The Game

Hello everyone, or whoever is left! (get it? Left? hehe!)

There are some things that I have been sure that I have written on this blog, only to come back and find out that I have said nothing about them. That means that my 'A' material is ending up as comments on other blogs, and whatever is left over is here. That's not a good way to run the show. Maybe I'll just post links to my comments from elsewhere. Hmmmm....

Anyway, I have to comment this morning about the Congressional races. I have been watching these VERY closely, especially over the last three weeks or so. The Senate race seems to have pretty much stagnated, somewhere in the 51-49 range, either way. As far as I am concerned, that will not cut it for the Dems, even if they have the 51. Here's why: If it is 51R-49D, then it is business as usual (for the sake of these numbers, we are assuming that Bernie Sanders (I) wins, and he will caucus with the Dems. Also, the pollsters continue to regard Lieberman as a de facto Dem, regardless of his new party affiliation.); if it is 50-50, Cheney is the tiebreaking vote, and we all know how that will turn out; At 51D-49R, things get a little weird. One of the Ds is Joe Lieberman, running on the Bullshit Moose party. It is my firm belief that, if he beats Ned Lamont, as it appears he will, he will caucus with the Republicans, knocking it back to 50-50+Cheney. Lieberman knows where his votes are coming from -- and he has a debt to repay. So, the magic number for the Dems is 52. I haven't seen a 52 yet.

Now, onto the House, where it gets interesting. The Dems need to pick up about 15 seats to take the majority. For a while, that was a possibility. But, going down the laundry list of scandals, problems, Iraq deaths, war profiteering, preying on children, etc., the game has gotten out of control, and FAST!

There is a term in baseball known as the Mendoza Line. The Mendoza Line is 200, or rather, .200 as a batting average. Named after a mediocre player who hit a lifetime .200 average, it is now regarded as the point where, if you are below the Mendoza Line, maybe you shouldn't be in the majors. I think the same rule could apply to the House. There are 435 members of the House; if a one party drops below 200 members, that means they have really screwed the pooch, and the party is in trouble.

According to my most-used polling site, electoral-vote.com, which I find tracks the most polls, things are getting weird. As of October 1st, the predicted House makeup was 216D-219R. By October 10th, it had flipped to 219D-216R (for simplicity, I am counting all 'toss-up' polls as Republican victories). By the 13th, it was 226D-209R. Things stayed the same for about a week, and then, IT happened. The Republican party imploded under the weight of it's own corruption & hubris. On November 1, the Republicans had smashed through the glass floor of the Mendoza line and were looking at a count of 239D-196R. I actually thought this was a bit over the top, since most of the polls were done by the firm Research 2000, but I took it under advisement.

Imagine my surprise today when a whole new group of Zogby (who I really like) polls came out this morning and put the numbers at 241D-194R! Bush & Cheney are being forced to campaign in Wyoming (!), Idaho (!!) and other places that should be locks for them. There is truly a move afoot to throw the bastards out.

I have said to some people, although not in this blog, that the way things are going this election cycle, if this campaign were to last a another month, we might be able to go straight from the election into impeachment hearings. I don't think we're going to get to that extent, but... wow! This should be an interesting (and, potentially long) Tuesday night.