Common Sense

Some good friends have warned against making predictions since technically, Democrats haven’t won anything yet. Election day is still hours away and the momentum might be going to the Republicans.

Republicans seized on signs of movement in their direction yesterday as they unleashed a massive election-eve voter mobilization operation in an effort to stave off potentially substantial losses in the House and preserve at least a slender majority in the Senate.

Democrats answered the Republicans’ get-out-the-vote machinery with intensified efforts to contact infrequent and still-undecided voters in a handful of tight Senate races as well as in more than two dozen GOP-held House districts where races were too close to call.

We knew their GOTV effort was going to be bigger than ours, we knew they were spending gobs more money than us and we also knew that they were defending way more House seats than we were. Even as margins narrow, I’m still feeling pretty confidant.

Amazingly, we haven’t gotten any al Qaida messages that would have swung the election back towards the GOP. I’m not a psychologist, so I’m not going to try and analyze the tactics of a mass murderer, but he has sent videos and tapes in an effort to keep Republicans in power during our election cycles. There could be four reasons, as I see it, for why he hasn’t insinuated himself into this election.

1. He knows that even if Democrats take the House it won’t make much of a difference on Mr. Bush’s war.
2. With a stronger opposition party, he hopes to create chaos and division within the United States.
3. He’s hoping that Democrats pull us out of Iraq because he thinks that phase of the global jihad is over and is ready to move on.
4. The RNC ad that is just al Qaida videos with subtitles was enough for them and they didn’t feel it necessary to make one of their own.

One of these is bound to be correct.

All I can say in my defense at having put forward predictions for tomorrow’s elections is that I’m not much of an activist. I’m more of an observer of politics, though I obviously root for one side over another. These are just predictions, similar to how oddsmakers make the lines for sports games, based on how I see the field. Handicappers aren’t always right and that’s how you win money. I should probably make that more clear when I’m doing it.