Dems: Don't count your chickens before they hatch...

I have long believed that projections of Democrats taking back control of congress are shortsighted and ovely optimistic. I'd even be willing to bet someone a beer that they won't even take back control of the House. If I am wrong, I'll publicly humiliate myself. But I ate a lot of steak dinners after the 2004 election, bought for me by blind-faith optimist Democrats who thought that Bush sucking was reason enough that Kerry would win.

Others will have their own explanation for the Democrats' ultimate failure. In my opinion, it's because they are INCAPABLE of having a distinct and different message, apart from empty negativity, because they are beholden to the same corrupt interests as Republicans. I would also not rule out the by-now usual litany of voting irregularities (which, because they are as corrupt as Republicans, the Democrats are unable or unwilling to address).

This post from The Hotline feeds my suspicion that a lot of you are going to be surprised, disappointed, and embarassed on election night:

Why The White House Has To Be Optimistic

"Perhaps the biggest danger to Republicans in the wake of all these bad polls is that their volunteer base, so critical to victory in 2004, won't put their heart in their work. If volunteers become convinced that Republicans will lose control of Congress, what incentive do they have to work hard?

"If you're ever read a profile of Ken Mehlman, you know he is obsessed with metrics. For him, one of the most important sources of data is a weekly e-mail his political team prepares called the "Weekly Grassroots Report." It meticulously records the work of tens of thousands of volunteers in targeted states, counties and congressional districts across the country. The data summary allows the RNC to determine which states are meeting goals and which states are falling behind.

"The RNC declined to share the most recent report, which was issued Monday. But two independent sources who saw last week's report professed to be surprised: not only was their [sic] no drop off last week, 12 states broke new voter contact records.

"In a month, the party completed more than a million phone calls and door contacts conbined. Bigger states are putting up big numbers -- even Ohio, which lagged behind its targets all summer, has caught up. The RNC is particularly pleased with their progress in New Jersey, where they've rapidly set up a more aggressive version of their 72 Hour Program in light of the state's more competitive Senate race.

"These are the numbers that motivate Karl Rove's optimism. The spreadsheets show that Republican volunteers are working hard. There are plenty of volunteers and they seem plenty willing to knock on doors and make telephone calls. That's why it makes sense for Rove, for White House pol. dir Sara Taylor, and for Mehlman to exude uncanny optimism even while their brains pour over pessimistic polls. Right now, a strong volunteer corps on election day working to turn out voters is the only hope they've got. If the volunteers detect a shred of defeatist cross-talk or come across a newspaper article suggesting that Rove is panicked, then they'll start to panic, too.

"The point is that top-level Republican optimism is pragmatic, not ignorant. [MARC AMBINDER]"

Yet another thing I could not have said better myself:

There has been a great ballyhoo about the immigration, "disasterous" cultural consequences, etc., through immigration and propagation of the paranoia that whites are going to become minority in their "own" countries. This is the narrowest-ever medieval psyche ruling the minds in the twenty-first century.

Americans, Europeans, Muslims, Hindus, in a word everyone belongs to one or the other minority group. There is only one majority in the world: that is the working-class. All others are minorities.

Capitalism and imperialism are far ahead of this medieval nonsense of countires, status-quo of cultures, etc. They need cheap labor and they draw it from all over the world; they need soldiers and recruit them from all parts of the world--making no discrimination in the process. But our enlightened leftists are backward, and they are doomed to remain so as long as they continue to seek guidance from feudal and pre-feudal sociologists and anthropologists.

Workers have no country, no motherland, no nationality, no national culture and other phantoms to worship and lay their lives for. They have their own world culture--their task is to grow from minority to majority world-wide. They are internationalists. The culture for them is not a fossil worth to be presereved but a dynamic, living thing. They have yet to proclaim their culture.

Ramesh Bhat