Playing at home Monday night, Election Day-eve, the Redskins lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers 23-6.

The ‘Redskins rule‘ is now 94.8% accurate in predicting the winner of the presidential election.  I don’t think there are any political pollsters that can claim that kind of record.

©2012 Zero Sheep. All Rights Reserved.

Whatever may come, however, there are some good things about an Obama win.  None of them, individually or in the aggregate, were good reasons to vote for him (although many did just that, I am sure), but they are a consolation prize:

(1) Less whining and derangement from the Left.  Not ‘none,’ because they are constitutionally incapable of that.  And any Obama failures will be blamed on the Right, of course, but until the next Newt Gingrich appears they don’t have a single target for their hate.

(2) Less whining from other countries.  Or at least from the populations of other countries — I believe that most foreign governments (barring Iran, North Korea, etc.) would have preferred McCain.  Obama’s win has already boosted America in the eyes of most of the world, and that is a good thing.  The trick now is to permit foreigners and Americans to simultaneously have a positive view of our country, instead of focusing solely on foreign opinion.

(3) America has elected a black president.  It is truly a historic moment, and one that is hard to imagine being possible even a couple years ago.  I do have to add that I find it ironic how so many commentators are going on about being color blind, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s comment about judging a man by the content of his character rather than the color of his skin.  If that were truly the case, than Obama would, at most, still be the junior senator from Illinois.  But regardless of the reason, it is worth being proud of this country, where only 60 years ago segregation and Jim Crow laws were the rule.  As an aside, I think the effect of race relations of an Obama presidency is entirely in his hands; if he governs the way he ran his campaign, using race as both a sword and shield against his opponents, then he risks setting this country back decades in that respect.

(4) Dancing in the streets instead of rioting in the streets.  I don’t know that there would have been riots, but emotions were running so high that it was at least a distinct possibility.  Even if you think Obama’s supporters were deluded, it is hard to see that joy and not be at least a little hopeful that it is not completely misguided.  Related to number (1) above, an Obama defeat would likely have divided the electorate and this country far worse than an Obama win; instead of the hate and anger and feeling of being cheated that would likely have been the emotions of Obama’s supporters, McCain supporters are mostly just disappointed and trying to be optimistic that Obama won’t be as bad as they think he will.

(5) A loyal opposition.  Unlike the unhinged hatred directed at Bush, the Right is not likely to indulge in ‘he’s not my president’ antics. I think Slublog sums up this sentiment the best:

I love this country too much to do to President-Elect Obama what the left did to President Bush, John McCain and Sarah Palin. I hope my fellow conservatives will do the same – demonization is not essential to opposition. I plan to spend the next four years like I spent the last four – being a husband, dad and reluctant taxpayer. I’m going to disagree with the president a lot, but I don’t see that as a license to hate. I’ve spent far too much time criticizing the left to become like them.

See also the takes of Ed Morrissey and AllahPundit at Hot Air, Patterico, Michelle Malkin, Don Surber, etc., for the lack of lunacy and Obama Derangement Syndrome.  (PUMAs too.)  I think that it is a safe bet that, had the situation been reversed, DailyKOS, the Huffington Post, and others would all be (1) claiming that (despite the landslide) the election was stolen, and (2) acting as hostile and degrading toward McCain as possible.  Well, they are probably doing the latter anyway, but I’m not going to go look.

(6) Hope instead of demoralization.  The young voters, and other groups that Obama reached out to that are not normally deeply involved in the political process, have seen that their voices can be heard.  It is much better for the country as a whole to have an involved, rather than apathetic, electorate.  The key now is to educate these voters so that they vote based on policies and what is best for the country in the long term rather than on feelings and personality.

I will update this post with other reasons as I think of them.  Please add others in the comments below.

UPDATE (November 6, 2008, at 8:06):

Not a new reason, but over at Pajamas Media John Hawkins follows an explanation of why right-leaning bloggers might have reacted with despair and hatred to Obama’s win, a la the Left’s reactions in 2000 and 2004, with a nice selection of examples of the sane reaction from the ‘Rightosphere.’ (h/t Hot Air headlines)

©2012 Zero Sheep. All Rights Reserved.

Congratulations and good luck to Obama, and I’ll put some of that crow in the freezer to hopefully eat in a few years if his presidency is actually successful and beneficial to this country.

I hope he gives a hearty thank you to Secretary Paulson and Rep. Pelosi — Paulson for transforming a difficult financial situation into a full-blown panic, and Pelosi for sabotaging the first bailout bill with her poisonously partisan speech, thereby undermining McCain’s work on pushing the compromise.

I doubt I will be getting any job offers from the Psychic Friends Network, but here are a couple things I see happening and/or questions I have about the next few years:

REZKO

This is a tough one for President Obama.  Indications are that federal investigators are paying more attention to the circumstances of Obama’s home purchase, and at the same time Rezko is presumably squealing in exchange for a lighter prison sentence.  If Obama has nothing to hide, or if Rezko cares enough to keep silent through four years of federal prison, no problem.  However, if there was something shady that Rezko can and may reveal, does President Obama pardon him?  At that point, I think it becomes a balancing game between how likely a criminal investigation (and possible impeachment) would be versus the damage a pardon for Rezko would do to Obama’s chances for a second term.  Tough call, but I think the answer is to wait it out — the media hasn’t shown any inclination to be tough on Obama, or, historically, on Democrats in general.  If Whitewater didn’t sink the Clintons, Obama could probably avoid any serious repercussions at least until he won a second term.

LIBERAL/SOCIALIST AGENDA

Another tough call.  How much of his ‘progressive’ agenda does Obama actually push?  That depends mainly on how firmly Obama believes in the cause, as opposed to political power — which we should have known in advance, but didn’t.  Unless he truly does amazing things, I think he has only two years to push any agenda.  If the bloom is off the rose before 2010 — and I don’t see how it can be avoided, with the insanely high expectations of the ‘messiah’ — expect signficant Republican gains in the mid-term elections, and probably the loss of the Democratic majority.

If Obama governs with an eye on two terms, I think any lasting harm from Obama policies will be minimal.  Sadly, I have to join the legions hoping that Obama is a cynical opportunist in the Clinton mold rather than a idealogue.  If he uses his first two years, with significant (although not filibuster-proof) majorities, I think he’ll only have one term but that it will be more disastrous for the U.S. than Carter’s.  Good for the Republicans in 2012, maybe (unless some of the more hysterical predictions of liberal fascism come true), but bad for the country.

UNITY/PARTISANSHIP/RACE RELATIONS

With regard to Obama’s claims to be a uniter, and to be post-racial, post-partisan, etc., I will state unequivocally that his presidency will have the opposite effect.  If nothing else, his willingness to use race as both a shield and a weapon leads me to believe that his presidency will be more ‘divide and conquer’ than ‘unite.’

SCARIEST PART OF THE OBAMA WIN

What probably scares me the most about Obama’s victory isn’t the prospect of four (or more) years of President Obama, because I believe that even if he tries to govern as a radical he will be checked — Republicans aside, just having a (D) after one’s name does not make someone a left-wing loon.  What does scare me, though, is Vice-President Joe Biden.  God love ‘im, but the thought of something happening to Obama and Biden having to step up scares the pee out of me.  Obama may be entirely out of his depth, or even have a sinister agenda, but Joe is just a chucklehead.

©2012 Zero Sheep. All Rights Reserved.

I work from home, and when I stepped out to get my mail out of the box a minute ago, I noticed a hangtag on my door from the Young Democrats of America.  I thought about posting a picture, but it’s hardly worth the effort, so I’ll post the text.

Front:

Republicans are counting on you to stay home on Election Day.

They want more of the same.  You want change.

join the revolution!

VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS on Election Day Nov 4th

Problem voting? Call 866-OUR-VOTE

Back:

young voter revolution

young democrats of america

www.YoungVoterRevolution.com

Republicans DO NOT DISTURB!

I VOTED FOR DEMOCRATS

Paid for by the Young Democrats of America.  Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.  www.yda.org

Not sure what the line about Republicans on the back means, but think about the overall concept for a moment.  Today is Election Day.  They are taking the time to put these hangtags on the doorknobs at peoples’ homes, telling them to get out and vote.  On Election Day.  Call me crazy, but wouldn’t it have been smarter to put these up yesterday, or earlier?  There will no doubt be some people that see these during the day, llike me, but most won’t see them until they get home from work this evening.  How likely is it that they will get to their front doors and go, “Gee, you know, I didn’t vote, I’d better go right back out & try to get to the polls before they close.”  Not too likely in my opinion.

©2012 Zero Sheep. All Rights Reserved.

It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

The Duplex, by Glenn McCoy

Hot Air has a ‘real time’ interactive map available to show poll closings and results, for those who want the full edge-of-your-seat, nail-biting, ulcer-inducing experience.

UPDATE:

More interactive goodness from Hot Air and AOL:  a nationwide poll, by state.

©2012 Zero Sheep. All Rights Reserved.

“But the polls!” you say.  Some look bad, some look less bad, but they all seem to show Obama leading.  For those (rooting for McCain) that find the polls depressing — and those (rooting for Obama) that are already patting themselves on the back — I have four words:  Obama; Hillary; New Hampshire.

There are reasons to distrust the polls, and even more reason to distrust the media narrative built on top of them.  An anonymous Obama worker (or workers, it’s not clear) claims that (1) “some pollsters get up to an 80% ‘refuse to respond’ result.” corresponding to McCain supporters who “are afraid to let people know who they are voting for;” and (2) that the Obama campaign has made affirmative efforts to skew the polls, such as by pushing the narrative of younger voters being overwhelmingly in his favor (with the result that pollsters change up their likely voter projections).  Keep in mind these allegations are coming from an anonymous source (or sources), so take them with a grain of salt.

A better critique of the current political polling comes from Ace at Ace of Spades HQ.  Ace discussed in some detail both individuals’ tendency to give the ‘socially desirable answer’ to poll questions, and how the — usually young and/or poor and/or minority – polling employees may unconsciously “give subtle cues as to whom they believe is the better candidate. They tip to the interviewee what the socially desirable answer is to the polling questions.”  As support, he points to the practice of polling companies to keep callers that have done work calling on behalf of candidates away from doing actual polling calls precisely to avoid this sort of skewed data.  Since those that are working in polling company call centers are precisely the sort that we are told prefer Obama by an overwhelming margin, how much (if any) does their support for Obama translate into corrupted polling data?  Only time will tell.  The unprecedented enthusiasm of groups that do not ordinarily get involved or excited in politics could explain why polling this cycle seems more erratic and less reliable than usual.

The polls may actually be dead on — or at least some of them may; there is too wide a variation in polling results for them all to be right.  We will know Wednesday which, if any, of the numerous polls are actually accurate.  However, both logic and my gut tell me to be sceptical.

My prediction is that McCain gets an outright majority of the popular vote, and all of Bush’s 2004 electoral votes, plus Pennsylvania’s 21, for a 307-231 victory.  Not a prediction, just a fact:  Democrats will blame racism, voter suppression, and outright fraud for a loss, rather than accepting that their candidate and policies just aren’t palatable to the electorate.

UPDATE:

Meant to include this earlier, but didn’t get it in.

Even Joe Biden says not to trust the polls:  “This election’s going to be a lot closer than everybody thinks it is.”  (h/t Don Surber)

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air notes that some polls still don’t get the 2004 election right.

Don’t forget to vote early and vote often.

UPDATE (again):

The IBD/IPP Poll, touted as having been the most accurate in 2004, has McCain behind Obama by less than 2%, well within the margin of error.  It also shows a whopping 8.7% undecided.  (h/t Hot Air).

FYI, in case you were wondering (as I was), IBD is Investor’s Business Daily, and TIPP is the TehcnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics, the polling arm of TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence.

UPDATE (November 3, 2008 at 14:49):

Another good discussion of why political polls are not reliable by Iowahawk.  Pollsters have no rational (and certainly no mathematical) way of correctly estimating their margin of error.  Starting with a word problem from a hypothetical statistics test involving red and blue balls in an urn, he reaches the conclusion:

Margin of Error = Who the hell knows?

Because, in this case, so-called scientific “sampling error” is completely meaningless, because it is utterly overwhelmed by unmeasurable non-sampling error. Under these circumstances “margin of error” is a fantasy, a numeric fiction masquerading as a pseudo-scientific fact. If a poll reports it — even if it’s collected “scientifically” — the pollster is guilty of aggravated bullshit in the first degree.

The moral of this midterm for all would-be pollsters: if you are really interested in how many of us red and blue balls there are in this great big urn, sit back and relax until Tuesday, and let us show our true colors.

Until then, fondle your own balls.

©2012 Zero Sheep. All Rights Reserved.

No sarcastic ‘unless-you’re-for-Obama’ comments from me.  Aside from believing that voting is the most important thing the vast majority of citizens will ever do for this country, I want Obama supporters to own an Obama presidency.

No looking back in two or four years and saying, “Well, I wanted him to win, but you can’t blame me because I didn’t vote.”

Regardless of what the schizophrenic polling tells us, I still think McCain will win this.  But if Obama does, I firmly believe that by comparison he will make Jimmy Carter’s domestic-and-foreign-disaster of a presidency look good by comparison.  So if you actually believe Obama is the better choice, be responsible enough to actually vote for him so that you cannot later shirk your share of the blame.

I don’t believe that an Obama presidency would mean the destruction of our country, but I do believe that unless he is completely unable to accomplish anything he wants to do — a real possibility, and best-case scenario in my mind — he and his cohorts in Congress will do lasting damage to almost every aspect of American strength.

I hope I’m wrong.  If I am, I will welcome the I-told-you-so’s from Obama supporters in four or eight years.  But I think most of that breed will simply disappear, and in 2012 not enough people will admit to having supported Obama to have elected him dogcatcher, let alone president.

©2012 Zero Sheep. All Rights Reserved.

So does the media think it is safe to report negatively about Obama because he has it in the bag?  Or is the love affair over?

UPDATE (October 30, 2008 at 9:42):

Hot Air has a piece up noting this as well.

©2012 Zero Sheep. All Rights Reserved.

If you haven’t yet had your recommended daily allowance of self-righteous, clueless drivel, I recommend this article on Politico.

By Politico writers  John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei, the column attempts to justify the coverage that they admit has been overwhelmingly postive for Obama and negative for McCain by arguing that there is just more negative stuff to report about McCain and only positive stuff to report for Obama.

Their point has at least some validity, but they completely shoot down their own argument and expose their complete lack of objectivity by saying, in one of the last paragraphs:

Then there is the bend-over-backward bias. This is when journalists try so hard to avoid accusations of favoritism that it clouds critical judgment. A good example were stories suggesting Palin held her own or even won her debate against Joe Biden when it seemed obvious she was simply invoking whatever talking points she had at hand, hanging on for dear life.

‘Hanging on for dear life,’ and not even holding her own against masterful debater Joe Biden.  The same Joe Biden that sounded so knowledgeable because he made up most of his own facts.  The same Joe Biden that was given a pass on his gaffes, misstatements, and outright lies by the media which was too eager to explain why Palin lost to actually do its job.

Not to mention that among actual voters, a majority thought Palin at least tied.

Although some media insiders are stepping up to point out the obvious double standard being applied this election cycle, it does not appear that anyone at Politico will be joining them.

It is not something I normally do, but I sent an email to Harris respectfully pointing out the internal inconsistency of the story.  If I get a response I’ll post it here.

©2012 Zero Sheep. All Rights Reserved.

The redistribution comments will get the most attention, and may even convince a few voters that were disturbed by Obama’s comments to Joe the Plumber, but who thought they might have merely been a misstatement or taken out of context.  Sadly, though, much of the country sees nothing wrong with these sorts of remarks (63% of voters under 30 agree, with only a plurality of voters over 30 holding the opposite view), a result, in my opinion, of short-sighted self interest and ignorance about the almost inevitable failure of a socialist systems (see, e.g., any country that has tried it).

It’s not the redistribution angle of Obama’s comments that has me most worried, though:

To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. . . .  [It] doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf.

Obama followed this statement with an expression of regret that the civil rights movement relied on the courts instead of pursuing other means of achieving this end.

Entirely too many people believe, as Obama seems to, that the Constitution does or should guarantee ‘positive’ rights.  The Constitution and Bill of Rights clearly focus on limiting government power:  it can’t take away your right to speech, religion, property, etc.  People like Obama, though, believe that there should be, for example, the right to a well-paying job, the right to own a house, the right to receive free health care, the right to be cared for from the cradle to the grave.

This represents a political philosophy fundamentally at odds with that of the founding fathers.  They had all-too-much experience with a powerful, meddling central government, and wisely implemented limits on governmental power — and checks and balances within the government itself — to prevent it becoming too intrusive.  The American political system is designed to prevent the government putting up obstacles to individual freedom.  Obama would like to turn that on its head by making the government, not the individual, the most important part of our society.

Aside from the complete destruction of American virtues such as self-reliance and independence, Obama and those that think like him are hopelessly stuck in the past.  Every society — every single one — that has imposed that sort of nanny state has declined (at least economically), and most have or are in the process of moving back to a more conservative outlook of free markets and limited government.

Socialism is a great idea.  Like most pure ideas, though, it does not survive contact with reality.  Those that think socialism can and will work — as opposed to merely ‘should’ — are hopelessly out of touch with reality, ignorant of history, and would bring ruin on our country.

I really don’t want to gamble my country on Obama’s claim to have magically become more moderate now that he is running for president.

UPDATE (October 28, 2008 at 9:24):

Although there is nothing about considering welfare a ‘right’ (which, if it wasn’t clear, was my main concern with his 2001 remarks), apparently Obama’s socialist tendencies were roughly the same five years earlier, in 1996.  The comments were delivered to the Chicago chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.

To all those that try to claim Obama — and his tax policy — is not socialist, how do you explain away the fact that self-professed socialists looked with favor on his political philosophy and publicly endorsed him?  There is certainly no evidence that he has changed his worldview in the last few years.  Please rely on something more than statements by Obama himself while running for president, and also refrain from bringing anything into the explanation other Obama and his policies/politics (i.e., no “Look over there, Joe the Plumber has a tax lien!” or “A Republican once said something vaguely similar, so what’s the problem?” tactics).

Anyone?  I’ll be patiently waiting.

©2012 Zero Sheep. All Rights Reserved.