So despite my worries about electronic vote-tampering, I'm realizing that for Republicans to get away with it this year, i.e. for it to be undetectable or unchallenged, it would require actual voting margins to be close. Barring an "October surprise" on the level of a terrorist attack (which none of us want, obviously), it looks like it'll be a pretty convincing Obama victory. The first chart on the left (from FiveThirtyEight.com ) shows various probabilities based on a complex, statistical calculations.
So, as a perpetual worrier and "what-next" kind of person, I turn now to the matter of the Senate. If we can get to 60 Democrats there, we'll have a filibuster-proof majority---unprecedented in recent decades!
This MoveOn page channels funds to critical Senate races. In a different and more general way, so does DailyKos's Orange-to-Blue campaign on ActBlue.com.
Now let's look at the second chart on the left, also from FiveThirtyEight.com. It suggests that:
- 6 are fairly winnable (VA, NM, CO, NH, OR, NC), though the MoveOn link above targets three of those (NH, OR, NC)
- 2 are close, barely tilting our way (Franken in MN, Begich in AK)
- 3 others are leaning red (MS, GA, KY), possibly to an extent not winnable on our end. *But* of those, the GA race is worth fighting largely because incumbent Saxby Chambliss is a vile, vile politician.
The strategy for the senate, then, would be to win VA, NM, CO, NH, OR, NC, MN, AK, and *one* more (maybe GA?). What do you guys think?
1 comment:
I would agree that GA is the most winnable of the last 3, and that Chambliss is most worthy of defeat, but would also not be surprised if we took KY. That would be an enormous blow to the Republicans, since their leader, Mitch McConnell, currently holds that seat. Come January, Obama could very well be leading something akin to a consensus government.
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