I want my exit polls…

The media needs to grow some. Do they realize it’s the Bush Republican pillagers who demonized exit polls? The only near misses have been over GW’s skin of the teeth runs. You know, the ones he saw as mandates?

Remember the last time before that that journalists jumped the gun. Can you say Thomas E. Dewey and Harry S Truman?

At the very least, exit polls have a much better track record than our intelligence community. And incorrect exit polls right themselves by morning. Not years and entire wars later.

It is the economy, at least here

First polls show the issue in Missouri is the economy.

Well, duh.

Last week GW, in Montana, said he was glad to be somewhere where the cowboy hats outnumbered the ties. Then, took off for St. Louis, a once muscular industrial city turned infirm village at best.

What would he say here? First thing that popped into my mind was, “glad to be somewhere where the blue collars outnumber the white collars.” Wait, all those jobs went south…

One day to go…and no voters came...

I really didn’t plan on following the What if they gave an election and no party came with this post. Then, at 3 a.m., after wrestling all day with putting auctions on eBay, I was sitting in bed, eating on a pint of Cherry Garcia, watching CNN and saw her.

There a blond suburban Virginia woman attempted to cut her lawn while a George Allen supporter bobbled around trying to get a pledge, in blood no doubt, for a vote..

“There’s one way you could convince me [to vote for Allen],” she said. “Start my mower.” He did; pulled the vexing little rope and shazam, mower putting noise.

Clearly the woman had intended a light jab, but it, as they say about some smiles, never reached her eyes. She was weary.

The polls show the gap between Dems and Reps narrowing.

I feel like that woman looked. Or I perceived she looked. It was 3 a.m.

That same weariness has dominated the last few days. I’m tired. We’re all tired. The Reps (except for GW and Cheney, et al) are going left. Dems are going right. And they’re all a world away from us. Yeppo, there is more clearly than ever an us-and-them.

For nearly 30 years, my husband anchored our family with a white collar, large corporation salary that tipped us into upper middle class territory. His running joke, albeit tongue in cheek, went along the lines of hoping my salary covered my American Express bill.

Gradually, insidiously, that state of life has eroded into where did all the money go?

I’ve stopped thinking an election will change that. For the first time, I may not stay up until the wee hours watching tote boards tomorrow. And know I’m one step beyond the average voter when it comes to election watching. I spent a lot of years in courthouses and campaign headquarters, watching tallies come in, jazzed, then later, bone tired and sometimes alcohol soothed, leaned over front page paste-ups on an extended deadline for the morning paper. Most times, I even stuck around in the pressroom watching that miraculous sight of news spinning off rolls and landing in a heap of warm newspapers. Yeah, I worked in one of those great anachronisms for a while. For me, that was almost as good as sex. As were the memories.

But even for me, that election night energy has waned. For a good number of us, I can understand where the goal changed from looking for a better life to just keeping this one from getting worse.

I’m in Jim Talent country. Now in a dead heat with Claire McCaskill for US Senator from Missouri. I fielded my 13th come-to-Jesus (both literally and figuratively) call at 9 p.m. last night. All recordings, no live people. Oh, that’s a voter connector for sure.

I’ve watched Talent and his no gay marriage, no abortion message ad infinitum. No matter what your leanings or religion, those messages won't wind many people up when their own committed relationships and those of their friends, gay or straight, stress under increasing financial woes. As for abortion, even for zealots, that has to come second to the basic needs of their already living children, like education, health care, jobs.

Don’t give me the economy is good. The pols need to step outside the beltway and their multimillion-dollar war chests. There are not many people out here who aren’t seeing differently, drowning in debt, arguing with contrary health insurance providers, just plain working poor or lacking jobs altogether. Or at least don’t have someone within two degrees of separation who is.

All the while, that big, showy balloon with the two billion a week war tally on the side hovers. The comparisons scream. Here in St. Louis, with a World Series win in a brand new stadium, pols tout the projected tax revenues for the soon to be built Ball Park Village. Over a 40-year span, BPV proponents project $291 million in tax revenues to the city, $142 million for our city’s near third world school district. We can’t help but look at the balloon and think of the schools one week of war revenue could build. Yeah, yeah, no one would ever spend on schools what we spend on war. Given.

For my money, McCaskill’s counter just doesn’t give me what I need. Or maybe there just isn’t a counter for that.

With all the attack campaignings -- Super Bowl parties with Playmates (ever heard of internet porn, candidates?), secret actual sexist agendas supported by an author/candidate's fictional characters (novels without evil for good to overcome, or fall prey to, really sell well, right?), well, you know the rest of the steps in that dance.

The races read more like science fiction than a plan for a better future on this planet. That does not entice people to wrestle with voter lines, ID checks and touch screens.

I hope I’m wrong. I hope there is a lot more, well, hope, out there than I’m seeing.

Getting me there would be simple. Just one candidate looking at me, even through a television screen or over a phone, saying I know it’s tough. I want to help. I can start my own lawnmower, thank you.

God, I miss Dick Gephardt.

Doogie and Still Looking for the ERA

Doogie Howser, Neil Patrick Harris, is gay. From the crawl on CNN. Big whoop. I’m still convinced that a lot of the movement is just a way for white Anglo Saxon males to gain minority status.

Before you comment, two things.

One, I have never factored anyone’s sex life – except my husband’s – in friendships. I take love where I find it, as should everyone else. The best friend I ever had, Atlanta Municipal (Traffic Court) and TICA international cat show judge Larry Paul, broke my heart when he died way too young a few years ago.

Two, as a female, I belong to the minority group with the majority number that has been fighting and yearning for equal status since the Romans kicked the Druids' asses a very long time ago.

When it comes to the power elite, still overwhelmingly male, my experience has been men choose gay men for power a lot easier than any type woman.

So, get over yourselves. Fight for your legal rights. I'll help. But don’t forget mine in the process. I 'm still smarting over the ERA.

Okay, comment away. I’m not countering any of them.

BTW, this in no way changes the fact that The Christmas Wish is still one of my all-time favorite movies this time of the year. But they may want to remake it with an eye to changing that Naomi Watts romantic lead.

Six days...What if they gave an election and no party came

Each night, and all day on CNN, the political pundits grow increasingly frenzied. They fidget and knit their brows. Across their faces swims a strange mix of confusion and self-satisfaction. Satisfaction at their apparent ease catching national politicians and planners with their heads up their asses. Confusion at the ease of it.

I’m not sure if it’s too much for them to wrap their collective heads around or if they can’t bring themselves to say what is a more logical conclusion – no party wants to win this election.

Despite frantic fumbling by individual candidates to win their own seats, for the political parties as wholes, winning this midterm is the ultimate nightmare. And some very savvy upper echelon pols are skating deftly to make sure they are not left last on the ice.

Actually, for all the bemoaning of voters who choose Dancing With the Stars over debates, this election foreplay entertains more and seems tailor-made for Jerry Springer – now that DWS has kicked him off – to referee.

Yesterday, the Dems pulled out their big gun. Swiftboat John Kerry trashed the troops.

If the Dems were planning the fastest, bestest way to stop their forward momentum, a better ploy or a better messenger doesn’t exist.
SKIDDD...

Kerry never steps on his tongue, or on a joke, or tells a joke for that matter. And if the ultimate breakdown of his considerable communication skills did accidentally happen, he would have apologized. Skillfully. Immediately.

Then GW gets on the horn with Rush Limbaugh and steps on his tongue. Well, no great surprise that, GW stepping on his tongue. But his handlers are more than deft at keeping him on message. Still GW declares Cheney and Rumsfeld to be doing a bang-up job and, if Reps retain power, the two will stay until the bitter end.

First, if there is a way to scare the bejeezus out of centrist Republicans, it is to invoke Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh made even Fascist Reps uncomfortable with his mean parody of Michael J. Fox. He’s Alex P. Keaton for Chrissakes.

Second, there's content of GW's re-animated, if unsaid, stay-the-course message.

Then, as if the pitiful job Rumsfeld has been doing hasn’t been underscored enough, Rumsfeld’s Central Command “leaked” a brightly colored bar chart showing violence in Iraq spread right past the midpoint between peace (green) and chaos (red). That, on the front page of the New York Times and flashed several hundred times today, was to drive home the point of how bad the war is for those who can’t read or comprehend without colors. Think threat level orange.
DOUBLE SKIDDD...

A couple of high points from last week. With all the doom mongering of how screwed up Operation Enduring Freedom is and with individual Republican candidates building border-sized walls between themselves and GW, Bush decides to skyrocket his visibility, taking Rumsfeld (hasn’t he been looking a bit subdued? Notice how despite his calm face in a press conference last week, he continuously banged the lectern with his fisted hands) along for the public ride.
SKIDDD...

Other, Late Indiscretions

Less than two weeks before the midterms, Sen. Barack Obama unnecessarily announced he will run for president in 2008. Pundits opined it was to give the Dems a face to rally around.

From my grandfather’s knee, I’m a yellow-dog Democrat. And I cringed.

Obama’s a beautiful, honorable, faithful, intelligent, caring man. Most of us YDD’s remember electing, once upon a time, an honorable, caring, faithful, intelligent, charismatic man, whose only drawback was his lack of experience inside the beltway. And our hearts broke watching Jimmy Carter eaten alive. That Carter grew into one of this country’s greatest statesmen and our superhero for good versus evil doesn’t help lessen the sting that he could not ever get a good grasp of that power while in office.

Personally, I didn’t need the angst over a decision to try that again. Not before this impending election. And I'm not alone.

And for those all-important Rep centrists who may swing the vote to the Dems, you know, the ones who are undecided and ones who are past dead broke, jobless, with none or third world health plans, it won’t escape their notice that he is black, married to a white woman and Ivy League educated. Jeez. Could anything be better to bring out the Klan vote?

Correction Nov. 3. Obama's mother is white, not his wife. I refuse to just edit out my careless mistakes. I was a Steve Brill journalist. We don't hide anything. It's my blog. Get over it.

With those vote-leaking drawbacks, Obama looks like he’s worth it and could possibly bring it home. But facing that decision before the midterms doesn’t help rally a Democratic vote, nor any other kind.
SKIDDD...

Then there’s Foley.
SKIDDD...

The only reason the Republicans didn’t take care of him sooner and quieter is that they weren’t afraid enough of what would happen if the word got out. After all, no matter how sleazy, since 16-year-old pages in DC are not legally minors, the political fallout is not apparently a legal one.

Admittedly a stretch, but in light of all the rest, bet there was at least one Republican who wanted word out. So, lose a few seats and a majority. Democrats won’t be able to fix it in two years. Blame them. Get the seats back.

Remember the rumors of the Clintons, et al, not giving it their all to defeat Bush in 2004, with an eye to taking it all in 2008? That seemed pretty far-fetched as anything more than, perhaps, late-night alcohol driven speculation.

Compared to the machinations of this election season, that was nothing.

This is the election no party wants to win. Party leaders on both sides know the penalty for the party in power not pulling miracles out of their butts is forfeiture of the ultimate prize, the 2008 presidency.

It will be interesting to see who skids into the soft, safe snow and who is left negotiating slick ice for the next two years.

What’s a real shame is that no one really cares what happens to the country in the mean time. That’s a given.