Democracy is the road to socialism".
I believe Democracy is the key to liberty. That's why I call myself Democrat. A socially responsible democrat, perhaps a "Social Democrat".
Democracy is how we make the rules of our economic system. We can choose to be anywhere on the spectrum between the extremes of Communism and unregulated Capitalism. The middle looks good to me.
The war on Democracy is how the Machines take over.
In the story of the Matrix, the machines brought us convenience. Robots served us by making our lives easy. They became ubiquitous, then they gained cognitive independence and easily took over.
I reality, the process is more insidious and immediate. It's not going to happen in the future, it's happening now.
Corporations are the "machines". They are structured systems of incentives which make use of "human resources" as interchangeable parts. The employees, even the executives, are merely cells within a multi-cellular organism - the corporation.
Corporations have bought out our media and our legislative branch of government. Now they insert themselves conveniently to measure our democratic will with electronic voting machines.
Humanity is presently being subjugated by non-human "entities". Corporations are the "Machines" of The Matrix and we're being methodically defeated.
By taking over our voting infrastructure, the corporations are attempting to put the last nails in the coffin of human liberty.
What are we going to do about it?
THE OBRADOR OPTION
1) Candidates who suspect their voters have been disenfranchised must not concede.
2) Build parallel infrastructure.
We must build free-software, open-source electronic voting machines which print paper ballots and give people paper receipts. Every vote must have a unique ID and a paper copy.
This way, we can challenge the proprietary offerings with open technology while keeping our paper trail and providing electronic convenience.
People will never go back to paper-only because people are lazy and they want the convenience of electronic voting.
Republicans will be much less inclined to attempt an election theft if they know they can't erase the paper-trail, and an accurate recount is always available.
We can't go backwards technologically, nor can we go backwards institutionally. We'll never be able to purify our corrupted institutions unless we build new ones to give functional support to these failing institutions.
The way institions are formed, the way they grow, decay and ultimately succumb to entropy is rather complex and organic. Adaptation under such difficult circumstances is like repairing an airplane in flight.
Once an institution becomes corrupted, it has to be replaced, temporarily at least. If an institution must be radically restructured, it cannot be relied upon until it is repaired.
Likewise, during a serious surgery, there have to be artificial life-support systems to keep the body alive while the original organs are repaired.
Based on this organic understanding of institutions, I believe it will be fruitful to focus on building new institutions. These will be designed to resist the new and insidious forms of corruption which are devouring our antiquated institutions.
It's difficult to accept such radical change. It may be tempting to deny the extent of the challenges we face. Ultimately, we must face reality and adapt.
So, Netroots... What's it going to be?
You take the blue pill and the story ends.
You wake in your bed and you believe
whatever your media wants you to believe.
You take the red pill and you stay
in Wonderland, and I show you how
deep the Republican corruption goes.