Mourdock's Comments Costing Republicans Senate Seat

For those of you who read my column in The American Complaint Department, this week's was about the ridiculous comment made by Senate candidate Richard Mourdock (read the article here).  In his final debate with Joe Donnelly and Andrew Horning, Mourdock was asked about his position on abortion in the case of rape.  If you haven't heard, Mourdock said that, if a woman got pregnant from rape, it was "something God intended to happen."  

Of course I think his statement is ridiculous, but great news has come out about Mourdock's Senate campaign.  The results of the first independent poll that has been released since his statement came out today.  The poll shows that Mourdock is now trailing Joe Donnelly by an 11 point margin.  If this poll is even close to accurate, Mourdock has likely ruined his chances of winning this race with his extremist comments.  He would have to pull off a miracle come back in the final four days of the election.  I doubt that is likely because Indiana television stations are being flooded with commercials condemning Mourdock's tea party extremism.  In the short time it took me to write this blog, I have seen about 6 or 7 commercials using Mourdock's comments against him. 

Most importantly is what this means for the election in general.  Republicans have been working very hard to gain a majority in the Senate.  This was going to be an uphill battle, but Indiana Republicans made it even harder when they replaced 35 year incumbent Richard Lugar with a tea party extremist candidate.  Lugar was a well-known moderate Republican that has worked well with Democrats for decades.  The desire to rid themselves of anyone who has worked across the aisle has now likely lost Republicans a seat that has been a mainstay for over three decades.  I hope Republicans take this into consideration as proof that the majority will reject the tea party extremist element that has been infecting their ranks.  It lost them an ally in the Senate, and will continue to destroy the Republican party from within.  Of course, that's not an entirely bad notion.

Election 2012: Latest Poll Results

There is a very interesting election shaping up.  The latest polls show Gov. Romney leading President Obama by less than one point.  The very interesting piece is that, even though Romney is leading in the national polls, he is losing the electoral college estimates based on the polls.  Here's the electoral college forecast I've created using the latest poll information from Real Clear Politics. 

Real Clear Politics takes the most current polls from various organizations and averages them.  Their averages are used by news sites on all sides of the political spectrum from MSNBC to Fox News (two of the most politically biased news organizations in mainstream media).  I used the RCP average to award each state to the candidate leading in the polls for that state.  The only perfect tie was in Colorado.  I gave that state to Romney to make the results more even. 

After doing all of this, I came up with Obama winning the election by 24 electoral votes.  This means that the results could be off a little and Obama would still win the election.  If the President lost New Hampshire and Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, or Wisconsin he would still win the election.  With only about a week and a half until the election, this is great news for those of us who support the President.

What it doesn't mean is that anyone can sit back and let their vote go uncounted.  Get out there and use your vote.  Vote early if that option is available to you.  Either way, don't let one of the few rights that we have to control our government go to waste.  Vote Obama 2012!

Conservative Cowards and Voter Intimidation

It's a growing issue with this election.  Voter intimidation and suppression.  We've seen it in telephone calls being placed to voters urging them to vote by phone so they don't have to go to the polls on election day.  We've seen billboards placed in minority neighborhoods warning that voter fraud is a felony.  We've seen employers threatening layoffs if President Obama wins another term.  We've seen the development of "poll challengers" who are intended to discourage people from voting under the guise of protecting the integrity of the election.  And we've seen numerous laws and proposals requiring unreasonable voter identification and changing voting regulations right before the election.  Fortunately most of these have been struck down or delayed by the courts. 

We live in a country that was founded on the idea that we can get up on election day and cast our vote for the people that we want to represent us in government.  This is a basic principle of our nation, yet we have groups that are working very hard to ensure that some people are misinformed, discouraged, intimidated, or disqualified from exercising that right. 

I try not to deal in absolutes.  I know that this kind of behavior can occur in any group.  However, it seems that the overwhelming majority of these problems are coming from Republicans.  These are generally the people passing the restrictive laws (smaller government, right?).  These are the people threatening employees (see my article about the American Aristocracy for more on that).  These are the workers who were caught giving false information to volunteer poll monitors that would specifically target minority voters. 

As with all of the other idiotic and bigoted behavior that these conservatives display, Republicans dismiss these as isolated incidents.  Well how many isolated incidents does it take to become a pattern?  I'm not talking about one or two...I'm talking about dozens. 

It's pretty obvious that Republicans are trying to suppress the vote.  The question we have to ask is, why?  The only reasonable answer is that they are afraid of the aftermath if people were allowed to vote freely without many votes being discouraged or changed due to intimidation and misinformation.  If these cowards can't face everyone in the nation and win an election, then they have no place in our government. 

It's our job to block out all of the noise from these outside groups.  If you want true voter information, contact your state's Secretary of State or election division.  Don't take the word of any activist group.  If anyone outside a polling location is trying to intimidate you or give you information don't listen.  The only accurate source of information is the polling location volunteers.  No one can stop you from voting if you are legally registered to vote and meet the requirements in your state.  If you see anyone trying to intimidate voters, including yourself, there are people in place to help you.  If you see this behavior contact The Election Protection Coalition at 866-OUR-VOTE or 888-VE-Y-VOTA or tweet the information to @866ourvote. Include a hashtag, your zip code, and a brief description of the issue. 

Even though we have the duty to stand up to these people, it is time that our government got involved to ensure that no person who wants to cast a vote is denied.  Regardless of the Citizens United Ruling that allows employers to directly express their political beliefs to employee, threatening the jobs of your employers based on their vote is unlawful and should be prosecuted.  We can't allow these people to control our elections.  We can't allow cowards to run our country.

Register and Vote!

November 6 is only 30 days away!  After the first debate, we've seen a conservative base that has been charged up and ready to vote.  Liberal and moderate voters should take their queue from the conservatives and make sure that they are ready to vote on election day.  If you support Obama, or even just recognize the fact that Romney can't tell the truth and is a terrible option for the presidency, get yourself registered and get to the polls.  Don't let Romney steal the election on lies and impossible math. 

Some people have already seen their voter registration deadline come and go.  Many people are only days away from the deadline.  Click here to check your state's deadline.  

Not sure if you're registered?  Not sure where to vote?  Click here to check your registration and find your polling location.  Finally, get out there and vote!  No matter what your viewpoint, you have no business complaining about the government if you refuse to exercise your power to make a change. 

A Look at Polls - Bad News for Romney

As the election continues to draw closer...we find ourselves looking at polls more every day.  The problem with polls is that there is always a margin of error.  There is always also the potential for pollsters to sway the results.  So there is no way to be sure about any particular poll.  The only ways to combat this problem are to look at the averages of the polls from various sources, or try to find the most historically accurate polls.  I have decided to do both of these.

According to the results of the 2008 Presidential election, the most accurate polls were Pew and Rasmussen.  Because they are easier to find, I decided to look at the Rasmussen polls.  Here is the current data that should have Romney worried:

According to the most current data - Rasmussen has 237 electoral votes for Obama and 196 for Romney.  This leaves 105 toss-up votes.  Of those votes, Rasmussen shows Obama leading for 76 of the votes while Romney only leads for 29 of them.  If this remains true, then Obama should walk away with the election.  In fact, Obama only has to win 33 of those votes to win the election.  This means he could lose the states that only have him ahead by 1 point (Ohio and Virginia), and he will still win the election. 

I'm sure conservatives will say that this poll is biased in some way (probably because their neighbors and friends hate Obama so that means the entire country must).  So I'm also going to average some of the major polls to get a better picture of the situation.  Here are the overall numbers:

Rasmussen (estimated based on state polls) - 47.4 Obama - 46.6 Romney
Real Clear Politics (used by Fox News and MSNBC) - 48.6 Obama - 44.7 Romney
Gallup - 47 Obama - 47 Romney
Purple Poll - 49 Obama - 44 Romney

The answer is somewhere in the middle of all of these numbers, so let's take an average.

The averages of these polls show Obama leading 48 to Romney's 45.6.  So it seems that, no matter how you break it down...Romney is hurting. Let's just hope this continues.  I may even continue to average the polls and publish the results...I may just turn out to be right.