I’ve already called the exit poll for Obama, but I’m ready to elaborate a bit more. Here’s a more detail of how it will shake out among the 5% of the electorate that actually waits until Election Day to not-early-vote:

1. Obama: 30%-35%
2. O-BAAAAAA-ma!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hallelfrickinlujah, Obama! Yesssssssssss!: 19%
3. McCain: 20-25%
4. Palin: 10%
5. Nobama: 10%
6. Leave me alone, asshole: 6%
7. Barr: One vote, from Barr himself.
8. Nader: One vote, from David Frum. Even Nader can’t bring himself to vote for Nader anymore.

The numbers have tightened a bit, sure, as they always do, but let’s be honest: they don’t look good. Right now, a socialist with less qualification than any major candidate in modern U.S. history is on the cusp of winning the Presidency, and almost no one who isn’t a staunch conservative seems to care. Joe the Plumber seems to have helped some, and it’s too early to tell if the 2001 interview may have helped more, but regardless, the odds right now are in favor of the guy who wants to make Marxism cool. Our “senior” Senator, whose claim to fame is being married to another senior Senator, is primed to lose to one of the three alleged mothers who made up the infamous “Million” Mom March. Even Bev Perdue, whose friggin’ surname is French for “lost,” probably won’t. And don’t get me started on Minnesota’s presumptive Senator, Stuart Smalley. He’s not good enough, he’s sure as hell not smart enough, and doggone it, no one with an IQ above room temperature likes him, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be gracing the U.S. Senate with his presence for the next six years. John Murtha? That dimbulb doesn’t understand that “vote for me, you cousin-humping rednecks” is a crude joke to be employed by Republicans, not a serious campaign slogan for Democrats. Yet even he will likely get another term, as will Nancy Pelosi, who went as far as to insult everyone’s intelligence by arguing that giving the Democrats even more control of Congress than they currently enjoy will make Congress more “bipartisan.”

Yes, some unforeseen event could turn the tide and make it all better. No, it probably won’t, and even in the unlikely event that it does, it’s not too early to ask what brought us to the brink, if only to prepare us for future elections in the unlikely event that The One allows us to hold such things in the future. There are probably too many reasons to count, but the following list is a start.

1. Branding problems. Bush may look better in history books 20 years out, but he looks like crap now. That doesn’t make any Republican’s race insurmountable, but it’s a handicap for sure.
2. Corruption. OK, just kidding, actually just a branding problem, combined with the reality that the Democrats do not have a complete lock on corruption. In a rational world, Ted Stevens’s corruption would damage him, not the party as a whole, and Tim Mahoney would hurt his fellow Democrats at least as much as Mark Foley hurt his fellow Republicans in 2006. We don’t live in a rational world.
3. MCain-Feingold aka Shays-Meehan. Any Republican candidate could have made a principled decision to forgo public financing and attack the so-called “reforms” that have done nothing but stifle free speech. Did I say “any” Republican? I’m sorry, I meant all but two potential Republicans: Chris Shays and John McCain. I forgot, who is running on the Republican ticket? Oh yeah, it’s one of those two, isn’t it? Crap.
4. Coolness. Somehow Obama has convinced everyone to the left of Duncan Hunter that it’s inapproporiate to even say Obama’s full name or mention his redistributive tendencies. He can mention them himself, of course, that’s cool, but no one else can.
5. Campaigns. I used to snicker at Obama’s claim that he has all the requisite executive experience because he’s been running for President for so long. I mean, c’mon, that’s like me having the chutzpah to interview for a job as CEO of some huge company and telling the directors that I’m qualified to be CEO because I’ve … um … applied to become their CEO. But one thing is clear: someone on the Obama campaign has done a hell of a job of organizing that campaign in a way that the McCain campaign can’t even dream of. I know firsthand how poorly organized the McCain campaign is. I’ll elaborate in another post.
6. Pendulums. A certain percentage of the population just likes to flip-flop. Don’t ask why. They just do. We needed to see that coming, and to anticipate that “change,” even as an undefined variable, might actually gain some traction this time around. To have avoided the stupid debate over who can be the bigger change, and to have debated instead over what kind of change the nation may want, we needed to get in front of the “change” issue much sooner than we did.
7. Media. Everyone but FoxNews is in the tank for Obama. Not sure what the McCain camp could have done about that – whining about it almost certainly wouldn’t have helped – but it’s a reality we have to be prepared to deal with. Obama owned all but one of the major networks already, so he didn’t need his own channel on Dish Network. McCain could have used one.
8. Sarah Palin. Just kidding about that one. Without Sarah Palin or someone like her (e.g., Bobby Jindal), McCain would have never recaptured the base, and McCain would be down by at least 10 points in every poll rather than just the outliers. Palin is the only reason I can say right now that McCain will probably lose, rather than definitely losing. I’m cautiously optimistic that Palin-Jindal will recapture the White House in 2012, assuming we still have free and fair elections then. I’m less optimistic that the duo will be able to undo all the damage created by Obama/Biden in the interim (cf. Ronald Reagan, who fired up the base and served twice as long as Jimmy Carter, but never managed to abolish the Department of Education, restore balance to the Ninth Circuit, neutralize Iran or reclaim John McCain’s birthplace).

If you either voted for Obama or plan to do so between now and November 4, this one’s for you. Are you:

1. A socialist who gets a thrill going up your leg every time you hear someone drone on about economic “justice?”
2. A far-left liberal who doesn’t necessarily endorse socialism per se, but does identify more closely with socialism than with even the maverickiest version of center-right pseudo-conservatism?
3. A single-issue voter who agrees with Obama on one hot-button issue like widespread gun confiscation, retroactive abortion or coerced unionism, and could give a crap about every other issue under the sun?
4. A dumbass who has no idea what he’s voting on, but considers it his civil duty to vote anyway?
5. A retarded-ass who audaciously hopes Obama will change into whatever the hell you’d like a President to be?
6. An Oliver-Willis-ass who … er .. what was the question again?
7. All of the above?
8. Other (specify)

Perhaps so, but if so, then so is every other Vice President in modern history.

UPDATE: Amanda Carpenter seems to think that if the New York Times runs an op-ed, the New York Times endorses all of the views contained in that op-ed. I don’t think it works that way.

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.

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.