Time for a little straight talk. A few polls show Obama trouncing McCain by double digits. A few others show them neck in neck, with Obama’s neck a point or two ahead of McCain’s. MOst others fall in between, generally hovering around a 6-7 percent spread. Not a single poll – none – shows McCain ahead. That’s not good. You can put lipstick on a hockey mom, but Barack Obama is still a pig. Or something like that. Whatever. While some conservatives hope and pray that all the polls are wrong, the odds are seriously against us right now. That said, we may well be better off making ourselves believe otherwise, at least until after our ballots have been cast. Here’s why:

1. Polls may be wrong. Polls have a long history of being wrong as often as they’re right, and almost uniformly in the direction that favors the Democrat. This time around, a few polls have the race incredibly tight, while most have an Obama blowout. Someone must be wrong.
2. Even when the polls are right, they only tell us how everyone would vote today, if everyone (or everyone considered a likely voter) voted today. No one will conduct such a poll on November 4, and even if they did, the typical three-day weighting would keep the results under wraps until November 7.
3. Self-fulfilling prophecies. People who treat it as a foregone conclusion that Obama is going to win will, as a group, find something better to do than actually vote on November 4. Better the Democrats should make this mistake rather than us. That’s no reason not to bluff, though. When around Democrats who know you’re a Republican or a McCain-leaning independent, by all means act as morose and resigned to defeat as possible. Drop hints that this race is so horribly lost that you probably won’t even bother voting yourself. Then do vote, just don’t make a big deal out of it. Better yet, vote early, then invite all your Democrat friends to some neat social event that just happens to fall on November 4. They’ll thank you later.
4. Sarah Palin. If McCain manages to eke out a victory, Palin will make a great VP for the next 4-8 years and an even better President later. If he loses by a narrow margin but beats the spread, she’ll still be at least as well set up to run at the top of the ticket in ’12 (assuming we still have democratic elections then) as Reagan was in 1980 after losing to the guy who lost to Jimmy Carter. But if McCain gets trounced, the meme will be that Palin cost him the election in ’08, and is to be shunned from now on. Between David Brooks, David Frum, Kathleen Parker, George Will and Peggy Noonan, that will be quite a hurdle to overcome.
5. Only you can elect an Obama-proof Congress. Contrary to popular opinion, this election isn’t just about the Presidency. Democrat control of both house is a foregone conclusion, but a veto-proof Congress and a filibuster-proof Senate are not. Every Republican who stays away from the polls because McCain can’t win lends a half a vote to one or more Democrat candidates for other races who otherwise could lose. Even if an Obama Presidency is inevitable, total control of both political branches (in the event a single conservative resigns, the Supreme Court as well) is not. Forced errors are bad enough. No unforced ones, please.
6. If all else fails, vote your conscience. Better to vote for the lesser evil to prevent the greater one, but if you can’t bring yourself to do that, then at least vote for some third party whackjob like Bob Barr. Better to send a message that will get lost in the forest than to send no message at all. Remember: if McCain loses by a point or two, the long-term message you will send as a voter is “them’s the breaks.” If he loses big, and no one can attribute the difference to a third party (cf. Bush-41 in 1992) the message will be that the Republican Party needs to become more like the Party of Obama. If you are OK with that, you should vote for Obama. If you’re not, you should vote against him.

Insty is getting grief from lefties for supposedly not covering the allegation of voter fraud in California even though he did. What Mr. Pundit likely does not understand is that without exception, anytime a reader purports to attack you for not blogging about X, his real beef is that you are blogging about Y, and the reader would really like you to shut up about Y.

UPDATE: Welcome, ‘Lanchers.

At the risk of committing an own-goal, I can’t help but wondering why anyone would carve a backward-B in anyone else’s face. Isn’t a backward letter what happens by default when one tries to carve something on one’s own face?

UPDATE: Yup, it was a hoax all right. Thanks a heap, toots. With volunteers like you, who needs opponents?

UPDATE x2: Kudos to Michelle Malkin for nailing it from the start. And shame on Matt Drudge and all others who initially reported the story as though the allegations were anything but, well, allegations.

Obama will win the exit poll by a landslide. You read it here first (unless you read it somewhere else before reading it here, which is entirely possible).

Not just a river in Egypt, they say. Me, I’m pretty much resigned to the fact that America has its heart set on electing The One no matter what. The biggest issue is The Economy. It doesn’t matter that Obama has done nothing to help the economy, offers no credible proposals to help it in the future, that he voted present while his party actively endangered it three years ago, and that every serious economist who has examined his proposals (aside from his general hostility to free enterprise as a concept) agrees that his massive intervention he proposes in the future would almost certainly exacerbate it. It’s the economy, stupid, and Democrats own that issue, stupid, so stop thinking about it and just vote for hopeychange, stupid.

Nor does it matter that Obama promises to be the most rabidly anti-gun President in history, even to the point of siccing his lawyers on any TV or radio stations threatening to run an ad that would point this out. Hope and change, man. Hope and change. Hope I don’t take your gun away, but if I do, then what the hell, that’s a change.

Marxian redistribution of wealth? No problem, just put it in cool talk. As surely as 63% of Americans under 5 believe in Santa Claus, 63% of those under 30 believe in “spreading the wealth” around, too. They probably wouldn’t if you mentioned Marx, just as the Obamabots in Harlem would never have supported John McCain’s positions if told that they were McCain’s rather than Obama’s. No matter, it’s Obama’s position so that’s cool. Everything Obama does is cool, by definition.

Disastrous foreign policy? Biden predicting manufactured crises just to test Obama’s mettle? Oh well, we all knew that was coming anyway, so let’s just let out a collective yawn and sing praises to The One. Besides, a weak foreign policy and a likable character make us a lot more popular abroad than an effective leader would. If JFK had truly stood up to Khrushchev, maybe there’d have been no Berlin Wall, no airlift, no famous “ick bin ein Berliner” speech, and the Germans wouldn’t have liked him any more than they like Bush today. We wouldn’t want that, would we? Move over, Fahrvergnügen, say hello to Hopenchangen.

Complete and utter lack of experience? That’s Sarah Palin’s issue, silly. It’s one thing to have a guy who gives good political speeches but has no executive experience in the Oval Office. That’s cool, man. Hope and change! It’s quite another to have someone who gives equally good political speeches but has some executive experience, just not as much as the grownups might want, and have that person position so that they probably won’t be President for several years to come, but theoretically could if something were to go disastrously wrong. So Palin owns the “unqualified” vote, and McCain is further disqualified for even daring to nominate her, while Obama has no qualification issues whatsoever (he’s been running for President, what other qualifications do you need?), nor is it a poor exercise of his judgment to be running for an office even he should know he’s not qualified for, not yet anyway.

Horrendous associations? Guilt by association, man. Not cool. Sitting in a racist pew for 20 years doesn’t make you an anti-white/anti-American racist any more than listening to Hitler makes you a Nazi or attending Klan rallies for 20 years makes you a racist. Hell, we elected Robert Byrd, didn’t we? Maybe he just liked wearing sheets and hanging around with other people dressed as ghosts. And a 10 year relationship with a terrorist doesn’t mean Obama is a terrorist himself, so how could it possibly mean anything else? Besides, none of this matters because McCain once met John Hagee, and may have even shaken his hand. Hope and change!

McQ has similar recollections of 1976. I was 9 then, so I’ll plead almost as much ignorance of that election cycle as Obama does of Ayers, but it sounds about right. Apparently, some lessons were meant to be learned the hard way.

UPDATE: Here’s more evidence from today’s Whizz-Urinal that things will get worse before they get better: a letter to the editor in support of Kay Hagan (and, presumably, Obama) yearns for the good old days of Jimmy Carter and his infamous “moral equivalent of war” (MEOW). This in a state that hasn’t gone Democrat since … Jimmy Carter. I guess some lessons aren’t meant to be learned, period.

UPDATE x2: Denial we can believe in? Me losing it? What say you?

UPDATE: TGirsch calls this post “hyperbole we can believe in.” Au contrary. If anything, the references to Marxian redistribution and the Warren Court were “hypobole,” if that’s a word. Unfortunately, it’s hypobole no one can (or will) believe in until it’s too late.

Literally.

Talking about Obama’s connections with a black racist preacher is racist. Talking about Obama’s chummy relationship with a white terrorist is racist. Depicting him in an ad that likens him to white women is racist. And now, comparing his openly redistributionist policies to socialism is racist.

I’m tempted to criticize Obama’s views on gun control and the Supreme Court, but I’m sure “gun-grabber” and “judicial hack” are races, too. So rather than risk being called a racist myself, I’ll just say that Barack H. Obama is a right on all the issues, well connected with wonderful people, and doggone it, he’s perfect in every way. But vote for John McCain instead. I’m still allowed to say that, right?

In a piece about the interplay between the election and the World Series, the Ass. Press helpfully “fact” checks Senator McCain in a manner that would make Annenberg Political proud:

McCain told several hundred people standing in a cavernous warehouse: “Now, I’m not dumb enough to get mixed up in a World Series between swing states. But I think I may have detected a little pattern with Sen. Obama. It’s pretty simple really. When he’s campaigning in Philadelphia, he roots for the Phillies, and when he’s campaigning in Tampa Bay, he ‘shows love’ to the Rays.”

As a chorus of boos built, he added:”It’s kind of like the way he campaigns on tax cuts, but then votes for tax increases after he’s elected. Or the way he says he backs the middle class and then goes and attacks Joe the Plumber after Sen. Obama’s asked a tough question. What’s that all about?”

In fact, Obama did not attack Joe the Plumber; rather he criticized McCain for suggesting that the Ohio plumber who wants to purchase the plumbing business where he works is in the same economic shape as most working class voters.

It sure is comforting to know that “in fact” Obama and his followers never attacked Joe the Plumber. The Ass. Press said so, and even dropped in an f-bomb on top of it, so who am I to question?

On the off-chance that the right has its own Alec Baldwin equivalents who plan to leave the country if when the wrong guy wins the Presidency, they might want to take this handy quiz to see if they’re smart enough to emigrate to Germany. Then again, there’s always Canada. I can’t find their quiz but I’m pretty sure you can get every question right on their citizenship test by asking yourself “What would an American say?” and selecting the opposite.

Matea Gold of the L.A. Times writes that the crowd at yesterday’s McCain rally in Virginia booed when McCain mentioned that Sarah Palin would be appearing on Saturday Night Live that evening. If you were at the rally, please confirm or deny. As one who attended the North Carolina rally a few hours earlier, all I can say is it doesn’t ring true. The same announcement was made at the earlier rally, and the crowd’s response (mine included) was uniformly positive.

Then again, I could see the Virginia crowd reacting more negatively than we did if in the intervening hours, someone leaked them the script of the medicre sketches that included Palin or the horrendous sketches that didn’t. Seriously, between last night and the equally dreadful Thursday night bits, I have to wonder if Lorne Michaels fired the guy who wrote the brilliant sketch lampooning Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, George Soros and the Sandlers, and re-hired Al Franken in his place. The show was making a real comeback, and then it stopped in its tracks.