The Cool Kids

I know that it is so much more fun to be one of the kewl kids and prognosticate about the outcome of the election and spew doom and gloom across the Nets. It is the most fun, apparently, to be one of the many who are screaming "I told you so" and play amateur campaign advisors letting Obama know just exactly what he is doing wrong and tell him why he will lose the election.

Apparently it is not very cool to write posts that compare and contrast Obama and McCain’s positions on the issues. Or highlight McCain’s many disturbing attitudes or views. Or write about the disaster that would be a McCain presidency. Or even to highlight the many lies that McCain tells on a daily basis. McCain is a fraud and a very frightening one at that. It would be easy to catalogue all of his many various flaws.

There is more…

First of all for the Chicken Littles and their cousins nothing has changed. Obama is still ahead. It is a close race, but Obama is in the lead and has been since the Primaries ended. Yes, it is a close race but it is not tied.

For Obama to be this consistently ahead, for this long, a tie it does not make. Remember Bush and Kerry had a tight race – up and down, up and down, but they both shared the top spot. One of them was not consistently ahead…even if it is only by a few points.

The Zogby polls are hardly trustworthy and National polls are not as reliable as State polls right now. And all of the electoral-vote maps are still looking pretty good.

I am not living in denial or have my head in the clouds. I realize that some of the internals in these polls suck for Obama. However, the Obama camp is not very worried about the polls right now.

Wha!?!?

Can’t remember where I heard or read it, but they put less stock in the polls and more stock in the registration numbers. The Obama camp plans to win this by getting new voters to the polls.

I have faith in this because of Obama’s past. As a community organizer he worked for Project Vote. Obama understands the ground game like no one and he knows all about disenfranchisement and the Republican election shenanigans. Obama has lawyers in place and will fight this thing.

CSPAN replayed his 2004 convention speech the other night. I watched with specific intent to capture some key words and to figure out a little bit more about who this guy is. I noticed a special line in his speech. It went something like “in America we have the right to vote and to have those votes counted – sometimes”. The “sometimes” was key…he was not saying it as a matter of resignation, he was stating it as a pre-emptive attack against it.

I believe that Obama has been using this pre-convention time to organize his ground game. He has been spending this primary money on organizing in every state and there is nothing that will ensure a win like a ground game. This ground game is not reflected in any polls. I believe that he will hit hard from convention time on and he will not have to spend a dime of General Election funds on his work on the ground.

I also think that he has been just letting McCain spin out. McCain is reactionary. McCain has not a single proactive bone in his body. Every single one of his policies and positions and actions are reactionary and McCain cannot for the life of him figure Obama out. It is driving McCain nuts that Obama will not react to him.

Obama is starting to hit McCain. And he is hitting him hard.

I realize that we are all damaged and suspicious and terrified after the last 8 years of the disaster that is Bush. I get it. It is enough to turn even the most positive of us into Negative Nellies. No matter the temptation to be one of the kewl kids and cluck about the falling sky – I will resist. I simply cannot afford more depressing days; the front page of any newspaper brings enough. I reserve the right to remain a little hopeful.