A New Political Party Is Needed

Joel S. Hirschhorn

Set aside any Obama euphoria you feel. The other important news is that third-party presidential candidates had a miserable showing this year, totaling just over one percent of the grand total with 1.5 million votes nationwide, compared to some 123 million votes for Barack Obama and John McCain.

The Anti-Incumbency Movement is Dead Joel S. Hirschhorn Voting out congressional incumbents failed this year, showing the anti-incumbency movement to be a clear letdown. For some years many groups and their websites have been advocating voting out congressional incumbents as an effective means to reform government and make it work better. Two of the better ones are Vote Out Incumbents Democracy and Tenure Corrupts.

You did well. Use your power wisely. You have it all.

Edit by stinerman:

The Republicans may have dodged a bullet in the Senate races.  Coleman looks like he's going to be in a recount situation with Franken in MN.  Smith is up in OR, and even Ted Stevens might end up winning in AK.

Ok guys. It's not too early or too late so lets all go on record. Actually you can revise your prediction in this same thread later on, up until the night before the election. Let's do it!

Feel free to include anything you want like the popular vote percentages, electoral votes, state surprises, senate and house results, etc.

McCain: We need to know the full extent of Senator Obama's relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.

McCain made this serious accusation during the third presidential debate . It has also been propagated by television advertisements , and extensive editorializing by Obama's opponents. However, if we look into the specific accusations against ACORN (let alone the actual evidence), they do not add up into the grand conspiracy theory that McCain is promoting.

Ballot access expert Richard Winger's blog is an invaluable resource to a minor party/indy enthusiast like myself.  Lately he's done some work detaling the large amount of unopposed incumbents for state legislature this year.

Even after a day of mulling, Joe Biden's remarks at a Seattle fundraiser a few days ago are still troubling to me because they say something about both Joe Biden and Barack Obama.  Here's what Joe the Politician said:

"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy."

If there is any politician who has a right to blame George W. Bush, it's John McCain.  In 2000, the one man standing in the way of McCain's quest for the presidential brass ring was Bush.  In 2008, the one man standing in the way of McCain's quest for the presidency is Bush (and his sub-30% approval rating and 90±% nation-going-in-the-wrong-direction rating).  Sure, McCain's opponent this time around is Barack Obama, but the Bush legacy of incompetence and cronyism--ladled with a big helping of economic crisis--is going to crush the McCain campaign into little tiny bits.  A good debate performance won't change a thing.  I'd like to be wrong, but the electoral map paints the picture .

This thread is for the final Presidential debate. We'll be starting the live-blog at 8:45p EST. Readers without laptops (is that like Doctors Without Borders?) may want to know that the debate will be available on Hulu.com . Post questions you'd like the candidates to answer, your thoughts on who might win the debate, what each candidate needs to do to win the debate, etc.

Lois Coar, the mother of two grown children, supported Mitt Romney this year and is undecided for November. She cannot see voting for Obama -- "not because he's black, but I just can't put it in words." She likes McCain as a person, but "I can't understand why he keeps talking about this Ayers guy" -- William Ayers, the 1960s radical who became an occasional colleague and supporter of Obama in Chicago. "He should be focusing on the economy and real terrorists; that's what people worry about," she said.

Take a look at this diary from Redstate.

Today is the first day of his polling track that includes all polling after the VP debate. 70 million people watched that debate, and the results are that Obama's lead increased to 8 points? How does that make any sense in a sane universe? Giving the MSM spin, at best it can be called "Biden held his own", which should have resulted in the tracking poll holding steady.

Factcheck.org is a non-partisan independent organization that attempts to judge the accuracy of statements by politicians. They recently updated their article on the Biden-Palin debate, changing it to more accurately reflect what Biden actually said. Kudos to factcheck.org for acknowledging the misleading nature of their initial article and for correcting the record. Details below the fold.

Associated Press just slapped down the race card in its latest "analysis" by Douglass K. Daniel.

By claiming that Democrat Barack Obama is "palling around with terrorists" and doesn't see the U.S. like other Americans, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin targeted key goals for a faltering campaign.

And though she may have scored a political hit each time, her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.

Edit by Brendan: added table with links to text for easier access to information. This is just my formatting, content and viewpoint is BD's.

Some Palin errors	Some Biden errors
	Hezbollah in Lebanon
McKiernan's name	McKiernan's position
Positions on Iraq	Afghanistan spending
	VP role
	Hamas elections
	Precondition
	Legislation
Obama's tax plan	McCain's tax plan
	Gay marriage
	Anecdote

First, factcheck.org compiled the factual shortcomings of both candidates:

I thought it might be fun to take a look at the Sunday Show's;

As my good friend Brutus14 pointed out in Thursday's open thread, the Barr campaign has filed suit [PDF] in Texas to have the court compel the Secretary of State to remove John McCain and Barack Obama from the ballot.

The statute in question which states in part:

Here Obama's 10 Worst Ideas .

Here's McCain's 10 Worst Ideas .

I think they are generally on the mark though I have some quibbles.

On Obama's, I'm not so sure how bad Number 4 is. Meeting with the Iranian President, by itself doesn't seem so bad to me. However, FP adds that Obama said he would do this "without precondition". Perhaps THAT isn't wise. I'm not sure. But according to a Carnegie Endowment expert on the matter:

Those of you who find yourself unenthusiastic about voting for either McCain or Obama might consider voting to reward the type of campaign you'd like to see candidates run in the future.

I'd heard about this survey a while back. And now, it's done.

Hat tip to Tyler Cowen for alerting me to the results.

I am actually as surprised as Cowen, a libertarian independent like me, that the polls were as close as they were on a general level considering the personal politics of Economists to skew "liberal" (despite that, as a group, those liberals tend to skew "Right" compared to others in Academia)

Obama won the general vote by a count of 59% to 31%.

As I've stated on several occasions, I find the resurgence of McCain and the GOP from the jaws of inevitable defeat to be simply astounding. In a way, the feeling is like when I, as a Phillies fan, watched the Red Sox improbable run towards a World Series victory when they were one out away from losing down 3 games to none to the Yankees in 2004. I was amazed. Not really sad, not really elated....just amazed. I was witnessing an improbable historic run.

As I watch McCain do nothing while surging ahead of Obama in the polls in a country that hates the Bush Administration, I'm intrigued.