Absentee ballots are out in case people want to vote early.  Call and have one mailed, or drop by and pick one up.  The reality is with the absentee ballot, election day really is just the “last” day you can vote.

Interest will be at a peak this year so if you want to avoid waiting in line vote early.  Don’t have worry about rushing to the polls before or after work.  Quite a handy piece of democracy.

This year your vote will contribute to the most important election in Vermont and U.S. history.

Vote.

Vote Absentee ballot.

Vote at will.  

I must say, Obama is running a brilliant campaign. While I still am not willing to misunderestimate the red voter’s stupidity and hatemongering and declare an Obama victory, Obama has played it real well.

We saw it come front and center in West Virginia, when Hillary stooped to conquer that primary.

Her fairly blatant appeal to racism brought the loonies out of the woodwork – and out from under the rocks.

During that portion of the campaign, America began to be regularly exposed to the insanity, stupidity, superstitious and vile nature of far too many of its citizens – e.g. the clowns that think Obama is Arab, that he is a terrorist, that he is a Commie, a foreigner, the not-so-closeted racists, etc.

Hilary won the Battle of West Virginia, but lost the war.

She won the “Joe Sixpack” vote – but what Obama got was the Joe Sixpacks’ exposure. Joe Sixpack came to center stage of our political process, and it is becoming a disaster for John McCain.

McCain floundered and meandered over the summer. Obama stayed on his message, hope and change, while the indecencies and incompetencies of the Bush GOP administration piled ever onward and higher. The Joe Sixpacks rumbled and grumbled, and then McCain threw them some red meat in the form of Governor Palin.

Joe Sixpacks ate her up, drooling over her, wetting their pants over her. Her acceptance speech was filled with homespun hate and bile, and they loved her for it. (That and the pictures of her with the real big gun, which is another post ;-)).

On the campaign trail, Palin gave them the simple-minded hate and character assassination that, after 20 or so years of hate radio and Fox, and 40 years of Southern Strategery politics, had become like their mother’s milk for them.

Stoked by their lust for hate, their fear of the future, Joe Sixpack became even more unhinged. Her campaign rallies became more mob-like.

Unfortunately for McCain, the Google, the internets and video cameras have undermined his Joe Sixpack strategery. Hundreds of videos show the Joe (and Jane) Sixpacks for what they really are – crazies and hatefilled cowardly bullies.

This uncomfortable truth has more and more Republicans and independents saying enough – I might be a racist, I might be a homophobe, I might be a xenophobe, but I am not rabble, I am not going to be part of a bloodthirsty mob, I AM NOT ONE OF YOU MORONS.

Meanwhile, Obama and Biden stay above the fray, not getting in the gutter with McCain, Palin, and their bully crowd. They rattle the cage every once in awhile, and watch the GOPers consume themselves with their own hate and bile, hoping that exposure to the light of public opinion will begin to kill the cancer that the McCain-Palin campaign has become.

Like I said, I still think the Joe Sixpacks could pull it out November 4. Our country has been a nation run by whiners, haters, and losers on and off since the failure of Second Reconstruction in 1968.

But Senator Obama has run a brilliant campaign, and done humanity a great service by standing strong in the face of hatred, stupidity, and the unceasing slanders of his opponents. He has played a masterful game of ‘rope-the-dopes’ since West Virginia, letting his opponents show us their true natures.

November 4th is not so much an election as a character test of the American people… are we a nation of crazy ignoranuses, cowards and bullies, or not?

There are a lot of Joe (and Jane) Sixpacks out there…

Stay tuned…

The meaning of the poll numbers is going to be bounced around for a while. I don’t see how any professional polling firm can represent itself as competent by presenting its results as “you might expect Pollina to end up between 4% and 25% while Symington ends up between 20% and 39%.” I mean, seriously – these polling professionals are offering a 20 point range of where they think the election will likely be? Somebody tell me why they get the big bucks, again? Can you imagine if they pulled this with the Presidential numbers? Clearly these folks have no concept of how to approach elections with more than two candidates.

So however you want to interpret this – that the 25-20 Pollina to Symington split is how people will actually vote or not – there is one stark, undeniable tone from the left’s response:

A lot of people on the left are underwhelmed by Symington. Honestly, I see Pollina as picking up little beyond 8-10% on his own merits, and if he truly does perform beyond that level in November, it will be a statement of disappointment in Symington and the Democratic leadership, rather than an embracing of Pollina. And before folks jump up and down and yell at me about Pollina’s “ideas” – the fact is that this mirrors the the traditional pitch of Pollina and the Progressives. On the stump and in debates, the P/P pitch is still as it has been – overwhelmingly negative. Most time is spent talking about the failure of Democrats as well as Republicans. Often, it seems Progressives assume that voters will simply infer their stances on issues (“pro-labor” and “pro-environment” – whatever those mean in the context of any particular policy, even though they can be at odds). In fact, single-payer health care and increasing the tax burden on the wealthy are probably the only specifics that jump to mind. This is what makes their approach by definition negative. It says those guys suck, so give it to me by default and offers few details. It’s reactionary, in the textbook sense of the term.

And the fact is, it resonates. With a lot of people. Many of us on the left have been screaming until we’re hoarse that the concerns of the base need to be respected, but Symington as a Speaker was mired in a constant state of political calculating, sprinkled with the fear that the liberals in her party would jump into policy discussions like bulls in a china shop and break down any potential progress. As such, she kept many of us at arm’s length. And people don’t like that.

If Pollina had been Speaker of the House, would we have Single-Payer Health Care now? Of course not. Could Pollina even have seen through the passage of the first house health care bill – the truly revolutionary one, supported enthusiastically by Progressives and activist leaders like Deb Richter? The one that got watered down into oblivion in the Senate before ultimately limping into its new manifestation as the Catamount Health Bill? Of course not, because the fundamental reason that Pollina will never get elected to statewide office is that he is not a leader – he’s a bridge burner. For every one person he inspires, he alienates another three.

But here’s a different example: one thing Pollina would not have done is squandered the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that was the impeachment movement. This was grassroots energy like none we’ve seen – a gift to a Democratic majority that could have been harnessed to accomplish multiple policy goals. All they needed to do was to deal with the activists respectfully and honorably. Activists needed to see leadership from the Leadership. We needed to come together as a team.

Instead, Symington used every excuse imaginable to push them off and marginalize them, such that she had to be forced into action. And by the time she was, the relationship had been poisoned, leaving the door open for usual Dem-bashing suspects like Jimmy Leas to dive in, try to co-opt what had been a non-partisan groundswell that had its origins in the Democratic Party grassroots infrastructure and make it into some sort of pathological anti-Peter Welch club, and the whole thing fell to pieces almost overnight.

It was an opportunity for leadership, healing and grassroots engagement, the likes of which I don’t expect to see again in this state. All squandered. All for fear of letting the bulls into the china shop.

And the result of all this and other comparable examples? I think the most likely conclusion from the Rasmussen “poll” (and I use that term liberally) is twofold:

1. A sizable chunk of the electorate, in the interest of defeating Jim Douglas, will vote for Gaye Symington in November, leaving Pollina in the 10 point range… but that chunk is not going to feel very good about it.

2. The left in this state is seriously screwed up and dysfunctional.

UPDATE: Shay has some good thoughts on this mess, and I can *almost* confirm his assumptions about internal poll numbers based on some sorta-non-sorta-telling answers from someone close to the campaign. /UPDATE 

So which is it? Are the results of the Rasmussen poll this:

…or this:

Vermont Governor – Douglas 45%, Pollina 25%, Symington 20% 

…and how does the R2K poll for WCAX fit in from a few weeks ago, which was this:

DOUGLAS      SYMINGTON    POLLINA   UNDECIDED

 

        48%                 33%                       7%                 12%

Rasmussen seems to have gone out of their way to pass on their data in a way that both maximizes confusion, and would seem to have the potential to seriously effect the dynamics of the race. Whatever you may think of them or which results you prefer, there's no question that this was a highly unprofessional rollout. After my conversation with a Rasmussen staffer today, I could almost believe it was done on purpose.

In any case, this is one seriously abgefuckt piece of polling.

Here's how it went. At about 4:00, Rasmussen announces the first, shocking results. More results seem to be available to subscribers, but I'm not one – nor could I find one (and it seems the folks in the media didn't get the numbers underneath either). About 2 hours later they release a narrative article containing the rest of the results.

There are many odd things about the poll. Most obvious is the definition of what they mean by a “leaner.” Usually, leaners are undecideds who are pushed a bit. But Pollina's numbers go down by 20 points when you factor in leaners, so its hard to gleam what they're talking about, and the narrative gives little guidance:

Normally, the support for the candidates would end up somewhere between the extremes of their polling range. In other words, you might expect Pollina to end up between 4% and 25% while Symington ends up between 20% and 39%. Under normal circumstances, the Democratic candidate would end up closer to the high end of that range while the Independent candidate would end up near the lower end.

One thing is certain: numbers dont change that much in a matter of weeks. Another certainty is that its problematic to too directly compare polls from different pollsters, and although I haven't seen the crosstabs, from the Presidential numbers, its likely that liberals were a bit oversampled.

The reality? Well, we need another poll – and a better poll. For the statistically inclined, it would be easier to assume that the second result released (the “leaner” numbers in the graphic) is more accurate as a “master” metric – or what we might call the shorthand results – because they are easier to reconcile with the R2K poll, as well as many conventional wisdom assumptions made about the overall race. But for the enthusiastic Pollina supporters, this is obviously the biggest shot in the arm imaginable, and they'll go with the first numbers released – the one liner with no other info. How could they not? Both campaigns are latching onto the respective “good news” iterations – as well they should. They have jobs to do. But for the rest of us this “poll” and the mysteries behind it does little but confuse the race even further.

Crossposted at Huffington Post’s Off the Bus.

It’s likely that most Americans have never heard of Katherine Gun. She is the former British secret service officer who leaked an email describing a plot orchestrated by the Bush and Blair administrations to force the hand of the United Nations in authorizing the invasion of Iraq. Gun was put on trial for leaking the email and the story garnered wide coverage in Europe. Unsurprisingly, in the hype that characterized the runup to the war here in the States, the story received little media play.

The larger story is being told for the first time in long form. PoliPoint Press has just released “The Spy Who Tried to Stop A War,” Gun’s story as written by Marcia and Thomas Mitchell, the former a senior executive for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, the latter a former FBI special agent.

I caught up with Gun on her recent trip to the U.S.

Christian: How is the public and the traditional media responding to your story now as opposed to when you blew the whistle in 2003?

Katherine Gun: Well, I guess the response is much the same, actually. Everyone who reads about it in the mainstream media is just surprised about what was going on at the time. When my charges were dropped in 2004, almost 99.9 percent of people were supportive. I was on the “Diane Rehm Show” recently and many called in to say they supported me.

In your opinion why did the European media pay more attention to your story as opposed to the American media who did not? Does the European media function differently?

That’s a good question. I’m not entirely sure myself. I attended a symposium at American University recently and one of the guests was The New Statesman’s Martin Bright. Bright published the story on the leak in 2003. He said, in the U.S., the general assumption is there should be no secrets and information should be made public at all times. Whereas in the U.K., it’s the opposite: the assumption is everything is secret. So when journalists get a top secret piece of information, they feel duty-bound to make it public in the U.K. Whereas, you suspect, in the U.S., if journalists get a top secret piece of information, the immediate reaction is, “Oh, well, there must be a reason why this is top secret. So we need to keep quiet about it.”

The era of Tony Blair and George Bush has basically ended. What would you like to see happen: more transparency and accountability in government security operations? Charges brought against Blair and Bush for misleading their countries?

There are a lot of things I’d like to see. In the ideal world, transparency and accountability at all levels would be a good thing. But here in the U.S., you already have a Constitution. All of your public officials swear an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution. It seems to me that members of officialdom should be made to re-appraise their oath to the Constitution and see if what they do is in conflict with that. In many cases they are in conflict; they’re breaking their oath. Of course it would also be good to see Blair, Bush and others held accountable for what we now know were blatant lies and deception. When the government starts beating the drums of war, the traditional media tends to bend over backward to support it. Just because the media says something, it’s not necessarily the case. We need to do our own research and turn to alternative sources of media.

Much is being made now in the U.S. on the question of who is prepared to be commander in chief, who has the qualities to keep our nation safe, and so on… As someone who has worked in the intelligence field, who do you think could tackle intelligence issues better: Barack Obama or John McCain?

Obviously my personal preference is Obama and Biden. I think you need a new administration with new faces, people who are willing to look at diplomacy, who are pragmatic, people who see both sides of the coin, who are not dogmatic and can see the future is going to be difficult — not just for the U.S. but the whole world, especially in relation to world’s resources, the level of living we are accustomed to and whether it’s sustainable for the future.

Given that key information related to major issues and policy decisions remains classified, how can voters best make decisions on the issues? In your view, how do we address that problem in a democracy, the “just trust us on this one” approach to governance?

Obviously there are hundreds of officials who have access to classified information. Intelligence is just the exact opposite of what the leadership is expressing. When it came to Iraq, I had no idea that I would receive that e-mail. I didn’t have that many insights because I wasn’t working in that field. I was working in China. So I did my own research. I bought books, such as “Target Iraq” by Normon Solomon, and I made an effort to educate myself about the issues, rather than accepting everything being said by Blair and Bush hook, line, and sinker. I do, I think you can educate yourself to make an informed decision.

In hindsight, how do you weigh Obama’s vote against the war? What do you think was his motivation for doing so and why didn’t more U.S. lawmakers stand against it as they did in the U.K.?

Well, yeah, surprisingly, there weren’t that many in the Parliament who supported the war. [ Parliament] was told by Blair that the legality of the war would hold; that it was justified and former Attorney General Peter Goldsmith provided the backup with a one-page document.

Looking at the document now, it surprises me the members of Parliament who did read it did not have the intelligence to come up with their own assessments. With regard to the U.S., it’s pretty much the same. I suspect that Congress was probably in the dark and took the word of secretary of state Colin Powell, vice-president Dick Cheney, and president Bush and believed the hype that was going on. The traditional media was at fault because there were a lot of alternative voices speaking out and saying that this just wasn’t true. Those voices of course just never got the coverage that the Bush administration was getting.

I doubt very much whether [Obama] knew things other people didn’t know. He was no doubt looking at the same material other members of Congress were looking at. I suspect Obama is extremely intelligent and I also suspect he will utilize the intelligence he receives and decide when war is justified or not. Saddam did not directly threaten the U.K. or the U.S., so a preemptive attack was contrary to the U.N. Geneva Conventions. There was also no genocide going on at that time and U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter said that the inspections team had dismantled 95 percent of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. The weapons they did have were beyond use.