According to Intrade, the odds appear something on the order of 6:1 in favor of Obama. At least that's the collective wisdom of large groups and that doesn't sound like a close race to me.
The betting suggests voter turnout will be well over 60% and Obama will be the next President with a significant margin over the Republican front-runner, John McCain.
Just for the sake of comparison, voter turnout in 2006 was on the order of 41.3%; 2004 was about 55.7%; 2002 was about 39% and 2000 was about 54.2.
People paying more attention.
My feel-o-metric sense is that first time voters are registering in droves as Democrats and Independents while the sound of crickets prevails in the Republican sign-up line.
Now, given that we have the best government that money can buy, McCain raised about $12M in the last month to promote his agenda, Clinton brought home the bacon at about $35M and Obama's campaign suggests their number was somewhat north of $50M.
People voting with their wallets.
So, given a bunch of givens, I'd say this coming national election has all the earmarks of a landslide. The mandate is not going to be one of those 1.5% varieties that the Right trumpeted about in 2004 (they stoled the election in 2000, loosing the popular vote to Gore - granted by a slim margin). It's shaping up to be one of those 60%-40% routs that will be an unprecedented rebuke of everything the right wing-nuts who are trying to pass themselves off as conservatives stand for.
They've had an unprecedented set of circumstances with control of the White House for eight years and control of Congress for the last decade and a half with the exception of the last two years. They've had a chance to demonstrate the effectiveness of their philosophy, their so-called fiscal responsibility, their lip service to smaller government and their commitments to Family Values.
The last time such an opportunity to serve the nation came together was during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The legacy he left includes bringing this country out of a depression, winning a world war, and providing the people of this country a safety net in terms of a social security program (that the Republicans have been trying to dismantle for the last 65 years).
Republicans have taken this opportunity to guide the direction of this country and driven the bus into a ditch. Instead of winning a world war, they've taken us into an unnecessary war in Iraq that appears to have no end. Instead of bring us up and out of a depression, they've left the country in a recession, teetering on the brink of a depression (not unlike the one their President Hoover presided over in 1929). Instead of improving the lives of the people of this country, they've advocated policies that allow the super rich to get richer at the expense of everyone else. Their preference for profit over people has left 40 million human beings without health care and countless more with inadequate health care coverage in the richest nation on the planet.
They planned for a Republican majority that would last for 100 years by playing to special interests at the expense of the people of this county but they ended up setting themselves up for a long dry spell. They have put corporate interests and party politics ahead of national interests. Their knee-jerk embrace of ideological theory has prevented them from adopting pragmatic solutions. It will be generations before anyone trusts their judgment again.
No comments:
Post a Comment