Competing Views on PA

by folkbum

It's going to be an early night November 4, unless we want to stay up to check the series of tubes for updates on the fate of Ted Stevens.

How do I know? John McCain is betting the farm on Pennsylvania, where polls close at 7 PM our time. At about 7:03 our time, the AP and everyone else is going to call PA for Barack Obama, and we can all start drinking (for one reason or another). The pollster.com average for PA as I write this shows Obama with a 15-point lead.



I've read two theories on why McCain is making PA his last stand. One, from Tim Dickinson, is that McCain is just doing it for show, to "create the appearance that he’s still playing offense." That's not a bad way to look at it--McCain is jiggering the optics to suggest that he's not really toast yet.

But I think that's wrong. I agree with dday, here:

Pennsylvania does not have early voting, and absentee voting is restricted. Unlike Minnesota and Wisconsin, Pennsylvania doesn't have same-day registration. So voting is concentrated on Election Day, and the state GOP is trying to make the election illegitimate [through attacks on ACORN and so forth].

I've written about this over and over again: All the cries of "fraud" that we have seen (note--these are only cries, not evidence of wide-spread voter fraud) are not designed to insure the purity of the election process. They are designed to delegitimize the inevitable Obama victory. McCain can't win states like PA, but he can raise a fuss that his loss was fraudulent. And if McCain loses by less than PA's 21 electoral votes, then Republicans and their media enablers have an excuse for the next four years to pretend that Obama is not the president.

Personally, I think a 20-EV loss would be a miracle for McCain at this point, but Republicans may still be able to construct the fantasy that the election was stolen across multiple states--like Wisconsin. Which is why it is important that we turn this into a rout. You can help, please. Click on the thermometer and contribute to Obama or some of the local Democrats, please.