It Ain't Over

I have good days and bad days with this election cycle. Last week was a grumpy one, but I'm not so negative these days. Thirty days is a long time before Election Day, and John McCain is within three points in at least one poll.

What this tells me is that the electorate is deeply divided about the candidates and they don't like either one that much. Sure, Barack Obama hit 50% in some polls, but those opinions seem to be fleeting and momentary. It seems as though each event pitches the electorate to one candidate or the other, but nothing has made the voters commit.

This instability is stressing not just us McCain supporters but Obama supporters, as well, as Jules Crittenden notes,

Here’s a particularly paranoid Huffposter who is imagining stolen elections past and future, with cooked election machines. But he recognizes a couple of things that are actually real. It ain’t over. And Obama needs a landslide. Not because the Republicans have the ability or desire to steal an election, as this dolt suggests. Because as have happened with the two previous Democrats, they lose a dead heat. Norman MacAfee’s handwringer is a must read. A lot of angsty rhetoric, packed with politic license. Ends dramatically:

This is the most important election ever.

If we allow the right wing, the neocons, to steal another election, as they did in 2000, the country is finished. Maybe the world will be too.

That is why a landslide is the best chance for the survival of our country, of even the human race and the natural world around us.

Because McCain will kill you. You and every living thing on Earth … er … Gaia.

I would be very unhappy if Barack Obama wins the election. I'm concerned about what Obama will do to the First Amendment, specifically with regards to the Fairness Doctrine. And his thuggish behavior late in this campaign towards any criticism gives me pause. I'm also concerned about the judges he would appoint and what a veto-proof Senate and Democrat majorities in Congress would mean. But I don't think I'll die or, for that matter, that humanity will die, if Obama wins. But maybe that's the difference between conservatives and certain, very desperate, liberals.