Working On A Dream

Bruce Springsteen breaks out a new song at an Obama rally in Cleveland last weekend.



Bruce's speech at the rally was also inspiring.



I've got your blue collar (and Blue Ohio) right here, Joe the Plumber!

Post-election withdrawl

Five Winners:
1. Obama's Davids (Plouffe and Axelrod)
2. MLK's Dream
3. Howard Dean's 50 state strategy
4. Fivethirtyeight.com
5. U.S. Americans

Five Losers:
1. John McCain
2. Sarah Palin
3. Joe the Plumber
4. Karl Rove Right Wing Politics
5. Marriage Equality in CA

Predicting the future

ARG's Dick Bennett, talking about Nate Silver of 538.com in the New York Times.

He hasn’t been able to predict the future.

He hasn't? Here's yesterday's Final pre-election projection from 538.

Our model projects that Obama will win all states won by John Kerry in 2004, in addition to Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, Nevada, Florida and North Carolina, while narrowly losing Missouri and Indiana. These states total 353 electoral votes. Our official projection, which looks at these outcomes probabilistically -- for instance, assigns North Carolina's 15 electoral votes to Obama 59 percent of the time -- comes up with an incrementally more conservative projection of 348.6 electoral votes.

We also project Obama to win the popular vote by 6.1 points; his lead is slightly larger than that in the polls now, but our model accounts for the fact that candidates with large leads in the polls typically underperform their numbers by a small margin on Election Day.

And here are the actual votes (with NC's 11 EVs still on the table)

Barack Obama 63,764,326 (52.4%) (349 EVs)
John McCain 56,324,856 (46.3%) (169 EVs)

For a popular vote difference of 6.1% and an electoral vote spread of 349-169. The only state Nate got wrong was Indiana.

That's a scarily accurate projection of the electoral and popular vote, but John McCain's win percentage is still at 1.1% and I still won't rest until it's updated to 0.0%!

Shut Up And Vote

Stevie Nicks and the Dixie Chicks.



Si Se Puede

One Day More

I've been waiting two months to post this.

The day after Halloween

The opening track on one of my recent holiday mix CDs is "Can't Wait Til Christmas Day" by Vince Vance & the Valiants, which has a line about stores putting up holiday decorations on the day after Halloween. Even after I found out that Vince Vance is responsible for both "All I Want For Christmas Is You" and that "Bomb Iran" song that John McCain likes so much, I still like "Can't Wait Til Christmas Day". It puts me in the holiday mood more than any other song. And stores actually do put up decorations on the day after Halloween.

I was at Rite-Aid yesterday morning (November 1st), and they had their Christmas cards and decorations out, and were already playing retail-friendly holiday songs in the store.

It's also the day that Peet's and Starbucks start offering eggnog latte (I'm a big fan of eggnog latte and think it should be available all year), so I guess the start of November is the start of the holiday season. Take it away, Andy!



This is the last day that we'll hear those seven fateful words ("the following is a paid political announcement"), but it's just the start of "whoop de do, and dickory dock, and don't forget to hang up your sock". Thirty days of November and twenty four days of December equals seven and a half weeks of Christmas music, which is probably a few more weeks than any sane person can handle. And maybe even more than an insane person like me can handle.

Three More Days

fivethirtyeight.com currently shows John McCain with a 3.8% chance to win the election.  This sounds like a done deal, but I won't rest easy until his win percentage drops to 0.0%, which probably won't happen for three more days.  

I can't wait to start resting easy! In three more days,  Nate Silver might have to go back to writing about baseball.   Or maybe he'll start handicapping the 2012 Presidential race on 11/5/08?