Opinion: As Barack Obama and Sarah Palin make final midterm pitches, it’s Americans’ turn to speak
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Sarah Palin has been traveling around the country in recent weeks, slyly telling appreciative conservative crowds, “Nov. 2d, we can see it from our house.”
This morning everyone can see Nov. 2d. Election Day is here. Many millions of Americans have already early-voted, including the country’s top Chicago Democrat.
But by the end of the day in Palin’s Alaska, the state so large it has its own time zone, most of those votes will be counted and some kind of history will be made in the first midterm elections of President Barack H. Obama.
At stake are 37 governorships, 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 37 seats in the ...
... U.S. Senate, including the Illinois one Obama used to occupy occasionally in between his frequent presidential campaign forays. Also at stake are some 6,300 state legislature positions, whose members in 2011 will do most if not all of the crucial legislative redistricting that sets the geographic and demographic parameters for the entire country’s next decade of politicking.
With virtually every poll indicating a gloomy electoral day on tap for his party, the Democrat is hunkered in the Oval Office for regular briefings and granting be-sure-to-vote telephone interviews to four radio stations in Florida, Illinois, California and Nevada, interviews that in the interests of transparency are closed for Washington media to hear.
What to watch for tonight:
If Republicans pick up some House seats in New England, the governor’s office in Ohio and Massachusetts, the Pennsylvania, Indiana, West Virginia and Illinois Senate seats, hold off on the second order of pizzas; it’s going to be a short night for planned Democratic parties all over.
If the GOP gains 40 new House seats, Nancy Pelosi becomes an ex-speaker in January.
If the GOP wins 55 or more new House seats, it’s worse than Bill Clinton’s loss of 54 in 1994, which was the latest worst since FDR lost 55 in 1942.
Based on its modeling this time, Gallup has predicted a swing of 60 seats from Democratic to Republican, possibly more.
In the unlikely event the Democrats lose 72 or more seats, it becomes the worst midterm result for a president’s party since the economically troubled Democratic Grover Cleveland administration of 1894, which was even before Joe Biden was a senator.
That year Republicans engineered American history’s largest House swing, 130 seats in a chamber then consisting of 357 members. And President Cleveland didn’t even have an economic stimulus plan that didn’t work.
Across the country as you read this, most candidates themselves will be voting in order to create a free media opportunity to make one more public pitch with the talking points they can now say in their sleep.
Shortly after breakfast the first wave of exit polls will begin flowing into the major candidates’ strategists, providing an inkling of what fate has in store for them. Thirty seconds later, the leaking of encouraging ones will begin.
From her Facebook perch, Palin issued another call to conservative arms overnight:
“Before you head to the polling place,” Palin said, “take a moment to remember March 21st, when the Pelosi Congress cast its vote for Obamacare. The enduring image of that day is one of Congressional Democrats arrogantly dismissing the pleas of thousands of Americans gathered outside the Capitol Building begging them not to inflict this disastrous bill on us.”
She added:
In the end this bill wasn’t about health care reform; it was about control and government mandates and fines for not purchasing a government-approved insurance plan.... They voted against our will that day ... it’s our turn to vote against them and put our government back on the side of the people. This is our chance to rebuke their big government power grab, reject their unwanted “fundamental transformation” of America, and start the process of repealing this bill before it buries us under a mountain of debt. So let’s fire Pelosi, retire Reid, and send all those who were responsible for that disgraceful bill a message that America is still about “We the People.”
Oh, and this morning Palin’s 2008 debate opponent, Biden, will vote in Delaware, probably not for the female candidate who wants his old Senate chair.
Related Items:
Final Gallup Poll sees historic GOP wave into ‘uncharted territory’ of 60-seat gain or beyond
Last-minute Rocky Mountain Hi: Palin backs third party Tom Tancredo for Colorado governor
-- Andrew Malcolm
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Randy Snyder / Getty Images (Palin campaigns in West Virginia last weekend); Larry Downing / Reuters (Obama enjoys a Cleveland campaign rally Sunday).
Photos: California heads to the polls | Photos: The nation heads to the polls |
