The Last Debate and the Current State of The Race

Tonight is the last presidential debate and the subject is foreign policy. My prediction is that not as many people will tune in as they did to the first two debates. The simple fact is that many Americans do not care that much about foreign policy (which I think is truly a drag) and are more focused on the economy and jobs. I'd look for each candidate to try to pivot back to domestic issues as much as they can.

In addition, I don't think there will be any surprises tonight and both candidates will likely come out even and that's just about where the race is at present. Take a look at the latest polls.

General Election: Romney vs. Obama	CBS News	Romney 46, Obama 48	Obama +2
General Election: Romney vs. Obama	Politico/GWU/Battleground	Romney 49, Obama 47	Romney +2
General Election: Romney vs. Obama	ABC News/Wash Post	Romney 48, Obama 49	Obama +1
General Election: Romney vs. Obama	Monmouth/SurveyUSA/Braun	Romney 48, Obama 45	Romney +3
General Election: Romney vs. Obama	Gallup	Romney 51, Obama 45	Romney +6
General Election: Romney vs. Obama	Rasmussen Reports	Romney 49, Obama 47	Romney +2
General Election: Romney vs. Obama	IBD/TIPP	Romney 43, Obama 47	Obama +4
General Election: Romney vs. Obama	WashTimes/JZ Analytics*	Romney 47, Obama 50	Obama +3

What a giant pile of muddled mess. At least in the national polls, the race is tied. But what about the states?

RCP Average	10/12 - 10/21	--	--	47.6	45.7	Obama +1.9
Suffolk	10/18 - 10/21	600 LV	4.0	47	47	Tie
PPP (D)	10/18 - 10/20	532 LV	4.3	49	48	Obama +1
CBS News/Quinnipiac	10/17 - 10/20	1548 LV	3.0	50	45	Obama +5
Gravis Marketing	10/18 - 10/19	1943 LV	2.2	47	47	Tie
FOX News	10/17 - 10/18	1131 LV	3.0	46	43	Obama +3
Rasmussen Reports	10/17 - 10/17	750 LV	4.0	49	48	Obama +1
SurveyUSA	10/12 - 10/15	613 LV	4.0	45	42	Obama +3

With Ohio, the president maintains around a 2 point lead. On election night, if the president wins Ohio, it's over. Actually, if he wins Virginia before the Ohio results are in, it's also over. Here's Virginia.

RCP Average	10/4 - 10/18	--	--	48.0	48.0	Tie
Rasmussen Reports	10/18 - 10/18	750 LV	4.0	50	47	Romney +3
ARG	10/12 - 10/14	600 LV	4.0	48	47	Romney +1
NBC/WSJ/Marist	10/7 - 10/9	981 LV	3.1	48	47	Romney +1
CBS/NYT/Quinnipiac	10/4 - 10/9	1288 LV	3.0	46	51	Obama +5

I'd like to see some more polls out of Virginia other than Rasmussen who doesn't call cell phones but this one is as much of a tie as anything can be with perhaps a slight edge to Romney. If Romney wins it, then the president pretty much has to win Ohio in order to get to 270.

Another odd state these days is New Hampshire which, with its mere 4 electoral votes, could be an early indicator of how either candidate is going to do on the night.

RCP Average	10/9 - 10/21	--	--	48.4	47.4	Obama +1.0
UNH	10/17 - 10/21	773 LV	3.5	51	42	Obama +9
PPP (D)	10/17 - 10/19	1036 LV	3.0	48	49	Romney +1
Rasmussen Reports	10/15 - 10/15	500 LV	4.5	50	49	Obama +1
Suffolk/7News	10/12 - 10/14	500 LV	4.4	47	47	Tie
ARG	10/9 - 10/11	600 LV	4.0	46	50	Romney +4

The latest poll from UNH is likely way off and I'm more inclined to think that it's pretty even with the president up slightly. I'd say this last debate really isn't going to make much of a difference with the polls. Nearly everyone has decided who they are going to vote for and some have already done so.
The one thing that I just keep shaking my head at is the "Do it again, only harder" mentality of the Right. We've seen what happens when we adopt conservative policies: our country was driven into a ditch. Now there are people that want to go back to that? Why? I think a lot of it has to do with Romney's campaign slogan versus the president's...it's "Believe" vs. "Forward."

This is perfectly exemplified by the guy that puzzles me the most...my pal, last in line. Obviously, I'm hoping he responds here but I just don't get how won't accept the fact the president essentially saved his 401K. He did a better job than President Bush on a score of issues and Mitt Romney has made it very clear he wants to go back to that.

I just don't get it.

The Latest Polls

I haven't done a post with polls lately as I have been out of town and simply scheduled a bunch ahead of time. Here is where we are at.

General Election: Romney vs. Obama	NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl	Obama 47, Romney 47	Tie
General Election: Romney vs. Obama	Gallup Tracking	Obama 45, Romney 52	Romney +7
General Election: Romney vs. Obama	Rasmussen Tracking	Obama 47, Romney 49	Romney +2
General Election: Romney vs. Obama	IBD/TIPP Tracking	Obama 48, Romney 42	Obama +6
Florida: Romney vs. Obama	PPP (D)	Romney 48, Obama 47	Romney +1

President Obama Job Approval	NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl	Approve 49, Disapprove 48	Approve +1
President Obama Job Approval	Gallup	Approve 49, Disapprove 45	Approve +4
President Obama Job Approval	Rasmussen Reports	Approve 49, Disapprove 51	Disapprove +2
Direction of Country	NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl	Right Direction 41, Wrong Track 53	Wrong Track +12

Ohio: Romney vs. Obama	PPP (D)	Obama 49, Romney 48	Obama +1
Ohio: Romney vs. Obama	Gravis Marketing	Obama 47, Romney 47	Tie
Florida: Romney vs. Obama	SurveyUSA	Romney 46, Obama 47	Obama +1

Ohio: Romney vs. Obama	FOX News	Obama 46, Romney 43	Obama +3
Virginia: Romney vs. Obama	Rasmussen Reports	Romney 50, Obama 47	Romney +3

It's hard to make sense of these polls with one showing Romney up 7 and the other showing Obama up six. The best thing to do is take the average of all the polls and that's probably where we are at. At least with the national polls, the race is a tie.

But the swing states are where this election are going to be won or lost and those states still favor the president. Andy over at Electoral-Vote.com has the count at 286-235 with 17 at tie (13 for Virginia and 4 for New Hampshire). I think New Hampshire will go for the president which makes it 290-235. Perhaps I'm being premature but it looks like Florida is going to go for Romney. Virginia? It's an exact tie at this point.

The other thing to take note of is how the approval ratings for the president haven't really changed. What does that mean?

A Sunday Reflection

Today, I'm wondering how so many of the conservative Christians out there have no problem whatsoever with Mitt Romney being a Mormon. Personally, I could care less what or how he worships but my friends on the Right have assured me many times that Christian purity is of paramount importance in whichever candidate they choose.

After all, most believe that Barack Obama isn't really a Christian and is a secret Muslim. Or they think he is an agent of the Black Militia. Either way, his religion is questioned constantly yet Mitt Romey's faith is never questioned. Why is that?

Why do none of these folks have a problem with the fact that Mitt Romney thinks that God is a six foot tall man who lives on or near the planet Kolob?

Why Again?

Gene Lyons has a great piece on why exactly the Right hates Obama so much. It echoes some of the recent writings of Andrew Sullivan. First, of course, we have to define the problem.

To an awful lot of white Protestant evangelicals across the Deep South especially, President Obama has become no less than a secular stand-in for the Antichrist — a smooth-talking deceiver representing liberal cosmopolitanism in its most treacherous disguise. Dislike of Obama has grown to cult-like proportions across the region.

But it's not really racial because they'd vote for Allen West or Condi Rice in a minute. So what is it again?

Nor, however, are their fears entirely irrational. Because if the polls are right — and a disinterested observer would have to say that professional pollsters have grown increasingly accurate at predicting recent contests — the 2012 presidential election may not bring about “The Rapture,” but it could definitely mark the definitive end of a political era.

Hmm...do go on, Gene.

Should he prevail in most of the nine “swing states” where everybody agrees that the contest will be decided, and where Obama currently appears to lead by strong majorities, the white, GOP-accented South will find itself politically marooned. Again.Richard M. Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” will have been dismantled and a new, moderately center-left Democratic coalition built by President Obama. For the first time since 1972, the Rush Limbaugh/Mike Huckabee wing of the GOP will find itself with no clear path to power.

I think this will happen even if the president loses. A GOP presidential candidate hasn't gotten above 300 electoral votes since 1988 when George HW "RINO" Bush got elected. Should Romney win, he will get nowhere near 300 EVs. But this is what happens when your party is populated by extremists.

Moreover, should Obama be successful in rebuilding the U.S. economy during a second term, and once voters grasp that “Obamacare” has liberated them from the fear of being driven into bankruptcy by medical emergencies, the new Democratic coalition could prove to have a kind of staying power not seen since FDR and Truman. Indeed, it’s been Republican anxiety over that very possibility in the wake of George W. Bush’s spectacular failures that led to the GOP’s Washington version of massive resistance during Obama’s first-term. Or, to put it another way, if President Obama can win in this economy, how could any talented Democratic candidate lose?

The economy is going to add 12 million new jobs in the next four years even by conservative estimates. So when Mitt Romney says he is going to do this, he's basically taking credit for the recovery that Obama and the Democrats implemented.

Lyons ends with why their reality has become unhinged.

The temptation for Southern Republicans would be to double down on the crazy, because “conservatism,” so-called, can never fail, only be failed. Also because religious melodrama is really what an awful lot of them are really about. That, and Koch Brothers money. They’re not actually conservatives at all, in the classical sense, but sentimental fanatics seeking to purge the nation of sin; adepts of “limited government” with their noses buried in women’s panty drawers; apostles of a lost Utopia located in a non-existent past, most often in 60s sitcoms like “The Andy Griffith Show.”

Yep.

My Kinda Gal!

Lie Strong

Lance Armstrong's world is falling to pieces all around him. After the USADA report revealed that he was at the center of the USA cycling team's performance-enhancing drug use there seems to be no doubt that he is guilty as charged. He has been stripped of his Tour de France titles. He has already lost seven sponsors, including Nike, Anheuser-Busch and Trek cycling. He has resigned as chairman of the Livestrong Foundation, but he remains on the board, though he's currently on leave. And the revelations revive old questions that Fox News had about whether his drug use was the cause of his cancer in the first place.

Questions on doping dogged Armstrong for almost two decades. But people saw how he beat cancer, persevered and went on to win the Tour de France seven times and were inspired. They wanted to believe that people can win without cheating. How many people have you seen wearing those yellow plastic bracelets?

Many people's support of Armstrong before this report was unwavering. In the wake of the report interviews with Armstrong supporters said they believed him because of how consistently and forcefully he denied the charges. He spoke with such conviction that they believed he couldn't possibly be lying.

And it was at that point I was reminded of people's reactions to Mitt Romney's debate performances. "He sounds so strong." "He was so forceful." "He speaks with such conviction."

Even though Romney won't specify all the "loopholes" he'll close to make up for the whopping tax cuts he wants to give everyone, especially the wealthy, he says it with such conviction that some people believe he must be right. Mitt's entire response to criticism of his budget amounts to a forceful, convincingly enunciated "The numbers add up because I say so!" But the latest study shows that Romney's numbers still don't add up.


As with Lance Armstrong, just because someone can Lie Strong doesn't mean they actually Live Strong. Mitt Romney's plan consists of recycled Bush policies of lowering taxes on the rich, eliminating regulation of the financial industries that caused our economic meltdown in the first place, and sending sick people into overcrowded emergency rooms of hospitals that are going broke because their patients can't pay them.

Under Obama we are definitely better off than we were four years ago: the stock market has almost doubled, returning to the near-record highs during the housing bubble, but without the lies and corruption the boom was built on. Millions of jobs have been regained. Housing starts are returning to the levels we saw before the recession. Fox Business News reports that Amazon.com is planning to hire 50,000 seasonal workers, many of whom will have full time positions, while Macy's, Kohl's, Target and Wal-Mart are hiring hundreds of thousands more.

Obviously they think that the economy is on the mend and that lots of customers will be coming in this Christmas. Is that a quiet vote of confidence for the president from business?

Wait....Huh?

Tight race? Avoid tea party label on stump.

But two years later, Rehberg wants a Senate seat, and in the 2012 version of Montana politics, Rehberg is Mr. Bipartisan. He touts his vote against the Paul Ryan budget; talks up his work with a New England liberal, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.); and has embraced expansion of a children’s health program. 

He doesn’t mention his tea party membership.

What happened?

Eric Olsen, the co-founder of one of Montana’s leading tea party groups, Montana Shrugged, said they still know Rehberg is “on their side,” but they also realize Montana’s sole congressman has to appeal to independents and some Democrats to win a Senate seat that could determine control of the upper chamber.

Oh yeah. Reality happened.

Good Lord...

My wife and I to flip over to Fox News for a laugh after last night's debate and this what we saw.

 

After a few seconds, I turned to look at her and she looked like she was having deep abdominal pain. What a collection of (ahem) people.

Frank always does a good job of shaping reality for people that are easily susceptible to suggestion (see: most conservative voters) but this video is a perfect illustration of the shrinking demographic of the base. Where are the young people? Where are the people of color?

Seriously, why didn't they just have a "Don't Tread On Me" flag set up in front of themselves...:)

A Debate about Debates

This being debate season, you'd think all the candidates would be fired up about attending debates where they can clearly voice the differences between themselves and their opponents. But across the country, from South Carolina, to Minnesota, to Colorado, Republicans are refusing to participate in debates sponsored by the League of Women Voters.

Some of them are skipping the debates because they're incumbents and are afraid that a debate will only serve to boost their opponents' visibility. But many Republicans have branded LWV as a "liberal" organization and insist the League cannot hold a fair debate.

This is like saying that no male judge can give a woman a fair hearing in divorce court.
 
But Republican ire has also been raised against AARP, for the same reason they're angry with LWV: their opposition to the nationwide Republican push for voter ID laws. These laws will overwhelmingly disenfranchise voters who don't drive, including low-income Americans, renters, urbanites, the elderly, and the young.

LWV has long fought for ballot access, which should be a completely non-partisan issue. Its stand on this issue has not changed. What has changed is that Republicans now see voter ID laws as a way for their party to win despite their flagging demographics (as stated by the Pennsylvania legislator who said that voter ID would allow Romney to win Pennsylvania).

In Minnesota Republicans couldn't get a voter ID law past a Democratic governor, so they passed a constitutional amendment that will be on the ballot this November. Earlier this month a debate on the issue was held between a former governor and a former secretary of state. They're both Republicans, which makes it pretty clear this is not really a partisan issue.

Yet Republicans call LWV and AARP "partisan" for opposing the ballot question, which is not a person and does not belong to a party and is by definition not partisan. But because they drafted the amendment for partisan purposes, they believe that any opposition to it must also be partisan.

Their partisanship is so ingrained that they cannot conceive for a moment that someone could oppose the amendment on the quite rational grounds that you should not embed technical details of election procedures in the constitution of a state. When technology gives us a better and cheaper solution for identifying voters than photo IDs, which are ridiculously easy to forge, we'll have to amend the constitution again!

What's ironic about Republican castigation of LWV is that at the same time Rand Paul Libertarians are citing LWV for the integrity of their debates. The League used to sponsor the presidential debates, but withdrew when they refused to "perpetrate a fraud" in the final Bush-Dukakis debate in 1988. The League also stood up to Jimmy Carter when he insisted that John Anderson (third-party candidate) be excluded from the 1980 debates, which were then held with only Reagan and Anderson.


The issue isn't that AARP and LWV have become partisan, it's that the Republican Party is attempting to win elections by enacting laws that prevent their opponents from voting. It is not partisan to oppose partisan manipulation of the franchise.

With Friends Like These...

The subject of the Keystone Pipeline came up in last night's debate and Mitt Romney fell back on that very false talking point that the president has "blocked it." This has been shown time and again to not be true.

But Governor Romney might want to be careful about how vigorously he champions the pipeline. He might seriously tick off a very large group of heavily armed people who don't take kindly to foreigners ordering them around: Texans.

As the company pursues construction of a controversial 1,179-mile-long cross-country pipeline meant to bring Canadian tar sands oil to South Texas refineries, it's finding opposition in the unlikeliest of places: oil-friendly Texas, a state that has more pipelines snaking through the ground than any other. 

In the minds of some landowners approached by TransCanada for land, the company has broken an unspoken code. 

"This is a foreign company," Crawford said. "Most people believe that as this product gets to the Houston area and is refined, it's probably then going to be shipped outside the United States. So if this product is not going to wind up as gasoline or diesel fuel in your vehicles or mine then what kind of energy independence is that creating for us?"

Hmm...who else has been saying that for quite some time now?

TransCanada's pipeline, some landowners say, is more worrisome than those built by other companies because of the tar sands oil the company wants to transport. They point to an 800,000-gallon spill of mostly tar sands oil in Michigan's Kalamazoo River in 2010. It took Enbridge, the company that owns that pipeline, 17 hours to detect the rupture, and the cleanup is still incomplete. 

Ah, those landowners in Texas are just a bunch of fucking tree hugger hippie communists...fuckers...what right do they have?

Nearly half the steel TransCanada is using is not American-made and the company won't promise to use local workers exclusively; it can't guarantee the oil will remain in the United States. It has snatched land. Possibly most egregious: They've behaved like arrogant foreigners, unworthy of operating in Texas. 

Oh, there's that, of course.

I seem to recall a few people on here expressing unqualified support for the Keystone Pipeline and accusing those who didn't of being traitors. So, this story from AP begs the question...are Texas landowners anti-American because they won't let a Canadian company drill for oil on their land?

Thoughts on the Debate

For those of you wondering what happened to Barack Obama in the first debate need not wonder after tonight. He's back and in massively full force!!

The president did a fantastic job tonight touting his accomplishments and explaining what a second term would mean for the country. He called out Governor Romney for his blatant lies and complete policy about faces in a most excellent way. In fact, I think he spent some of his debate prep watching the videos below. For all you undecided voters out there, there's no need to listen to anyone else but Mitt Romney himself.





I wonder how long it will take (less than a second) for a "Voices in My Head" mouth foam...:)

Anyway, this calling out clearly rattled Romney and, unfortunately for Republicans, this brought out the old Mitt...repeating the same question over and over again ("Have you looked at your pension? Have you looked at your pension?")in a similar way to how he tried to bet Rick Perry $10,000...talking about binders with qualified women (?)...looking the perfect combination of hyper and flustered when told he was wrong about something (the president's post Libya comments)...among many other awkward moments that make it pretty clear that the president won the debate tonight.

On a personal note, I was shocked, I tell you, SHOCKED, to hear the president actually have the guts to say what I have been wanting someone in government to say in the last decade:

Some of those jobs aren't coming back.

Praise the Lord! Someone who is FINALLY honest about globalization. And he followed it up with a very thoughtful and intelligent comment about education and retraining workers. So what does all this mean for the race? I think it will stop the momentum that Governor Romney had and re-energize the Democrats which is really great because they are less enthusiastic about voting than the Republicans.

More importantly, I think it cements the electoral firewall the president has set up in Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa which still makes this a very tough race for Romney to win. But it's still going to be closer than it looked before the first debate which makes it all the more exciting!

Polls For Tuesday, October 16th

Here are the polls for today. The obvious one that jumps out right away is the Gallup poll which shows Mitt Romney up 4 points nationally.

But does it matter? The swing state polls haven't really moved that much and with Ohio still polling 2-3 points  that puts the president at 255 so all he needs is Wisconsin and Iowa which have been consistently in the president's column for the entire campaign. A good debate tonight (regardless of what Mitt Romney does) will help cement this lead.

The other poll to take note of is the one in my home state where Bachmann is leading Jim Graves by 9 points. The race seemed much tighter than this in recent polls.

General Election: Romney vs. Obama	Gallup Tracking	Romney 50, Obama 46	Romney +4
General Election: Romney vs. Obama	Rasmussen Tracking	Romney 49, Obama 47	Romney +2
General Election: Romney vs. Obama	IBD/TIPP Tracking	Romney 46, Obama 47	Obama +1
New Hampshire: Romney vs. Obama	Suffolk/7News	Obama 47, Romney 47	Tie
Pennsylvania: Romney vs. Obama	Quinnipiac	Obama 50, Romney 46	Obama +4
Colorado: Romney vs. Obama	WeAskAmerica	Romney 48, Obama 47	Romney +1
Iowa: Romney vs. Obama	WeAskAmerica	Obama 49, Romney 46	Obama +3
New Jersey: Romney vs. Obama	Quinnipiac	Obama 51, Romney 43	Obama +8
Indiana: Romney vs. Obama	Rasmussen Reports	Romney 54, Obama 41	Romney +13
Washington: Romney vs. Obama	SurveyUSA	Obama 54, Romney 40	Obama +14
Massachusetts: Romney vs. Obama	Rasmussen Reports	Obama 57, Romney 42	Obama +15
Montana Senate - Rehberg vs. Tester	Rasmussen Reports	Rehberg 48, Tester 48	Tie
Pennsylvania Senate - Smith vs. Casey	Quinnipiac	Casey 48, Smith 45	Casey +3
New Jersey Senate - Kyrillos vs. Menendez	Quinnipiac	Menendez 55, Kyrillos 37	Menendez +18
Washington Governor - McKenna vs. Inslee	SurveyUSA	Inslee 47, McKenna 44	Inslee +3
Washington Governor - McKenna vs. Inslee	Rasmussen Reports	Inslee 47, McKenna 45	Inslee +2
New Hampshire Governor - Lamontagne vs. Hassan	Suffolk/7News*	Lamontagne 38, Hassan 41	Hassan +3
North Carolina Governor - McCrory vs. Dalton	Rasmussen Reports	McCrory 52, Dalton 38	McCrory +14
North Carolina Governor - McCrory vs. Dalton	PPP (D)*	McCrory 47, Dalton 37	McCrory +10
Minnesota 6th District - Bachmann vs. Graves	KSTP/SurveyUSA	Bachmann 50, Graves 41	Bachmann +9
President Obama Job Approval	Gallup	Approve 49, Disapprove 45	Approve +4
President Obama Job Approval	Rasmussen Reports	Approve 48, Disapprove 51	Disapprove +3
Obama: Favorable/Unfavorable	USA Today/Gallup	Favorable 51, Unfavorable 48	Favorable +3
Romney: Favorable/Unfavorable	USA Today/Gallup	Favorable 52, Unfavorable 44	Favorable +8

Tonight

The second presidential debate is tonight at Hofstra University and it's very clear that the race has changed since the last debate. If you would have told me before the last debate that the president's chances of re-election went from  347-191 to 281-235 (with Colorado and Virginia being pure tossups), I would have said you were nuts.

But that's what one poor debate performance and a completely new and improved Mitt Romney does for a presidential race. The president has a tough task ahead of him tonight. He has to obviously be more upbeat than he was in the last debate and he also has to challenge Romney on his many about faces on the key issues. Yet he has to do it without seeming belligerent because this is a Town Hall style debate with undecided voters in the audience who would likely frown upon heavy partisan bickering. A tough task, indeed.

What I would do tonight if I were the president is point to his list of accomplishments in office and use them to challenge Romney. The president could say, "Mr Romney says that he is a job creator...well, he's sharing the stage with one right now. I've created 5 million jobs in my four years in office and that was after the greatest economic contraction since the great depression. The stock market is seeing new highs, housing is coming back, and consumer confidence is getting higher everyday. We've cut the deficit by 200 billion. We're on the right track, despite the policies of the past that Governor Romney wants to return us to." This is the way he has to frame it. He can't be the attack dog that the Democrats want him to be.

Another thing he could say to erase the last debate is to say something like, "I was shocked at the last debate to see that Governor Romney has come to my way of thinking on issues like health care and taxes. I'm glad he wants to save social programs and keep most of my health care plan like pre-existing conditions and children being able to be insured by their parents until they are 26. I think it's great that he thinks taxes don't need to be cut for the wealthy. But he still hasn't said how he is going to pay for all of this."

The president can nail Romney on specifics without going negative. He could simply say, "I stand for the wealthy paying more of their fair share of taxes. I want to keep tax cuts permanent for the middle class. I'm looking forward to implementing the rest of my health care plan. Who are you, Governor Romney and what do you stand for?"

This point really has to be driven home because it's enormously aggravating that Romney is now suddenly a moderate who supports helping the middle class. More irritating is the sound of crickets I hear from the Right who now have made it abundantly clear that they just want Barack Obama to lose and it's not because they think his policies are wrong for the country. It's because they KNOW they are starting to be effective (which Romney will, of course, take credit for if he wins) and that would hasten the end (already inevitable, demographically speaking) of their party as they know it. It matters not if Mitt Romney does these things...just as long as it's not Barack Obama.

Honestly, I don't think Mitt Romney can do these things. I think he's a nice guy and he is exactly like all the dads of the kids I with whom I went to school (private school, grades 7-12) but he's not presidential material. The fact that people are now of the mind that he "looks like a president on the TeeVee" is really disappointing to me. I thought we had moved past all that.

I guess I'm very pessimistic about the race at this point. Perhaps it's because there was such a comfortable lead by the president that has now been needlessly squandered and we are left with an honest to goodness nail biter that sadly isn't based on substance. More frustrating is the fact that the Democrats are likely to pick up 12 seats in the House and hold the Senate, possibly even gaining a seat or two, given the fact that the GOP candidates are so awful this year and the Democratic candidates are so good.

281 does win it, however, and so perhaps I'm being overly paranoid. With Ohio holding the way it is (even after the president sucked in the last debate), that means that Romney is going to have to run the table on the rest of the states. Even Frank Luntz says that the president is likely going to win simply because of electoral math.

So, the president could really help himself tonight and I'm hoping that he will!

Polls For Monday October 15

General Election: Romney vs. Obama	Gallup Tracking	Romney 49, Obama 47	Romney +2
General Election: Romney vs. Obama	Rasmussen Tracking	Romney 49, Obama 48	Romney +1
General Election: Romney vs. Obama	IBD/TIPP Tracking	Romney 47, Obama 47	Tie
General Election: Romney vs. Obama	Politico/GWU/Battleground	Romney 48, Obama 49	Obama +1
General Election: Romney vs. Obama	ABC News/Wash Post	Romney 46, Obama 49	Obama +3
Pennsylvania: Romney vs. Obama	Morning Call	Obama 49, Romney 45	Obama +4
Iowa: Romney vs. Obama	ARG	Obama 48, Romney 48	Tie
Virginia: Romney vs. Obama	ARG	Obama 47, Romney 48	Romney +1
Colorado: Romney vs. Obama	Gravis Marketing	Romney 46, Obama 48	Obama +2
Florida: Romney vs. Obama	Gravis Marketing	Romney 49, Obama 48	Romney +1
Pennsylvania: Romney vs. Obama	PPP (D)	Obama 51, Romney 44	Obama +7
North Carolina: Romney vs. Obama	PPP (D)	Romney 49, Obama 47	Romney +2
Missouri: Romney vs. Obama	Wenzel Strategies (R)	Romney 55, Obama 41	Romney +14
Virginia Senate - Allen vs. Kaine	Rasmussen Reports	Kaine 48, Allen 47	Kaine +1
Indiana Senate - Mourdock vs. Donnelly	Rasmussen Reports	Mourdock 47, Donnelly 42	Mourdock +5
Florida Senate - Mack vs. Nelson	Rasmussen Reports	Nelson 46, Mack 45	Nelson +1
Pennsylvania Senate - Smith vs. Casey	Morning Call	Casey 41, Smith 39	Casey +2
Pennsylvania Senate - Smith vs. Casey	PPP (D)	Casey 50, Smith 39	Casey +11
New Mexico Senate - Wilson vs. Heinrich	Albuquerque Journal*	Heinrich 48, Wilson 39	Heinrich +9
Michigan Senate - Hoekstra vs. Stabenow	Rasmussen Reports	Stabenow 51, Hoekstra 39	Stabenow +12
Virginia 2nd District - Rigell vs. Hirschbiel	Virginian-Pilot/CNU	Rigell 44, Hirschbiel 32	Rigell +12
Generic Congressional Vote	Politico/GWU/Battleground	Democrats 46, Republicans 44	Democrats +2
Generic Congressional Vote	Rasmussen Reports	Democrats 43, Republicans 42	Democrats +1
President Obama Job Approval	Gallup	Approve 48, Disapprove 47	Approve +1
President Obama Job Approval	Rasmussen Reports	Approve 49, Disapprove 50	Disapprove +1
Obama and Democrats' Health Care Plan	Rasmussen Reports*	For/Favor 42, Against/Oppose 52	Against/Oppose +10
President Obama Job Approval	ABC News/Wash Post	Approve 50, Disapprove 48	Approve +2
President Obama Job Approval	Politico/GWU/Battleground	Approve 50, Disapprove 48	Approve +2
Direction of Country	ABC News/Wash Post	Right Direction 42, Wrong Track 56	Wrong Track +14
Direction of Country	Politico/GWU/Battleground	Right Direction 40, Wrong Track 53	Wrong Track +13
Obama: Favorable/Unfavorable	Politico/GWU/Battleground	Favorable 53, Unfavorable 45	Favorable +8
Romney: Favorable/Unfavorable	Politico/GWU/Battleground	Favorable 51, Unfavorable 44	Favorable +7

No Longer the Majority

A study from the Pew Research Center found that, for the first time in history, Protestants are no longer the majority in the United States: only 48% of Americans belong to a Protestant church. Since 2007 the percentage of Americans who belong to Christian churches has declined from 78% to 73%. The number of religiously unaffiliated Americans (the "Nones") has increased from 15.3% to 19.6%.

Most of the decline in church membership has been in white Protestant sects (evangelical and mainline), which have fallen from 39% to 34%. Historically black Protestant church membership is unchanged. Membership in the Catholic church is also unchanged, in large part due to immigration from Latin America.

According to the study, a major factor in the growth of the religiously unaffiliated is generational replacement: that is, old folks are dying off. Among younger Millennials, 34% are religiously unaffiliated, as compared to 9% of those born between 1928-1945 and 5% of those born between 1913-1927.

Now, not all unaffiliated people are atheists and agnostics (though those numbers have increased by half, to 5.7%). Most nones still believe in God, and most of them (74%) were brought up in a religious tradition. But the number of people who admit they have doubted the existence of God has almost doubled, to 18%, since 1987. In addition, the number of people who believe that the Bible should be taken literally has declined to 31% from 38% circa 1980.

Not surprisingly, based on their age cohort, more than 70% of the nones favor same-sex marriage and believe that abortion should be legal. They don't, however, all harbor identical views on the size of government, so they're not necessarily all in the same political boat.

Yet this downward trend in religious affiliation is happening at the same time the religious right and the Republican Party are doubling down on their opposition to science and reason. Just last week Georgia Rep. Paul Broun called the theory of evolution and the Big Bang theory "lies straight from the pit of hell." Broun, who sits on the House Science and Technology committee, thinks that the Earth is only 9,000 years old. Even if you don't believe in the Big Bang or evolution, biblical archaeology tied to straightforward observations of alluvial, volcanic and glacial deposition tell us that the earth has to have existed for far longer than 9,000 years.

But perhaps the biggest reason that young people are becoming unaffiliated is that major institutional religions are drowning in hypocrisy. The Catholic Church has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements for child sex abuse, yet continues to pretend there's not a serious structural problem with an all-male celibate priesthood (they basically couldn't get rid of those bad priests because they had no one to replace them). There's an endless string of Protestant pastors who've had affairs with all manner of women and men and have multimillion dollar media empires built on the backs of old ladies who send in the last pennies from their social security checks

The Republican Party has hitched its wagon to hotbutton social and race issues (cast in the guise of "illegal immigration") pushed by southern white Protestants. Unless they reform their agenda soon, Republicans are about to fall into a demographic chasm so deep that no amount of gerrymandering and manipulation of voting laws will be able to win elections for them.

How Much Longer?

It's things like this that sadly make me realize just how much of a challenge we have with education in this country. How much longer will paranoia, hatred and anger rule the day and make people this irrational?