I'm Going Nuts...

with this election. The latest polls national polls are really close--possibly Bush with a very slight lead (around 1%). The downside though, is that the trend seems to be in favor of Bush in a lot of swing states. From Minnesota to Michigan to New Jersey to Hawaii, a lot of states that voted for Gore and were seemingly safe for Kerry turned into swing states or at least sent signs of worry over the past few weeks. That the battleground is shifting further on to Kerry's turf (again, it's hard to trust the polls-- even the reliable ones) seems to be really bad news-- it might be another repeat of the last election where Bush wins without winning the popular vote. Check out http://www.electoral-vote.com and http://race2004.net for polls.

Of course, there's always the wild card of how much energy reality-based people are going to put into Get Out The Vote efforts over the next few days. And then there's the wildcard of how much better organized the Republic Get Out The Vote will be in this election than in the last one. God...I hate this country sometimes.

My congenital worrying and pessimism has me feeling woozy (I try to restrict my intake of election news), particularly with this new Bin Laden tape. I haven't read all the coverage of it, but, in terms of the election the plus point for its impact might be that it wasn't a screaming tirade that would frighten voters and cut down on undecided voters who would switch to Kerry. The huge downside is obviously that the tape came out at all. I have a bad feeling that when people see it, they're not going to be reminded of why Bin Laden wasn't captured as much as that he exists and wants to kill them.