Hard to believe this, but after a lot of thought I think the best path forward for this nation is to let Harry Reid and President Obama have their way and let sequestration go into effect. The Tea Party/Libertarian in me has concluded that another round of deficit spending and kicking the can down the road is worse for this nation and its families than letting this fiscal debacle play out. Time to go over the cliff.

Here’s the problem.  As of now each man, woman and child owes over $50,000 each on the national debt now accrued (one third of which was created under Obama/Reid/Pelosi). If we don’t cut the spending spree, we will die a slow Greece-like economic death. Those of us past ‘mid-life’ will likely be OK, but our kids will inherit an economic mess, which will lead to violence and probably war. That is what happens when rot takes out the governing paradigm and leaves a vacuum.

Besides that, the nation voted in more of this madness so let’s get it over with and determine if Government-Trickle-Down can really work (it can’t of course).

My fear is we are a nation of what is known as boiled frogs right now:

The boiling frog story is a widespread anecdote describing a frog slowly being boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. The story is often used as a metaphor for the inability of people to react to significant changes that occur gradually.

In our case, the slowly warming water is our rising national debt. It is consuming us and the next two generations as I write this post.

So I suggest we turn up the heat and figure out if that fixes the problem, or causes the nation to wake up.

Yes, it will be hard on many people. However, I also think it will be short lived, like the government shutdown was under Clinton. And it will initially be limited in scope. The spike of pain is probably worth it if we finally realize the kind of fiscal hot water we are in.

Besides, this time no one can blame only the GOP since the bill in question was signed by President Obama and supported by Harry Reid. I think once the heat hits the Dems as well, it will begin to sink in that all economies thrive on the private sector, not the leech that is government.

Tags: Fiscal Cliff, National Debt, Sequestration

Major Update: More pathetic details here:

As the Web traffic from volunteers attempting to connect to Orca mounted, the system crashed repeatedly because of bandwidth constraints. At one point the network connection to the campaign’s data center went down—apparently because the ISP shut it off. “They told us Comcast thought it was a denial of service attack and shut it down,” Dittuobu recounted. “(Centinello) was giddy about it,” he added—presumably because he thought that so much traffic was sign of heavy system use.

Major Update: More details are emerging on the mess that was Romney’s GOTV debacle:

But Orca turned out to be toothless, thanks to a series of deployment blunders and network and system failures. While the system was stress-tested using automated testing tools, users received little or no advance training on the system. Crucially, there was no dry run to test how Orca would perform over the public Internet.

I surmised as much from seeing the results. Being someone who has worked on some of this nation’s largest command and control systems, it was obvious what happened here. That’s amateur hour, and it cost us all – end update

Sorry for the not posting, but elections matter and I had to take steps to ensure we can ride out the coming economic storm. Besides, I needed some space to analyze the debacle that was this election instead of just reacting. The day after the election the hard truth showed up on what happened, and it explained a lot. Before I get to that, realize that the Absentee/Early vote effort by Romney and the GOP was damn good. So good there should have been no way to lose CO – but they did. So good they should have taken some Senate seats, but they did not. So good that if they won (as usual) the election day GOTV (Get Out The Vote), we would not be here.

But they did not.  And we know why.

Here is the sad tale of technical incompetence that led to the 2012 election debacle, and its name is “ORCA“:

The entire purpose of this project was to digitize the decades-old practice of strike lists. The old way was to sit with your paper and mark off people that have voted and every hour or so, someone from the campaign would come get your list and take it back to local headquarters. Then, they’d begin contacting people that hadn’t voted yet and encourage them to head to the polls. It’s worked for years.
From the very start there were warning signs. After signing up, you were invited to take part in nightly conference calls. The calls were more of the slick marketing speech type than helpful training sessions.

…

On one of the last conference calls (I believe it was on Saturday night), they told us that our packets would be arriving shortly. Now, there seemed to be a fair amount of confusion about what they meant by “packet”. Some people on Twitter were wondering if that meant a packet in the mail or a pdf or what. Finally, my packet arrived at 4PM on Monday afternoon as an emailed 60 page pdf.

OK, full stop. This is to be a massive, coordinated campaign to monitor the voting and get people out. It takes time and preparation for those 100’s of thousands of volunteers to be trained, outfitted and ready to execute. Yet some idiot waits to the bloody last day to get the instructions out? 60 pages on a Monday afternoon for a coordinated plan of attack to be implemented the next morning?

Are you ‘effing kidding me! This is incompetence writ large. That material needed to be out 4 weeks earlier. It required people to be registered and able be vote monitors:

At 6:30AM on Tuesday, I went to the polls. I was immediately turned away because I didn’t have my poll watcher certificate. Many, many people had this problem. The impression I got was this was taken care of because they had “registered me”. Others were as well. But apparently, I was supposed to go on my own to a Victory Center to pick it up, but that was never communicated properly.

…

While I was home, I took to Twitter and the web to try to find some answers. From what I saw, these problems were widespread. People had been kicked from poll watching for having no certificate. Others never received their pdf packets. Some were sent the wrong packets from a different area. Some received their packet, but their usernames and passwords didn’t work.

So now the GOP had lost ALL insight into what is happening on the ground. The entire project relies on knowing who has and has not voted. They were blind while Team Obama knew what was happening because their people were in place. This explains why GOP vote monitors were being kicked out everywhere.

Again, what moron tries to execute a tactical effort like this at the last second? And if you think this was the worst of it, the technology behind this disaster was not ready for prime time either:

Now a note about the technology itself. For starters, this was billed as an “app” when it was actually a mobile-optimized website (or “web app”). For days I saw people on Twitter saying they couldn’t find the app on the Android Market or iTunes and couldn’t download it. Well, that’s because it didn’t exist. It was a website. This created a ton of confusion. Not to mention that they didn’t even “turn it on” until 6AM in the morning, so people couldn’t properly familiarize themselves with how it worked on their personal phone beforehand.

…

By 2PM, I had completely given up. I finally got ahold of someone at around 1PM and I never heard back. From what I understand, the entire system crashed at around 4PM. I’m not sure if that’s true, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

You NEVER launch something this complex hours before it must execute. The nimrods who were behind this should go find another career, like ditch digging. You NEVER wait to the night before to send out a complex tactical plan. You leave time for screw ups to be corrected. You rehearse, you checklist. You NEVER deploy a website or app without brutal load testing. Everything should be up, running and working like a fine Swiss Watch.

What we got in the Romney GOTV were technical amateurs and incompetents. They took what was a huge wave of momentum and cut the knees out from it on the day the GOP usually carries the day.

You can point fingers everywhere you want, but the proof is in CO where the early voting had the GOP at historic highs and in the lead. Yet, in the end, Romney’s Orca was still able to grasp defeat from the jaws of victory in Colorado. And since this occurred across the nation, it is also clear it was a systemic problem.

Elections are about having the best team win. And given this royal screw up (which could amount to 2-4% in the vote tallies), it is clear the best team did win.

More here at Breitbart:

 … the absolute failure of Romney’s get-out-the-vote effort, which underperformed even John McCain’s lackluster 2008 turnout.

…

Romney volunteers in Virginia confirmed that the campaign had relied entirely on Project Orca to turn out the vote in key areas such as Roanoke, where Romney and Ryan had made appearances. Volunteers who had driven to Virginia from safely-Republican Tennessee were shocked at the disorganization they encountered.

…

If each of the 37,000 volunteers that had been devoted to Orca had instead brought 20 voters to the polls in those states over the course of the day, Romney would have won the election.

Next Up: The Petraeus War & How Obama’s “Stazi” Tried To Silence The Truth of Benghazi

Tags: Burn, Crash, GOTV, ORCA, Romney

One of the great things about blogging is when you have an epic face plant moment, you get to post about it the next day – no matter what. /sarcasm

Amazingly, President Obama ran the table of swing states – taking all but North Carolina. Color me sadly stunned. I got none right, outside NC. I am in good company I guess: Rove, Limbaugh, Krauthammer ….

Something is clearly wrong on the GOP side if after four years of this kind of economy the nation is ready to go through four more years of massive debt and deficits with no job creation. And there will be very little job creation coming. Businesses are looking at tax hikes, Obamacare and massive new regulations. Business owners (like us) don’t have the luxury of adding a lot of new people now – unless they are there to fill out government forms. This does not make us money or competitive, it simply drains our revenues that should be going to opening new opportunities and raising salaries. But why would a liberal, community-organizer understand business?

I worry about our kids, and the fact we are not handing them the same nation handed to us by my parents generation (WW II). Instead of the American dream being about making something of yourself and succeeding, it is now who can grab the most government handouts. Or better yet – be the one handing out the goodies to the poor masses. And the debt they have now to pay off is horrific.

If Americans under the age of 18 were required as a group to pay off the entirety of the federal government’s debt in equal shares, each would now need to pay about $218,676.

That is more than the $130,468 average price tag for four years at a private college or the $173,100 median price for an existing one-family home in the United States.

Obama only knows one trick – spending. Hopefully the GOP House will – this time! – hold their ground. But I fear they will fold, like they did in 2011.

It is not morning in America – again. And I can point to a few things that kept GOP out of office – again.

First off in VA: the GOP has to let the voters pick their candidates. ‘Ol George Allen ‘the retread’ was hoisted on the voters without their support (or desire). He was a huge boat anchor for Mitt Romney. You cannot get people excited about a campaign when they are not even allowed to vote (win or lose) on the selection of the candidates. Bob McDonnell is the face of the new VA GOP. The old guard who fear open primaries need to go into retirement – they have done enough damage. There better be change in the Grand Old Party of the Old Dominion. Or else go the way of the Whigs.

Social issues: If the GOP is going to be strapped with idiot white men telling women what it means to be raped they should just give up now and not waste time or money. Aiken and Mourdoch left a stain on the entire GOP’s small-government message of the season. This makes three GOP senate candidates I am so glad did not make it I can’t tell you. Boat anchors, all of them.

Rich White Guy Party? When I hear talking heads say the GOP needs 75% white turn out to win, there is something seriously, seriously wrong. I mean what is the point of a national party that looks like they come from one family? America is diverse and we need to tap into that and explore its potential. Instead we find the GOP being distilled down to a single large voting bloc. Rich White Guys….

This is the new face of the GOP – or should have been.

Mia Love conceded in a hotly contested congressional race against incumbent Rep. Jim Matheson (D) in Utah’s 2nd congressional district.

As was Herman Cain, Sarah Pailin, etc. Yes – I am an old(er) white guy, but not rich and sure as hell not comfortable with an all-white male group as my social circle. I can’t talk sports and cars that long before going comatose. I enjoy the diversity of my Northern Virginia community – including the immigrant working families. I want legal and managed immigration: not rabid, unbending, uncaring anti-immigration. I definitely think women should be equal partners in all endeavors. All of sudden I see the GOP as the lecturing, know-it-all  guy you hate to be around. Mitt Romney was a nice exception to the rule.

I am not going to sugar coat this. President Obama AND his party won big after four years of historic economic pain and suffering. That tells you something about how bad the opposition appeared to too many voters. Turnout was astoundingly high, which meant the people spoke. Races were close and down to the wire, which means voters wanted a good option. I cannot help but ponder what a Bob McDonnell would have done in 2012 (like he did in 2009). Or a Chris Christie – though I am a bit cool on the man.

The GOP needs an overhaul, new blood up and down, and a new set of causes built around a moderate libertarian core of limited, non-intrusive, cost-efficient, results-oriented government. That means jettisoning all ideas about using the government to impose a preferred set of morals on We The People. Get over the social engineering, life will teach the lessons needed to survive and thrive.

Finally, pick a small set of priorities like national debt and career/wealth opportunities (which is not the same thing as ‘jobs’) and hammer the hell out of them. Expose the problems and failures of the opposition (see green energy for endless examples of cronyism). Don’t dance around the issue and try and be polite. Stay on target, stay focused and work solutions. If you are off yapping about rape being God’s will you are going to be seen as completely off the tracks and in the ditch. Because you are!

Four more years of incompetent leadership will lead to only one thing – another shot at a bruised and beaten electorate in 2016. But in those four years, the GOP better be a completely different animal.

Now, back to life for a while. I have an economic storm to prepare for, and it won’t be easy going to weather this one.

Update: By the way, the esteemed Ed Morrissey has an interesting post out this morning – noting we had a D+9 turnout again. Can you say “centrists”?

Update: Curious about that economic storm coming? Here is one bleak outlook worth reading.

10:58 PM: So, clearly I should stay away from predicting elections. Good night all, better luck next cycle.

10:44 PM: CNN notes it is coming down FL, not Ohio. Not good for Romney

Post Final Update: Karl Rove pulled me in off the ledge. I had done a county-by-county analysis of Ohio and Rove is right – there are more red counties than from 2008, so I will hold off (one more scotch) to see if this can be pulled off. It is 163-163, with room to win.  It is still down to FL, NC and VA.  Let’s see what happens.

Final Update: I am watching GOP senate races go down to foolish social conservative losses – thanks Aiken and Murdouch. We even lost Scott Brown. One of my readers asked me if the GOP still can screw up? Well RT, apparently yes. We have lost so many senate races, so many states. And with a President who has been a huge failure. Losing the Senate is bad enough. But at 9:50 PM we have yet to get A SINGLE swing state call. Not one…

President Obama gets 4 more...  Good night America! This independent is sadly going to sign off and figure out how the conservative/libertarian movement can be taken out of the hands of those who lose.

If you want to cling to some hope, go to Hot Air – end update

Still cautiously optimistic for Romney. First round of states could set the tone. VA has to go big for Romney to establish a path to the White House. Hearing that government workers in Northern Virginia (and the many more government contractors) are going for Romney tells me the government employee unions are not going to carry the day. This is what you get when you hold the sword of Damocles above the head of voters in the one area of VA that the president must carry.

So, here…. we…. go…!

Update: 8:27 PM Eastern: Rove is bullish on VA and OH. My prediction could hold up, if all we are seeing are early/absentee voting and not real election day votes.

Update: 8:24  PM Eastern: Painfully slow. Hat off to the Obama GOTV. Should not be this close. VA, F, OH, and NH still open. Sleeping tomorrow!

Update: 7:40  PM Eastern: Wow, this is close. VA, FL and NH not called yet.  I will be 3 sheets to the wind before we get past the east coast. SC and WV goes to Romney!

Update: 7:00  PM Eastern: VA – too close to call. Kentucky, Indiana, Georgia go to Romney. VT to Obama. SC and VA hold out.

Update: 6:56 PM Eastern: Fox is planning on calling states right after 7 PM???  Anticipation!

Dialed in Fox News at 6 PM. Everyone up beat and positive. Dialed into MSNBC, Mathews looks like he is sitting a hemorrhoid. Now MSNBC is talking big, but I am not seeing it in the faces.

Update: CNN not looking too perky either….

Update: Trick Or Treat Pollsters:

I am hearing on Twitter that the exit polls show 10 percent of self-identified Tea Party supporters voted for Obama, and that Mitt Romney is winning among households with a government worker in Virginia.

In related news, voters are messing with exit pollsters.

Edited at 3:00 & 3:07 PM Eastern, Updated 3:40 PM

OK, I needed to get some confidence that Romney will win this thing, and so I took a look at the county-by-county tallies for Ohio’s early/absentee voting and did some analysis.  Due to the complexity and size of the spreadsheet I am not posting the details, but here are the scenarios and results.

First off, I wanted to assume 2012 looked like 2008 in terms of D+whatever and just see if there is an enthusiasm edge out there for the GOP. And this should indicate Obama’s ceiling.

Here is the general process:

For each county I have the total absentee/early votes cast (not counted) for 2008 and 2012.

For each county I compute the change in votes from 2008.

Then I look at the 2008 county by county tallies for Obama and McCain and note which counties went blue or red. This was then used to determine the difference in voting from 2008 by red or blue county.

If you look at counties that went GOP in 2008, they gained 84,568 votes from 2008.

If you look at counties that went Dem GOP in 2008, they lost –41,652 votes from 2008.

That right there shows a GOP momentum. Blue counties are down, red counties up. Problem is, counties are not monolithic or clearly on one side or the other. But as a rule of thumb, this is encouraging.

Update: To be clear because the math is complex and sometimes misleading. If you take the 2012 vote deltas in county votes, and run them through the McCain splits (which is not the same as what I computed below for the 100,000 change) the GOP gets a net 30,000 votes. What I did below was run the total 2012 vote through the 2008 turn out model, not just the delta’s. There are many ways to model a 2012 result, and many knobs to twirl that change the result. All are mathematically valid, the question is are the realistic! My engineering approach is not to determine a precise estimate out of noisy data, but to bound the likely outcomes based on positive and negative assumptions. To build a multidimensional box of results that span realistic outcomes. Please don’t take this as a given for Romney, but he has more positive indicators than Obama. And no, I don’t do Monte Carlos! – end uupdate

Now of course each county splits the vote based in their partisan make up. SO I decided to project the 2012 absentee voting using the 2008 county percentages. If we hold the county percentages constant between Dem and Rep but now project the 2012 absentee/early vote outward, Obama loses 100,000 votes in his hypothetical match up with Sen McCain. He still wins, but his lead is cut in half and indicates what Obama can expect today at best. If the counties enthusiasm is run through the 2008 returns, the race is 51-49. But of course, that is not what is happening this year at all.

We all know this is not a D+7 election like 2008. Not even close. So how much does the 2008 race have to switch to Romney for him to win Ohio?

The number even surprised me – because it was so low. If I take just 3% 2% from Obama in each county and give it to Romney, then compute the 2012 results based on absentee/early votes, Romney wins.  Just 3%! That means a D+4 nationally can give Romney the win in Ohio by a tiny margin

I am seeing GOP counties, on average, increasing their voters by 11%, Dem counties by only 2% (assuming my math is right – always a challenge).

So, bottom line: Yes, I am confident Romney wins Ohio, and therefore the election. I am thinking, if it is really a tie in Ohio, then the state has moved 4% towards the GOP since 2008, and that would give Romney a 51-49 win

Major Update: Romney’s internal polls also confirm my predictions:

Mitt Romney is ahead by a single percentage point in Ohio, according to internal polling data provided to MailOnline by a Republican party source.

Internal campaign polling completed last night by campaign pollster Neil Newhouse has Romney three points up in New Hampshire, two points up in Iowa and dead level in Wisconsin and – most startlingly – Pennsylvania.

If the Romney campaign’s internal numbers are correct – and nearly all independent pollsters have come up with a picture much more favourable for Obama – then the former Massachusetts governor will almost certainly be elected 45th U.S. President.

I see no value in the Romney campaign releasing this data except to get a big “We Told You So” come Wednesday. More updates at the end of post. – end update

Never have so few, waited so long, for so little. But after seeing this I am prepared to make my predictions for tomorrow’s presidential election results [click to enlarge]:

R+6!

If Scott Rasmussen is even close in this result, tomorrow is going to be a really bad day for Democrats (and he has been very good at this before). This is a historical level for GOP partisan ID, and is much higher than seen in the 2010 blow out. 2008 was D+7, so this would mean a 13% swing away from the left in 2012.

As I said before, the 2010 insurgent voting bloc is NOT responding to pollsters and will send a clear, unfiltered message to the Political Industrial Complex tomorrow. We have never seen an R+6 election as far as I know, so this should be something else.

So here are my swing state predictions, based on what is a more likely an R+6 nation (not some D+8, D+9 or D+11 nonsense):

Governor Romney will win:

• Florida
• North Carolina
• Virginia
• Colorado
• New Hampshire
• Ohio
• Wisconsin
• Iowa
• Pennsylvania
• Nevada

President Obama will win:

• Michigan
• Minnesota

Therefore, the EC count will be: 321 Romney, 217 Obama [click to enlarge]

You too can have fun creating your own electoral map at RCP, it’s a blast!

Update: Jim Geraghty has some confirming data that supports many of my picks.

Update: Ed Morrissey also provides a slew of supporting data.

Tags: 2012 elections, Party ID, Prediction, Swing States

Does anyone really think Obama has the Big Mo’ if he can’t even ignite his home town?

According to the numbers, at this point in 2008, there were 260,376 early voters and 304,290 absentee voters. Now, the party maintains, there are 195,064 early voters and 46,232 absentee voters. That’s a loss of 57 percent of voters, since the last election.

And this is why you need a D+11 turnout model to show a mythical tie between Romney and Obama. Disaffected Dems, Crossover Dems and an insurgent wave in the ranks of the independents.

I plan to come out with my  predictions later today. Needless to say I have been waiting because I want to see Gallup’s last hurrah today before jumping in. But to be honest, after seeing the CNN poll today I am about ready to make Michael Barone look cautious:

The poll, released earlier tonight, shows a 49-49 tie among likely voters. But to get that result CNN had to use one of the most skewed samples we’ve seen this campaign (see page 29):

 Among those likely voters, 41% described themselves as Democrats, 29% described themselves as Independents, and 30% described themselves as Republicans.

A D+11 sample! By comparison, the electorate in 2008, when Obama-mania was at its peak, was merely D+7, according to exit polls.

You know why you have to put out such a laughable poll to show anything other than a Romney blow out? Reverse engineering this puppy is easy.

If Obama is losing independents well into the double digits, and/or he is is losing left-of-center Dems in such numbers he cannot hold more than 80% of his party, then you have to ramp the Dem turn out numbers up to “absurd” to compensate. Another data item noted:

CNN conducts a poll where Romney leads independents by 22 points and it’s TIED.

Folks, if Obama is losing indies by 20%, he is losing a lot of dems in crossover as well. More here, and more later.

Update: Ed Morrissey chimes in:

So we are expected to believe that since 2008, (a) Obama has lost thirty points in the gap with independents, (b) Obama has lost fifteen points in the gender gap, and (c) Obama is still just four points below his 2008 share of the electorate?  Only in a world where 41% of the voters will be Democrats and only 30% Republicans, and that world won’t be what we see tomorrow.

Watch out – You are entering the Twilight Zone!!

Nevada has completed its early voting, and while Democrats have a slight lead in raw numbers, the GOP and Independents have also come out in force. Therefore, some reasonable turnout calculations show a possible Romney win. Here’s the math:

Final vote tallies (ref here and here):

• Democrats: 307,877 (43.9%)
• Republicans: 259,913 (37%)
• Independents: 134,055 (19.1%)

But we know that these groups don’t vote just for their party’s candidate. So we can do some experimental turnout model runs to bracket the potential eality.

If you look at some of the common partisan splits out there in national polls, President Obama should be able to hold 84% of Dems and Romney 90% for the GOP. This is important, because center-left Democrat defection is the President’s biggest problem. The other big key is with independents, where polls show Romney winning by double digits (up to 21% in one VA poll).

So for the first run, lets assume:

• Dems go 84-14% to President Obama
• Reps go 90-10% to Governor Romney
• Indies go 55-45% to Governor Romney

If this is what happened in Nevada, then Romney would win the early vote by 51-49%. That would indicate the President is not likely to win that key state come election day. These numbers closely reflect the state of play nationally.

Let’s run another case:

• Dems go 90-10% to President Obama
• Reps go 90-10% to Governor Romney
• Indies go 55-45% to Governor Romney

Here Obama holds his coalition together at the same level as Romeny, and he wins 52-48%. But is this a good assumption? After the 2010 election I would say not really.

• Dems go 90-10% to President Obama
• Reps go 90-10% to Governor Romney
• Indies go 60-40% to Governor Romney

Here Obama wins 51-49%. This is one of the least likely outcomes, because Obama would not be holding center-left Dems and losing independents by 20%.

Next:

• Dems go 84-14% to President Obama
• Reps go 90-10% to Governor Romney
• Indies go 60-40% to Governor Romney

Here Romney wins 52-48%. While the first run is closest to the conventional wisdom, this run looks to be a possible result for Romney because he is taking independents so well this year. Here Obama loses center-left Dems and independents big. One last experiment:

• Dems go 84-14% to President Obama
• Reps go 95-5% to Governor Romney
• Indies go 55-45% to Governor Romney

Surprisingly, this mix of turnout and voting patterns gives Romney the highest result: 53-47%. Is it feasible for Governor Romney to steal 14% of democrats, win independents by 10% and hold his base to only a 5% loss? You betcha. This is nuch more likely than Obama holding Dems to a 10% loss.

Tags: Early Voting, Nevada, Obama, Polls, Romney