Fright Nights

It is Halloween night and across the land the most frightened people are not those at the Haunted Farm or local movie scream-a-thon. No, the most frightened people are Democrats who cannot stand that there are still a full Saturday, Sunday, Monday and part of a Tuesday before votes are counted. That means there is still time for a seeming assured win to turn into a loss.

Two years ago, a political cartoon epitomized the view of Democrats. A small donkey dressed as Charlie Brown faced Lucy with the football. Lucy says something like, "All the polls show you ahead."

It was the perfect metaphor for the Democratic attitude, especially during a presidential election year. In my lifetime, Democrats have won only 4 presidential elections. That kind of losing means you keep waiting for "something" bad to happen. Chicago Cub fans understand perfectly what I'm talking about.

What "something" will go wrong? It doesn't matter. It could be that aliens from the planet Zenon are secretly backing Obama. This fear isn't about reality. It is about simple paranoia. I have had Democrats saying things to me like "I'll believe when I see it" and "Are you optimistic about Tuesday?" This is the attitude when every Electoral College analysis you can find outside of the McCain campaign has Obama winning more than the 270 electoral votes needed. Even Karl Rove has an Electoral College prediction with Obama at 311. Democrats will only see that as a sign of a Republican conspiracy to make Democratic voters complacent.

Luckily, the Democrats who are cool under pressure are Barack Obama and his campaign staff. Through the entire year they have lived up to their "No Drama Obama" nickname. Through the primaries they stuck with a clear strategy and made it work. In the summer while numerous Democrats wanted them to be blitzing the airwaves with ads against McCain, they worked on building their ground organizations. When the Republican convention bounce boosted McCain, they just kept moving forward and didn't jump to "do something dramatic" when the financial crisis hit. They left it to McCain to look foolish by saying he would suspend his campaign and wanted the first debate canceled. It blew up in his face and Obama has been running ahead every since.

In this last weekend, the ground game built in the summer is paying off. Thousands of staffers and the volunteers they have trained and empowered have been helping bring out the millions of early voters in key battleground states. These voters are heavily Democratic in most battleground states and places like Colorado are expecting to see more than half their voters before election day. The overall turnout is expected to top the 122 million from 204 and there is a possibility that we will see the highest turnout since 1960.

All indicators point to great night for Democrats on Tuesday. What they hope to see is the return of the political cartoon from the day after the 2006 campaign. Lucy and the little donkey Charlie Brown looking up in wonder as the football soared through the goalposts.

Then they'll start worrying about how the return of "the rightwing conspiracy" from the 1990's set to destroy another Democratic presidency.

My Favorite Month

October is my favorite month of the year. This is particularly true during election years. I get all my favorite competitions at once: politics, football and baseball. All of my obsessions get fed.

In baseball, I get post-season games. This year the league championship series give me David vs. Goliath in the American League with Tampa Bay vs. Boston. In the National League it is LA vs. Philadelphia. There I'll root for the Phillies just because I have someone to root for on that team. Chris Coste is the backup catcher in Philadelphia and I used to root for him in his days in Independent League baseball and even got a chance to talk to him and wish him well one winter before he headed to "organized ball" in what was the beginning of his long trail to the majors. He has even written a book about it called "The 33 Year Old Rookie." As a backup catcher, Coste doesn't get as much playing time in the postseason as he did during the regular season, but after 10 years working to get to the majors he deserves the champagne I saw him celebrating with after the Phillies beat Milwaukee.

October is the middle of football season. That means I have to do my work around my football watching obsession. This week it will mean getting exams graded on Friday so I can watch football on Saturday and Sunday. My beloved Chiefs are rebuilding and are just plain bad right now. However, their one victory was over the Broncos and was a lot of fun. I love the game enough that even when the Chiefs are bad I enjoy watching other games through my lovely HD with DirecTV NFL package.

The Mizzou Tigers continue to impress with one of the most prolific offenses in the country. Last Saturday I watched with joy as they destroyed Nebraska in Lincoln. It was the first time since I was in high school that Mizzou beat Nebraska in Lincoln. The final was 52-17 and was almost as much fun as beat KU on national TV last November. My lifelong watching of the Tigers still makes me wary of getting too excited, but each week I hope for more days in which I shake my head in wonder at how well they play.

That leaves my obsession with politics.

Football is really about weekends. Postseason baseball has off days. My politics obsession in an election year October has something new every day and often multiple times a day. The Internet only makes me more of a political junkie as I now have easy access to polls, events, spin, ads and the punch/counterpunch of the various campaigns I'm following.

I love it.

Of course, the presidential campaign gets most of my attention, in part because it feeds my obsession most readily. Tonight's debate was just another event in the endless series of points I've followed for more than 1 1/2 years as the campaign has unfolded. We have only 4 weeks left and there fewer and fewer opportunities for either side to affect the outcome of the race.

The debate tonight did nothing to change the presidential election. (Right now one of my best friends is mocking me for saying this, but then he's killed trees and spent computer power studying debates.) Obama has riden bad economic news and McCain's bad reactions to losing (see Sarah Palin and the "suspension" of his campaign) to a clear lead in national polls and the Electoral College. McCain has entered the last 28 days needing something "new" that favors him. He's trying attacks on Obama's "associations." It's not working. In the debate, he didn't seem to try anything in particular except the idea that unsteady times requires an experienced hand. Unfortunately fo him, the public wants "change" and Obama exudes change.

In the 2 presidential debates, Obama's main task was to make those unsure of him more comfortable. He has done this simply by being calm and presenting his points in a well-practiced tone aimed at "the middle class." He hasn't needed to do much more than appear plausible as the next President of the United States. He has done that easily and left McCain in the dust in all the snap polls and in many of the pundits and bloggers reviews. There is one more debate left and his only goal will be to continue to avoid making a big mistake. McCain needs the gaffe, scandal or bad choice from Obama to make the race more competitive. Beyond such a mistake, I'm not sure what can help McCain.

The public is consumed by the bad economic news and the party that occupies the White House gets the blame when the economy goes bad. Someone on CNN tonight cited a poll that said 60% of voters say the economy is the top issue and Obama wins those voters by 20%. McCain can only grimace in pain at such numbers.

With so little time left, the campaign is also turning to "the ground game." Voter registration deadlines are being hit in states who don't allow "same day registration" and the campaigns and parties turn to GOTV (Get Out The Vote). Again, this in an area where Obama has a big advantage. Obama has been working on this effort for months. Campaign offices, phone banks, canvassing, voter registration and database building have been organized in every state. They hit my street in August. They have the folks on the ground that have been registering voters and will now turn to getting those voters to the polls. The most effort will be in the states where the campaigns have battled the most. These include traditional spots like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Missouri, but Obama's extended the battleground to Indiana, Virginia and North Carolina which are usually reliably Republican. In recent presidential elections the Republicans have beaten the Democrats at GOTV. It was a key part of their victories in 200 and 2004. This year the advantage goes to the former community organizer who has used the new tools of the Internet and old tools of person-to-person campaigning to build an impressive organization. Read this bloggers views as they tour sites in Missouri for more detail on the difference.

In 4 weeks my political obsession culminates with a long day waiting for election returns and then a very late night watching, reading and listening to results. My favorite month will have gone, but I am hoping that November brings joys of its own.