Mac the Knife

Were the election held today, Obama would win in an electoral landslide the likes of which we haven't seen since Clinton routed Dole in 1996. This map (courtesy of electoral-vote.com), shows Obama with a commanding and potentially insurmountable lead. (Consider that even if McCain were to get North Carolina and steal back Ohio and Florida, he gains only 62 electoral votes and still falls short of the magic 270 needed.) Adding to McCain's woes is the bellwether of history: In the last six election cycles, the candidate leading nationally and electorally thirty days prior to the election has gone on to win the election 100% of the time. (Well, except for 2000, when Gore actually pulled out a victory, despite being behind thirty days prior. But, as we all know, that irregularity was quickly corrected by the supremely partisan Supreme Court.)

All of this should leave liberals, Democrats and anyone else thirsting for a change of course feeling pretty optimistic. And, yet... Many of us still have a nagging suspicion that McCain could still win this thing. Why do we feel that way? Blame HBO.

Yesterday, I finally caught up with the Emmy-winning film "Recount," painfully recounting (pun intended) the national tragedy known as the 2000 election. Whatever its flaws as a film, it helped to crystalize many of the reasons for Democrats' nagging suspicions regarding this cycle's outcome. Consider what happened eight years ago and just how much, if any of, the following have since been corrected:

* Over-populated, difficult to read, ballots, leading to voter confusion.
* The purging of registrants from voter rolls simply because their names were similar to the names of convicted felons.
* Wait times in voting lines as long as four hours.
* Old, uncleaned voting machines in poor districts (which typically lean Democratic), increasing the likelihood of hanging, dangling and dimpled chad (yes, the plural of chad is chad).
* Lazy election officials unwilling to follow election law to the letter.
* Election results relying on certification by elected, partisan officials.
* An overzealous, partisan judiciary as confused by equal protection law as those arguing on either side of it.
* Voters being misdirected from their correct polling places and/or discouraged to vote on the correct day (if at all) by the other side's "organization."

Add to the above, the emergence of the electronic, touch-screen voting machines (the successfully hackable kind used in Ohio during the 2004 election where all exit polling indicated John Kerry had pulled ahead of Bush in the final days and would become the 44th President of the United States), and one can understand the nervousness.

During the remaining thirty days, as the so-called "gloves" come off and the campaign turns publicly nasty, let's hope someone is keeping tabs on just where the Republican fingerprints are being left. We can ill-afford to look too far ahead, when those behind us have such a storied history of knifing our backs.