Down the stretch they come: The electoral map, Crazy Joe, and other things.

Now this is really it.  I mean it was “IT” after the debates, but only partially it.  Now this is really  it.  Come Tuesday the race will finally be over, maybe.  More on the maybe in a second.  Lets get to the campaigns with some quick hits.

We ain’t in Kansas anymore…

Because you’re in Cleveland Joe, you crazy bastard.  Crazy Uncle Joe was at it again.  On stage in Cleveland the countries favorite Drunk Uncle started to extol the virtue of Des Moines Iowa.

Tell me who’s the candidate with Romesia…

They use to call me Crazy Joe, now they call me… ah…ah… Hey who wants ice cream?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The “where am I bug” even hit President Clinton, who is normally smoother than I don’t know what.  He thought he was in Pennsylvania when he was really in Florida.  Now in his defense he was in the middle of a 6 state run yesterday.  He also recovered much better than Joe, who just stammers along as if you’re the one who doesn’t know where you are.  Clinton just went on a riff about PA and chucked out some interesting facts and figures before returning to his Florida speech.

Can that dude run again?

Since last we debated…

So a lot has been going on since the final debate.  We’ve been subjected to lousy punch lines from the Obama campaign.  “If you said one thing two weeks ago, but said something different this week, you might just have Romnesia.”  Good lord.  Do we need to say more.  The state of his campaign is pretty obvious.  If it’s not obvious to you than you’ve never been pursued by a desperate paramour.

Not to be outdone in the idiot department, a super pac supporting Romney put up an ad about Chrysler Jeeps that could only be classified as an outright lie.  Seems camp Romney is telling folk the economy is so bad that Jeep is making Jeep in China and it’s all Obama’s fault.  A myriad of problems here.  China does not allow auto imports.  Every car maker has a plant in China.  The Chinese can only buy domestic, meaning the car must be made in China.

Second, car makers traditionally build the cars where they sell them.  It’s a standard car business model.  So Jeep also has a plant in Australia, all over Europe, Japan, etc…  So do most car makers.  Guess what, they have a plant or two here in the good old US of A. Always have.  They build the cars where they sell them.  Stuff like that is so easy to check. One search in the Google and you have the ad debunked.  Just dumb to put that ad out. Even dumber to endorse the ad, which Romney did himself when asked directly about it. You might have Romnesia…

Along came Sandy…

The only positive of the massive storm that hit the east coast was it put an end to all the idiotic campaign talk, ads, stump speeches, and commercials.  It would have only lasted a day or so but we got even more relief from an unlikely source.

In walks Chris Christie, Governor of NJ and big time Romney supporter.  The day after the storm destroyed the Jersey coastline and my hometown, Christie gave a press conference where he praised President Obama for moving so quickly to eliminate the red tape and expedite relief efforts.  The President was doing his job, but Christie really went on and on about the help and support he was getting from Obama and Christie felt the President deserved credit for that.  OK.  But he went a little overboard in some peoples’ estimation.  Conspiracy theories abound.  My favorite: Christie is submarining Romeny so he can run in 2016.  Sometimes I weep for the American Electorate.

Then there are times I laugh myself silly.  Christie went on Fox and Friends, the last bastion of pure intentional idiocy on the airwaves, and did an interview with Steve Doocy, king of the dopes.  Just when I thought Doocy could not be dumber, he rises to the occasion and proves me wrong.  He was clearly sent out there to burn the edge off all this praise Obama was getting.  So he asks Christie  if he was going to be taking Romney on a tour of the damage as he had just done with Obama.   The look on Christie’s face was priceless and if you have seen him before you knew what was coming.

Christie lit into Doocy for a good three minutes.  Instead of helping Romney, Doocy opened a can of worms with Christie that only hurt Romney more.  Everything Christie said in response was the last thing the Romney folk wanted to hear.  Especially since it was coming from the mouth of one of their more famous advocates.  But like President Bush 43, Christie really has a heart for the people he governs and he speaks his mind from that perspective, clearly unconcerned with the impact on the politics.

He proceeded to tell Doocy and the Fox fan base that he could care less what Governor Romney was interested in, he’s not the President so he can’t help me or the people of NJ so I have no desire or interest in that.  If you think I’m interested in the Presidential election right now you don’t know me very well.  That last sentence was a direct quote.   Ouch.  Good work Steve.  That’s the kind of reporting/interviewing we have come to expect from a bad weatherman with an undetectable IQ.

On the flip side…

Of course Romney took hits from the left wing of the media and as with Fox, they were all stupid and blatantly false.  The gist of the accusations were to the effect that if Mr. Romney wanted to help so much he should put his personal fortune where his mouth is. There is a lot wrong with that statement and its sentiment. Not the least of which is the fact Mitt had already made a sizable monetary donation to go along with food and resources he’s been personally providing since the storm hit. All done long before the media started to assault his character in a public forum.

Red Cross has confirmed they are accepting all supplies from Romney and his campaign. This was in response to an outright lie put out there by Rachel Maddow and reiterated by Alex Morgan on her noon time talk show on MSNBC.  They said Romney was only making matters worse by sending material goods instead of money and his stuff was not being accepted by any agency due to logistics.  Hey girls maybe it’s time to put your checkbook where your lies are.

So politically the storm was a push for the campaigns.  Both men did what they could do in their respective capacity.  The President obviously has more resources and ability to move mountains and he did so.  The Governor proved you can mobilize private help, but he also showed individual states can’t respond to an event of that magnitude.  Probably has something to do with the fact that the states of NY and NJ just had all their infrastructure washed out to sea.  It takes a partnership people.  The President, Governor Christie, Governor Cuomo, and Governor Romney worked it as well as it can be worked. And regardless of what you may hear or read, they all did it without playing politics.

It’s the map, always the map…

The map is where it’s at.  And the map says this one might be very close.  In popular vote Obama will probably be on the short end, but it looks as though he will win the electoral college race and get a second term.  In the olden days the Thursday prior to election day always told the tale.  Whoever was winning the polling data and the electoral map mathematics on the final Thursday eventually won the election.  And by olden days I mean all the way up to November of 08.   So here is where it stands now.

From Real Clear Politcs

Here is the rub, this ain’t the old days.  Hard to tell what may happen, but if the math stands like this come election day, Romney will need 78 of the 146 toss up electoral votes to break for him while Obama only needs 69.  And yeah that 9 vote difference is a big deal.  270 makes you President, so the Governor has a tough road to climb but not insurmountable.

The hurricane really has little effect.  The President was going to win NJ and NY anyway. Romney didn’t even campaign there.  But he is making up ground in Ohio, Colorado and Iowa.  That’s huge.  If Romney wins Ohio, get ready for a long night and possibly…

RECOUNT!…

Yeah it may be that close that an auto recount is triggered in several states.  Each state is different with respect to when they have a recount, but polling suggests a few states may be close enough to their recount number.  If that happens we’ll not know who won until December.

Be sure to check back here on election night for live updates as the results pour in.  I’ll be typing until Hawaii decides.  As the old saying goes: As goes Maui, so goes the nation.