Quarantining The News

Are you ready for the Bizzaro world elections next Tuesday? Our corporate owned (by a handful of people) media has set up a Quarantine room for election night where all of the exit polls will be poured over, but no information will leave the room until it matches the actual returns. Sound familiar? This administration is quite deft at fixing the facts to fit the policy. An election is small potatoes by comparison.

Remember 2004, when all of the exit polling showed Kerry winning handily until the exit polls were changed to fit the “unbelievable” last minute surge for George W. Bush? Well, that won’t happen this time, our “news” media is making sure of that. This time, none of the exit polling will see the light of day until they are certain that it matches the results coming in. They don’t want to accidentally reveal information that might suggest the election was tampered with. So what if exit polling is how we monitor elections around the world to make sure there’s no hanky panky? If the shoe doesn’t fit, stretch it until it does. In this story, Cinderella doesn’t marry the Prince, instead, it’s the ugly step sister that wins the day.

I wonder if Keith Olbermann will be allowed anywhere near a camera on election night? I have this image of Olbermann losing his shit on air as the news comes down that Republicans are unexpectedly winning seats all across the country. Will he start to visibly shake when Chris Matthews starts trumpeting the “values voters” and the superior “ground game” of the Republicans? Will he throw something at Chris’s marshmallow head when he cites John Kerry’s remarks this week, as the reason each and every tight race is magically falling in the GOP column?

There is plausibility and then there’s reality. The reality is, this IS a nationalized election, it IS a referendum on Bush and his failed policies and it IS about the disastrous occupation of Iraq. There aren’t enough Evangelicals still in the Bush camp to pull this one out. Not only do the numbers not work EVEN IF every single Evangelical in the country voted Republican, the Bush administration has alienated a large segment of their religious base by disparaging them behind their backs.

Before you accept the validity of a Republican win next Tuesday, keep a couple of things in mind. When the Republicans Revolution swept into DC in 1992, generic polls had them up by 7 percentage points. Today, the Democrats are up by as much at 15 percentage points. Yes, there has been re-districting that heavily favors Republicans, but that is a monstrous lead, and the less publicized side effect of the GOP gerrymandering is that more seats are competitive and that doesn’t bode well for their side right now.

For me, it’s simple, the Bush administration has committed crimes of which they cannot allow vigorous investigation. That is one hell of a motivator, and what in their history suggests that they wouldn’t resort to criminal behavior to stay in power? In fact, all evidence is to the contrary. The infrastructure for rigged elections is in place, privately owned voting machines that have no paper trail, exit polls that are weighted after the fact to fit the “actual” vote returns and a corporate media with a dog in the fight. They may not have decided to use it yet, but that it’s there is enough to cast doubt on any more “unbelievable” GOP wins.