2008 Elections

To: Friends of ACORN
From: Steven Kest, Executive Director
Re: News from Nevada
Date: May 4, 2009

Politicians in Nevada are at it again. Seven months after executing a carefully staged raid on the Las Vegas ACORN office - a publicity stunt purporting to gather evidence of “voter fraud” in ACORN’s 2008 voter registration drive - Nevada’s attorney general and secretary of state today announced that they were filing a complaint against ACORN and two voter registration managers. Specifically, the complaint alleges that ACORN implemented a “corporate mandated quota system,” and that bonuses were paid for exceeding this quota, in violation of a Nevada statute that prohibits payment based on the total number of registrations.

By Dave Lindorff

Now that the street dancing is over, and President-elect Barack
Obama is measuring the drapes for the new Oval Office (let’s hope he
loses the mounted Saddam Hussein matching pistol set and that he has
the direct hard-wired link between the Vice President’s Office and the
Pentagon severed), it’s time to start focusing on how to make this new
president live up to his mantra of “Change We Can Believe In.”

Well over 65 million people voted Obama in on the belief that he
meant what he said with that largely empty slogan. They are going to be
hugely disappointed if he doesn’t deliver.

Harris & VandeHei did a good job of describing the massive shift in power from conservatives to Obama, which is nothing short of a revolution.

The rout of the Republican Party, and the accompanying gains by Democrats in Congress, mean that Barack Obama will assume office with vastly more influence in the nation’s capital than most of his recent predecessors have wielded.

The only exceptions suggest the magnitude of the moment. Power flowed in unprecedented ways to George W. Bush in the year after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It flowed likewise to Lyndon B. Johnson after his landslide in 1964.

This county map shows how the GOP is shrinking compared to 2004. The only growth areas are eastern Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and eastern Oklahoma. (The red dots on the Gulf probably reflect poor Democrats driven out by hurricanes, rather than actual Republican gains.) The heart of the Confederacy - Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, along with most of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi - is actually turning blue.

One of Ben Smith's readers found a map that roughly overlaps the red-leaning counties.

The reader comments:

By Dave Lindorff

With the polls continuing to show Barack Obama holding a steady or
even growing lead heading into Election Day, especially in the key
swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Colorado, New Hampshire
and Virginia, and with Democratic challengers looking strong in at
least 10 Senate races and dozens of open-seat or Republican-held House
races, it’s looking like this will be a big win for Democrats, both in
the presidential and the Congressional races.

Hopefully one thing such an across-the-boards win will lead to
would be a withering away of the self-destructive conspiracy-theory
paranoia that has gripped much of the Left over the last eight years.

By Dave Lindorff

Way back on June 20, I dreamed of an Electoral College map for Obama that rode the I-5 I-90 I-95 expressway to victory:

Of course we're not there yet, but we're getting close!

By Dave Lindorff

I’m ready to call this election. It’s going to be a big win for Barack Obama.

I know this because of a story I heard from an employee of a major
polling organization. He tells of a poll worker who was interviewing
homeowners in a small town in central Pennsylvania, part of that “real”
American hailed by Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
The man knocked on the door, and when the woman of the house answered,
told her he was a pollster and wanted to know how her household planned
to vote in November.

The woman turned and yelled into the house, “Honey, how are we voting this year?”

From inside the house, a male voice yelled back, “I guess we’re voting for the nigger.”

The woman turned to the stunned pollster and, without a hint of embarrassment, said, “I guess we’re voting for Obama.”

By Dave Lindorff

Okay, I was going to vote for Ralph Nader this November 4.

It was an easy decision. I live in Pennsylvania, which is now,
according to all the polls, reliably in the Obama column, with the
Democratic candidate holding an insurmountable lead in the polls of 14
percent over Republican John McCain—enough to overcome even the most
devious Republican vote suppression techniques and voting machine
chicanery.