Virginia. Their results start coming in around 7pm ET; the 538 site isn’t responding now (gee, wonder why), but I remember him saying that Virginia will be your lead indicator. If Obama loses Virginia, it doesn’t mean he’s lost, but the path to victory is more winding. But if McCain loses it, he’s at a drastic disadvantage.

Incidentally, I just realized one reason why I like Obama on emotional level — I appreciate a storyteller. When McCain talks, I want him to stop talking. When Obama talks, I want to find out what happens.

Just a couple bits I’ve picked up in my reading…putting them here for myself, if no other reason, because I am forgetful and will forget the significant states otherwise. Should make following election night results even more edge-of-the-seat than they already are:

FiveThirtyEight.com: Electoral Projections Done Right: What A McCain Win Looks Like…

Also, there are some states that truly do appear to be “must-wins” for McCain. In each and every one of the 624 victory scenarios that the simulation found for him this afternoon, McCain won Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Indiana and Montana. He also picked up Ohio in 621 out of the 624 simulations, and North Carolina in 622 out of 624. If McCain drops any of those states, it’s pretty much over.

(That’s out of 10,000 simulations.)

Talking Points Memo | Where to Watch

We just shot today’s episode of TPMtv, which is a run down of the big senate races. This won’t surprise anyone who’s closely watching the senate races. But if you’ve only been watching the presidential race, it’s all going to come down to three southern state races, all of which share a strong basic profile — Kentucky, with incumbent Mitch McConnell, Georgia with incumbent Saxby Chambliss and Mississippi, with appointed incumbent Roger Wicker.

None of the three Dems in these races has yet to get a public poll putting them in the lead. But each is very close, within a few points. And the incumbent, in each case, is under 50%. All of which is to say that each of these incumbents is in real trouble, though each probably has a thin advantage going into election day.

To get to 60, the Dems need to bag one of these three seats. Even with that, they’d need to pull out the Minnesota race, which looks promising but is still touch and go, and win all the ones where they’re favored but it’s still close. But when you’re watching on election night, keep an eye on those three races. They’ll be the tell.

Apparently disagreeing with Palin puts you at odds with the Constitution.

Political Radar: Palin Fears Media Threaten Her First Amendment Rights
“If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations,” Palin told host Chris Plante, “then I don’t know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media.”

This is so abysmally wrong, so tragically misunderstanding of what our FIRST GODDAMN AMENDMENT is, that I am not going to insult your intelligence or waste my time explaining why. I’m just going to present it as something she said and continue to silently nurse this ulcer that will continue to grow until Nov 4th.

What do you think would happen if, after the votes were counted, the numbers said McCain won with 85% of the vote?

Holy crap, man, there is just something so very cathartic about this.

The Alfred E.Smith Dinner is an annual fund raising event for Catholic Charities. Since 1960, when Kennedy and Nixon were guests, it’s been a traditional stop for presidential candidates. Apparently, in recent years, it’s also become sort of a…well I won’t say roast exactly, but an opportunity to poke fun at politics. I didn’t know these things, I had to go look it up.

I figured that had to be true, because to risk a speech like that, there’d have to be some context. Still pretty cool, though.

I was kinda thinking about liveblogging the debate again, but 1) who really cares and 2) once I heard about the format, I think I’d rather be livewatchin’. Five minute discussion period? Holy crap. I’ve been wanting that for like forever.

I might write something if it’s highly boring or highly interesting. Otherwise I’ll be checking other livebloggin’s while it’s going on.

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I mean…sigh. I mean. I need a word for this. Backwardism? Reverse-fu? I think I’m past the shock of the baldfaced lies that fly into the face of the truth, and I’m just in a state of dull depression.

TPM MUckraker | Palin Falsely Claimed Report Cleared Her of Legal Wrong-Doing

In a conference call on Saturday, after the report on the Troopergate investigation was released, Palin says:

I’m very very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing … any hint of any kind of unethical activity there.

It’s just…its just astonishing. The first finding of the Branchflower report says, quite clearly:

…Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act.

That’s not clearing you of legal wrongdoing, that’s finding you guilty of legal wrongdoing. I mean it’s right there. I was going to say that I can’t comprehend the size of the girl-balls needed to so brazenly lie like that—at reporters—who are all taping the conversation—but really, the media’s generally shown them there’s little accountability for doing so.

Edit: oh, I missed McCain campaign manager Rick Davis doing the same thing.

John McCain assures a crowd that you shouldn’t fear an Obama presidency and he’s a decent man. The crowd boos and makes shocked noises, but he pushes it more and they come around. They can take it as an empty proof of their mistaken views on his character, make it into a “look how noble John McCain” is, whatever. I’m just glad he actually seems to be doing something about the angry crowds he was starting to create.

This has been scaring me. And a lot of other people, judging by the blogs I read. Imagine you want to see a movie, but it’s only playing in one theater in the city, so you go. But when you get there you see it’s not a good neighborhood, you’re even kind of concerned about parking your car and the walk to the theater, but you think nah, it’s probably okay against the advice of your subconscious, and you go in anyway. The theater’s packed. A lot of talking, occasional yelling. Ten minutes into the movie the screen goes dark, people yell. The lights don’t come back on. Voices are getting raised. You hear a lot of shuffling. Somewhere deeper in the theater, a glass bottle breaks.

That’s the feel of the tension I’ve been getting about this recently. And damnit I had a great example of an editorial that I was going to point to, it was someone writing in shock with exclamation points about how he was actually worried, a sort of open letter to McCain saying “Senator, you must put an end to this!” But it turns out all you have to do is google “must stop!” mccain rally to see what I’m talking about. Note that these are not generally Obama supporters saying “McCain should stop attacking Obama”. These are people saying “the McCain campaign has to stop bringing people to the edge of violence.” Or Republicans warn McCain he may soon have blood on his hands. I wonder if the Secret Service asked him to take it down a notch.

So to see him start to actively push back makes me feel a little better. Of course that just means I upgrade my opinion of him from “shit” to “shit with a marshmallow on it”, but still.

Two things: one, apparently I was wrong about the results of the VP debate, and two, holy crap I missed the whole raging discussion in there. I’ve been in Java training all week, hadn’t paid a lot of attention. I’ll have to read through it this weekend.

Why not. All the cool kids are.

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Palin didn’t suck.

The polls are going to flatten out. By election time they’ll be close enough that the vote fixing can be hidden in the chaos of small sample sizes.

I was actually starting to get some hope, too.

sigh.

Consecutive sentences.

McCain: “Senator Obama and his allies in Congress infused unnecessary partisanship into the process. Now is not the time to fix the blame; it’s time to fix the problem.”

I mean even forget the larger point that he was the one who swooped into Washington, Batman-like, making a big friggin’ deal about going there to get shit done when in fact all he did was sit at a table and be noncommittal and not deliver whatever magic pixie dust he thought would make it all better. Forget he went from “NO DEBATE UNTIL THERE’S A DEAL” to “Okay, we can debate because there’s a framework for cooperation” to “you guys better all get back to work because you didn’t fix it yet” in under a week.

I mean just look at the consecutive sentences. “I blame Obama. This is not the time to blame people.” Amazing.

I have this empathy for embarrassment. I’m one of those people who has a really tough time watching things like Crank Yankers or America’s Funniest Home Videos or a sitcom where it’s the episode’s big punchline moment where someone’s caught in something really embarrassing. I get all squirmy and can barely look at the TV.

It’s because of this reaction that I’ve had a hard time watching clips of Couric’s interview with Palin, but I finally suffered through this one in its entirety because it carried the promise of Cafferty being a grumpy old man at the end:

Talking Points Memo | Cafferty: Palin’s a Friggin’ Laughingstock

(Personal to M.G.: Why do I think Palin should be laughed off the public stage? This.)

This scares me because I know exactly what she’s doing. I do that. Hit the popular phrases and the right-sounding words. I have a general confidence that if I just start running my mouth, I’ll either shortly have enough of an idea what I’m talking about, or I’ll be able to present it well enough to fool non-savvy people into thinking I know what I’m talking about. But I don’t risk it unless I have a general understanding of the topic and when I’m under less scrutiny.

But when I do it, I also have the confidence that, if I don’t pull it off, I have the safety net of apologizing, saying “oh, sorry, I got confused there,” and promise to get a better answer later after some research. I can work a crowd well enough that I can keep goodwill through that if I don’t try it too often, and people’s bullshit meters are usually thrown off by an admission that you don’t have all the answers.

But of course Palin doesn’t have that luxury. She can’t possibly say “I don’t know”—well, she can maybe a few times, but the number of times she can get away with that is very small—so she has no choice but to barrel through. And that’s what she’s doing here. I’ve heard a lot of people say “this sounds like a bad interview” because that’s exactly what it is. It’s a job interview with a candidate who has no right to be there, but she’s trying to bullshit through the interview and hoping for the best. If you were hiring a Safeway regional manager and she answered a question like this, you’d kick her out the door.

You know JOBS. Jobs and 1 in 5 and immigration. And oh yeah taxes! Taxes so hard-working Americans can 9/11 and jobs overseas the economy strong Israel and Iran porkbarrel spending bridge to nowhere. Russia.

edit: this guy does that riff better.

Again, protecting Palin from reporters. For some reason. Because she’s totally ready, and like, stuff.

Talking Points Memo | Palin bans reporters from meetings with leaders
Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who has not held a press conference in nearly four weeks of campaigning, on Tuesday banned reporters from her first meetings with world leaders, allowing access only to photographers and a television crew.

CNN, which was providing the television coverage for news organizations, decided to pull its TV crew, effectively denying Palin the high visibility she had sought.

Presumably until they show the proper deference. Man, it blows my mind, the banhammer that would come down on the Obama camp if any of them said that Obama wouldn’t talk to reporters “until they give him the proper deference.”

I dig the Republicans making this election about personality rather than issues, because it’s what they do. It’s what they understand. Nothing sinister about it, it’s just an argument that sort of person finds more persuasive. So Barack + proximity to William Aires = “hates America” for them fairly easily.

I just don’t get it. You look at his life, and what has he done that makes these people think he hates America or that he’s some sorta secret sleeper cell terrorist or something? It’s an indicator of how conservatives dominate the discussion that this isn’t asked much. What is it about Obama that says he hates America? you’d ask. And in some sense I guess some prominent pundits have already answered it…I seem to remember Sean Hannity saying he is afraid that, in his heart, Obama doesn’t love America, or similar.

Meanwhile you get this:

Palin touts stance on ‘Bridge to Nowhere,’ doesn’t note flip-flop: Politics | adn.com
Meanwhile, Weinstein noted, the state is continuing to build a road on Gravina Island to an empty beach where the bridge would have gone — because federal money for the access road, unlike the bridge money, would have otherwise been returned to the federal government.

So 1) not only did she support the Bridge to Nowhere, but 2) she is currently in support of a road to nowhere. Why? Because if Alaska didn’t use the money, they’d have to give it back. So not only is the “thanks but no thanks” a lie, but it covers up a greater falsehood: she’ll keep Federal money and burn it on something useless.

But somehow, in many people’s minds, the perky scrappy hockey mom image wins.

ABC News: Sarah Palin Defends Experience, Takes Hard Line Approach on National Security

On the anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, Gov. Sarah Palin took a hard-line approach on national security and said that war with Russia may be necessary if that nation invades another country.

I’ve just realized: this is why the neocons don’t want to do anything about global warming. Because it’d mean that Russian winters aren’t as bad as they used to be.