httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzHcqcXo_NA

The Republicans elected a lot of candidates tonight who — judging by the behavior of their compatriots — will be eager to collect the graft that will shortly be coming their way from big oil and Wall Street.  But not the one above, who represents everything that is wrong with the Palin brand of Republicanism, and, happily, went down to defeat in her bid to become the junior Senator from Delaware.

The Republicans are nihilists at this point.  They stand for nothing but gaining and holding onto power while comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted.  They’re not even republicans in any meaningful sense.  They are plutocrats who make it clear by their actions that their vision of America is heartless predation affirmed by the Constitution.  Let’s see how far that gets them.

One last observation from the preternaturally savvy Nate Silver on what is a hobbyhorse of my own:

The cellphone effect. This one is pretty simple, really: a lot of American adults (now about one-quarter of them) have ditched landlines and rely exclusively on mobile phones, and a lot of pollsters don’t call mobile phones. Cellphone-only voters tend to be younger, more urban, and less white — all Democratic demographics — and a study by Pew Research suggests that the failure to include them might bias the polls by about 4 points against Democrats, even after demographic weighting is applied.

There is also some indirect evidence for the cellphone effect. What follows is a list of each firm’s final generic ballot poll, arranged from the best result for Democrats to the worst:

You can see that there is a rather strong relationship between whether a company included cellphones in its sample or not and the sort of result they showed. The polls that were conducted without cellphones showed Republicans ahead by an average of 9.3 points; those with them showed a smaller, 4.8-point advantage. That’s a difference of 4 or 5 points (and one that is statistically significant at the 95 percent confidence threshold), which is about of the same magnitude that Pew identified.

Sign seen at the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear”:  “Make Awkward Sexual Advances, Not War.”

(Thanks to Connor Thompson for the tip)

“We live now in hard times, not Endtimes.”  Jon Stewart, “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear,” today.

In Canada you can watch the Stewart-Colbert “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” at The Comedy Network.  Everywhere else you can watch it at Comedy Central.

Obama on The Daily Show last night

Public Policy Polling acknowledges that there’s been a surge in support for the Democrats among likely voters, but it probably isn’t enough.

One of the biggest hopes for Democrats heading toward election day has been that the party’s voters will get more engaged as the election comes closer, helping to mitigate its losses. A PPP analysis of 9 states where we’ve polled in October and also conducted a survey in August or September finds that the likely electorate for this fall is trending more Democratic- but not nearly to the extent the party needs.

As Frye says in The Double Vision, “Hope springs eternal, it just tends to spring prematurely.”  We’ll know soon enough.

Meanwhile, Obama made an appearance on The Daily Show last night in the hope of drawing that all important youth vote to the polls.  It was a good humored but still robust exchange.  Jon Stewart pushed Obama hard on the disappointed expectations of the liberal base.  But Obama pushed back and pointed out that much has been accomplished against long odds.

Video here.

Stewart and Colbert’s “Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear” here.

That’s the headline of a story in the New York Times today.

Notice that the editors have no problem using the word “torture” when it is not committed by Americans.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aBaX9GPSaQ

Easily the funniest Simpson’s bit in more than a decade: Homer tries to vote for Obama on a rigged voting machine.  (Click on the image above and hit the YouTube link.)

Michael P. McDonald has posted the numbers for early voting in the midterms.  It’s a complex situation with lots of variables, but the Democrats seem to enjoy the edge for those opting to vote early, which may be a good sign for overall voter turnout.  I have seen suggestions that this phenomenon may be the Obama effect: his campaigning has been strong enough that he’s put people in the mood to vote early; particularly because, as we know, long lines seem always to occur exclusively in Democratic districts on election day, and that people of color are more susceptible to some form of harassment by local and state police when they try to get to the polls.  As McDonald points out, this does not necessarily mean that Democrats will prevail on election day, but that it might not be the bloodletting that has Republicans smacking their lips.

A sample from McDonald’s article:

We appear to have entered a new era of early voting where Democrats are the ones more likely to vote early. The 2010 early voting numbers are better for Democrats than 2006 but are better for Republicans than 2008. Not surprisingly, Democrats are comparing the current numbers to 2006 while Republicans are comparing to 2008. We are likely somewhere in-between 2006 and 2008, but we do not know by how much, which leaves ample room for both parties to spin.

If voting behavior changed in 2010, a hanging question is why? Why would Democrats now be of the type more likely to vote early? I offer two plausible explanations. First, that Democrats learned about early voting options in their state and like using it. This may be particularly true for states that offer in-person early voting at special polling places, since there is plenty of evidence that this is the favored voting method for Democrats. Second, that Democrats developed early voter mobilization organizations in 2008 that they are carrying forward to 2010. I suspect both explanations contribute to the story.