So I was reading news again today. It was fairly depressing, which is not too unusual unfortunately. But I saw this article on the Huffington Post and was inspired to write one of my periodical letters to the White House. I know the President never actually sees anything I write, but I figure someone adds up the numbers of supporters and/or commenters about various things, so I can at least make my opinion known.

Then I thought, well, I can also let my opinion be known other places, so here is my latest missive to the man in the Oval Office.

I see in the news today that Press Secretary Gibbs said that it looks like Senator Enzi has given up on bipartisan healthcare reform and walked away from the table. I believe this statement is incorrect. In order to give up on something, you first have to want it to happen. It has been apparent since July that very few Republicans in office have any desire for healthcare reform to happen, especially in a bipartisan manner, so they can hardly give up on that now.

Gibbs also says, “”It looks like Republicans are stepping away from seeking a bipartisan solution. It is bad for this town but it’s worse for this country.” Again, this in not correct. While it would be better for everyone in Congress to work together to make the best bill possible, that is not what has been happening. They have been using the cover of bipartisanship to do their best to delay and stop any kind of reform from happening. If that cover is finally wearing thin and falling away, then that is very good for the country. Now you just need to corral the cats (i.e. Congressional Democrats and moderate Republicans like the 2 ladies from Maine) and pass a bill that really is good for the country.

A single-payer system like Canada’s may be out of reach, but the HELP committee’s bill looks pretty solid to a layman, and is at least a good starting point. Republican’s want to force the responsibility for reform on the Democrats? Well they did that 40 years ago with Medicare and that seems to be pretty popular these days. I say the Democrats should say thank you and get on with passing it.

Going back to the reader’s side this time, I will look at some plugins that help you keep posts in front of their eyes.  The most important thing about the post is that the writing and content are good. But if it is from very far back in time how to get it somewhere your readers can see it. Well, the trusty plugin developers of the WordPress world are up to the task.

First up is Recently Updated Posts, an easy to install, easy to use plugin. It gives you a widget for your sidebar that will display a number of your posts that you have recently updates. You can change the title, the number of posts shown, and you can exclude certain categories from showing. All of this is on the widget, there is no option page for the plugin.

If you are comfortable dealing with php, the author of the plugin has included some of the parameters he uses so you can edit the plugin your self to customize it a bit more. You can include pages, or switch it to show new posts that haven’t been modified. Still not a huge amount of control, but some. And not at all easy to make use of if you do not do code.

TDD Recent Posts is almost identical to the Recent Posts widget included with WordPress. It places a list of your posts, from most recent to older, with a link to them. But it also includes the date of the post and a short excerpt from the beginning of the post. You can change the length of the excerpt shown, and the number of posts shown, but that is about it for easily controlled options.

Again, if you are comfortable with coding, the author gives instructions for including pages in the listing and how to increase the maximum character limit for the excerpts. There is no styling, although if your theme styling does things with unordered lists, the widget output may be included. If not, you will have to do your own CSS to make it fit in. The author has included one class name so far for styling purposes, although he says he may include more later. Nice change to the basic recent posts widget.

WordPress.com Popular Posts uses the stats from the Wordpress. com Stats plugin to give you a sidebar widget that shows your most popular posts. All of the controls on on the widget, making for easy installation. You can show popular posts, pages, or both, and can choose to limit it to only posts within a certain number of days. You can also choose to have an excerpt, length up to you, posted. And it can show the number of view each post has received.

This is a nice plugin, easy to install and use. Having to install the Stats plugin also is somewhat irritating, but not too much since having some kind of stats tracking is always a good idea. If you are relying on Google Analytics already, then it would be more annoying to add the second. The documentation on the available options could be a bit better, it is not real easy to figure out how to add the excerpts, but they are just additions to a plugin that is good from the start.

Must Read Posts allows you to put a list of posts on your sidebar that you think your readers will like. You can set the number of posts that will be in the sidebar, and the author includes a class for styling the list. Aside from putting the widget in your sidebar, the only other thing you need to do is add a custom field in your post. Posts with the field can show up in the list, making it easy to control what will be there. It does not do much, but what it does do, works well.

Old Post Promoter also allows you to keep older posts up for your newer readers to find. But it does not use your sidebar to do it. Instead, it updates the timestamp on older posts and puts them back on your front page and back into your RSS feed.

You set how often old posts are promoted, how old they have to be before they can be promoted (minimum 30 days), and whether they are put in front of your most recent post. The only other control you have over what posts are promoted is by excluding categories. The lack of fine control over what is promoted is not the best, and something about changing the dates on the posts to bring them back to the front doesn’t really appeal to me. But for blogs that are offering advice or how-tos that are not time sensitive, this can be an effective method of keeping good ideas in front of your readers. Of course, you also need to keep writing new posts, or you will end up doing nothing but recycling the same posts over and over.

Serial Posts Plugin is a way to send people to other posts in a series. It is much more powerful than the typical related posts plugins, with exact control over what posts appear, where the list appears on each post, and what information about the series is given to your readers. The documentation is much better than average, including a nice tutorial, although that lacks the shortcode information.

Set up is remarkably easy. You need to add a custom field to the posts you want included in a series (Note: Make sure you put Serial in just like that. Lowercase will not work.) with the name of the series as the value of the field. Then place the shortcode in the posts where you want the list to appear. You can have multiple series going at the same time, just use different values for the custom field. And there are several ways to control the styling of the list if you do CSS, so you can make it stand out from the rest of the post. There are improvements that can be made, like specifying the order of the list or making the styling easier for non-coders. But really, it is a very nice plugin as is, well worth using if you do series of posts.

Hackadelic Series does almost exactly the same thing as Serial Posts, but slightly differently. The plugin generates a menu of related posts, defined by a custom field added to the post (Sound familiar? Great minds think alike.) the places the list in a collapsing menu at the top of the post. It has many of the virtues of Serial Posts, as well as adding a very nice back end for controlling your series and the meta fields. And the collapsing menu means even larger series, like these are starting to be, can be added to your posts without taking up too much room.

When the developer found out that the Serial Posts plugin was out, he even created his so that you can use his back end for admin of that plugin, without using his frontend and placing his menu at the top of the post. This is very nice, and it means that if you have already started using Serial Posts you do not need to stop.

The downside of the plugin are not major, but they are real. In order to use this plugin, you have to install the authors other plugin, Sliding Notes. This is a nice plugin by itself, and does not take any set up if used for the Series plugin, but it is one more thing to install. And there is no control over the location of the menu, it automatically shows up at the top of the post. The styling is very vanilla, but can be made to blend to your site if you are comfortable with CSS. All in all, a nice plugin that you will definitely want to consider.

Upcoming Posts goes in the opposite direction from most on this list. Rather than trying to interest your readers in older posts, it gives them a glimpse of what you have coming up. Again all of the controls are in the widget you place in your sidebar, but there are quite a few options available there.

You can set the number of posts, whether to have a timestamp, the category of the post, and whether an excerpt will show. You can have either scheduled posts or drafts on the list, and can put a message up if you have nothing planned. And you can specify specific categories to be shown. Nice options, easy to install and use. One problem, the styling out of the box is not very good, and you need to do it in the css in the plugin folder. But that is pretty much the only downside to the plugin.

Final Words

So there are some ways to keep people reading your old posts or get them interested in what is coming soon. If you think something is really good, you should be able to find something here that will let you share it with your readers and keep them coming back.

Edited to remove error about Hackadelic Series plugin.

So the week started with Bush as the President of the USA and not much happening except getting ready for the inauguration. Then Tuesday happens, and it feels like a tornado is going through the government. In over 30 years of watching national politics, I do not remember this kind of change happening so quickly, in so many areas.

CNN is making a big deal about covering Obama’s first 100 days. But is seems that in his first 100 hours, he has already accomplished more than the Bush administration did in the last year. Just the first three days of Executive Orders shows the enormous difference between the former and present administrations.

Not everybody is happy of course. The Republicans have decided that their losses in the elections are proof they need to stand up and disagree with Obama more. I am not sure pushing back hard is a good idea at this time. It will probably be popular with their base, but not so much with the more moderate section of the population that they need to woo back. It does show a certain amount of chutzpah, which I wish some of the Democrats could learn to have. On the other hand, it may just be an inability to grasp reality.

And one very important Democrat understands exactly where the country is right now. And the President let the GOP know it during their meeting this morning.

But some progressives need to see about picking up some tin foil from their haberdasher. While the title of his article, Obama and Ted Kennedy See Plans Foiled as Caroline Withdraws? does end with a question mark, Steve Clemons writes it like he knows exactly what Obama and Ted Kennedy were planning. And what they were planning was a Machiavellian scheme to set up Caroline Kennedy for a run at the Presidency in 2016. His reliance on anonymous insiders and an inability to get simple facts straight (Senator Kirsten Gillibrand will have to run in 2010, then again in 2012 if she wins), as well as his apparent mind reading abilities, tend to count against his credibility.

And it is looking like the trial in Minnesota will not be too long. Coleman does not appear to be doing well even convincing judges appointed by Republicans that his legal arguments are correct. With luck, this might possibly be over by the end of next week. (Was that enough weasel words?)

I guess it all comes down to, right now it feels really good to be able to say President Barack Obama. I hope he continues as well as he has started.

There are a lot of places you can hear about the inauguration. It is of course a front page, above the fold, story almost everywhere in the world. In the Gaza Strip, they are treating their wounded, and finding and burying their dead. And they wonder if he will be any different from past American Presidents. A friend from Croatia emailed me to have a happy Obama day, and they are showing the inauguration live there. The same is true to one extent or another over most of the world.

The feelings about Obama are mixed of course. You have people like Rush Limbaugh that say they want him to fail. (No, I am not linking to it. I refuse to give him more publicity than just mentioning his name.) Other conservatives don’t care for most of his policies, but realize that  if he fails, another Great Depression is probably the least of what we have to look forward to.

There are liberals and progressives that are not happy about some of the choices he has already made, and will be angry at him in the years to come, for other things he will do. Keith Olbermann did a special comment that raises one issue of contention. But they all realize he is a much better choice than McCain would have been.

From here in Ohio, it looks like the constant in the Obama era will be change. Right after he took the oath, the website at Whitehouse.gov changed. Anyone that visited the Obama campaign website will recognize the design. And the philosophy behind the site has also changed. Instead of just a site of information, it is a site for participation. They are asking for the grassroots that helped elect Obama to help him run the country. I have to admit, that sounds very good to me.

Basically, the greatest feeling I personally have about today is relief. Bush and Cheney are gone, Obama and Biden became the leaders of the country safely, and it feels like there is something to hope for again. And I know I am not the only person that feels like this. The Colonel And Company does a good job of expressing it.

There is a down note. CNN has reported that Senator Ted Kennedy had a seizure at the Congressional luncheon after the inauguration. Other reports say that Senator Byrd also had health problems there, but that has not been confirmed and has been disputed by police.

I am definitely not cut out to be any kind of public figure. I do not know how the President-Elect (Officially now!) can stand all the harping and complaining about the job he is doing and the people he is picking to help do it. Yes, I wrote about this stuff before. But it really annoys me, so I am doing it again.When Obama was elected, the majority of the country was happy. That was apparent almost everywhere you looked. The Democrats in Congress were happy, the blogosphere was happy, about the only people that weren’t happy were the conservatives, and even a few of them were not too upset.

Obama was very popular when he was elected and he still enjoys that popularity. Congress, on the other hand, was about as popular as Bush, and that hasn’t changed either. So now, the very popular President-Elect is getting closer to taking office and the very unpopular Congress is feeling their oats.

Nancy Pelosi doesn’t like the fact that Obama wants to just allow the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to expire. Instead, they should be repealed as soon as possible. While I admit to feeling that way myself, I am willing to admit it may not be the best idea. The tax cuts expire at the end fo 2010, so they have less than 2 years to go. Why doesn’t she worry about getting the stimulus passed as soon as possible, see what happens, then take up the question about the tax cuts. That makes more sense to me than slowing down important legislature that the entire country wants passed.

Then there is Representative  John Conyers of Michigan. He is objecting to Dr. Sanjay Gupta as Surgeon General because Gupta is not qualified. A practicing neurosurgeon, reporter, and speaker, who was a White House Fellow in the class of ‘97-’98, not qualified to be the spokesman for the Public Health Service?

Admittedly, Paul Krugman also has a problem with Gupta’s appointment, but not because of his lack of qualifications. And the issues Krugman brings up about Gupta’s encounter with Moore should definitely be explored. By the Senate, when they hold hearings on his confirmation, if he even decides to accept the appointment. (I don’t know if I would, it would be an immense pay cut.)

Then there is Senator Dianne Feinstein, who was very unhappy about Obama’s choice (still not official mind you) of Leon Panetta for head of the CIA. I guess I am somewhat confuse, I did not realize that the President had to clear his choices with the Senate before he actually made them. Questions about his qualifications should be brought up in the confirmation hearings. Getting upset because you were not asked about him being nominated? Not really part of the Senate’s job, as I understand the Constitution.

But Obama, and Joe Biden, called and apologized to the Senator. Because they know that if they did not, she would probably cause all kinds of trouble for any of their nominations that went in front of her committee. And any other committee she serves on.

And Holder may have some trouble getting through the committees to the floor vote. But at least that is coming from the Republicans, not the Democrats.

At least it looks like Tom Daschle will be getting through the various committees without too much trouble. Not really surprising, since he is appearing before a lot of old friends.

All of this, along with trying to figure out how to lead the nation, and the world, out of the troubles we are in. Nope, I am not cut out to be a public figure. Thank god there are people that are.

No, I am not talking about the seating of the 111th session of the US Senate that convenes on January 6. Everybody knows about that, and it is much too mundane to compete with the rest of the news about Senators that is out there.  Or possible Senators anyway.

The Choice is Made? #1

First off, it looks like Caroline Kennedy will be getting the nod from New York Governor Patterson. It is still not official, with the official word from the Governor that he is still open for others. On the other hand, he has also said he will not appoint an caretaker senator until the required 2010 election. This really limits him, since if the appointee wins that election, they will have to run again in 2012 for the full term. 2 races for senate in less than 4 years will be realy hard to handle, both financially and physically.

Yes, members of the House have to run every 2 years. But they only have to run and win in their particular districts. Senators have to cover the entire state, trying to cover as much of it as possible, which takes its toll. The strain is eased somewhat in New York, since so much of the population is in New York City. But ignoring the upstate area is dangerous, at least some token attempt must be made to listen to their views and needs.

The Choice is made? #2

So the indicted Governor of Illinois made a decision about who will take Obama’s remaining term in the Senate. But nobody seems to be very happy about it. Especially the Democrats in the Senate.

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com has been writing about it, with uneven success. His latest post dealing with the seating of Burris is much better, with links to consitutional scholars on both sides of the arguement about seating Burris. I am not a constitutional scholar, nor a lawyer in any way. But of course I have an opinion.

Blagojevich does have the authority to name someone to fill Obama’s term. He hasn’t been impeached or removed from office, and the Illinois legislature has not changed the law that gives him that power. So from my layman’s point of view, legally, Burris’ appointment seems aboveboard and he should be seated.

The big problem I see is that Blagojevich named Burris just to poke the Democratic leadership in the eye. He knows that with him under a cloud at present, any appointment he makes will be sharing that storm. The actual amounts that Burris and his firm have donated to various Blagojevich campaigns is miniscule in comparison to what Blagojevich was purportedly trying to sell the seat for. And the fact that Burris donated is not remarkable at all.

Blagojevich has shown that he does not really care for the future of the Democratic Party, the people of Illinois, or the country as a whole. He knew when he named Burris that it would create problems both in his state and in the US Senate. With the current problems facing the world, creating more when it could be avoided is something reveals either a lack of intelligence or morality. And Blagojevich is not someone that appears unintelligent.

Burris has also come across as much less honorable then he should be. He knew before he accepted the appointment that the Governor is under a cloud. And that both the President-elect and the Democrats in the Senate had asked Blagojevich to step down and not name a replacement. So Burris is going against the leadership of the party, knowingly doing something that will cause them problems. Apparently just because he finally sees a way of reaching a goal that has always been out of his reach, high power in an elected office.

I suppose the real reason I oppose seating Burris is that if he does become a Senator this way, it will be rewarding both him and Blagojevich for making choices that are, at best, of dubious morality.

Still Waiting

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, they still don’t know who will be showing up for work in the Senate. There was a proposal that whoever was in the lead at the end of counting should be seated provisionally until the court cases were finished. But it looks like the Republicans do not like that option, since Al Franken is up by 49. Which is kind of odd, since Republicans did allow Democrat Mary Landrieu to be seated in 1996 while an investigation into fraud was ongoing. I guess possible fraud is better than losing by 49 votes.

What is interesting is how Coleman’s lawyers are saying there will be a court battle after the recount is done. I guess he doesn’t feel that he should take his own advice about letting the healing process begin.

Update: And the Minnesota Supreme Court now wants more information from Franken concerning Coleman’s latest filing. But they won’t have new instructions for the Canvasing Board before the board starts counting Saturday morning. If the Court has done their job in the first place and set standards for which ballots to count, rather than telling the campaigns to agree on standards, this could have been avoided.

This is how to do it

Now in Colorado, they are doing it the right way. The governor has made a decision and it is not full of drama. Governor Bill Ritter will probably be naming Michael Bennet to fill Ken Salazar’s senate seat, assuming that Salazar is confirmed as Obama’s Secretary of the Interior. This is apparently somewhat surprising, since Bennet does not have extensive experience in legislature.

On the other hand, he managed to convince the teachers in the state to agree to merit pay, and filled his promises about improving the eduation system in Denver. That by itself makes him a good candidate for higher office. As long as he avoids making too many promises.

As the inauguration gets closer, and Obama makes his choices for cabinet positions and other important jobs in his administration, more and more people are complaining. I do not believe a single choice has been met with unanimous approval from anyone, except for maybe the press, since it gives them something to talk about. My opinion? (Hey, it is as valid as anyone else’s.) Let him decide who he wants.

I don’t mean let the unqualified (just had 8 years of that thanks) or criminal (ditto) take the jobs. But none of the people that Obama has nominated come close to that. They have been uniformly intelligent, informed people, most of whom have extensive background in the area he has chosen for them.

I don’t agree with all of his choices. Nothing against Hillary, but I think Bill Richardson would have been a kick-ass Secretary of State. I think he will also do well at Commerce, where his background also works well. And in 8 years (I hope) there will be changes in who is where in the cabinet. That is pretty normal.

What I am finding annoying are the people saying that Bill’s donation list could cause problems with Hillary being Secretary of State. Or the Republicans on Holder’s role in the Clinton pardon of Marc Rich. I do not agree with either of these people on everything, but none of the information I have seen comes close to being enough to disqualify them from the offices they are nominated for.

The same goes for Salazar having close ties to the oil industry, or Mary Schapiro being too mild to effectively turn around the SEC. Maybe these are the wrong people for the jobs. Maybe not. I am not the President Elect, I don’t have the same information about them he does, and I don’t think it is a good idea to second guess him.

I do not say this because I think he can do no wrong. He can, and has made mistakes, witness the current brouhaha about Rick Warren. I think he should get exactly who he wants right now, because of the present world situation.

Obama is going into office with not just the US economy in trouble, but the entire world economy in the tank. We are involved in 2 wars, with people dying every day, and our standing in the world is extremely low. I do not feel the President of the USA is leader of the free world. A few decades ago, that title was much more appropriate, but, until a few years ago, he was definitely first among equals.

If Obama is going to take on all the problems facing him, and restore at least some of America’s standing in the world, he should have everything we can give him to do that. That means oking the people he has chosen to work with him. Even if we do not like everything about them or their positions. There will be plenty of time to Monday morning quarterback later. And I am certain there will be plenty of it, no matter how things turn out.

The first line in this story from USA Today is a telling indictment of someone who is widely considered a man of honor. “Sen. John McCain is scheduled to visit Georgia on Thursday to campaign for GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss, and Sarah Palin may not be far behind.” It is not the fact that McCain is stumping for a Republican that is a failure of principles. That is expected from the person considered to be the head of the party. It is the man he is stumping for that is the problem.

Chambliss is the person that was responsible for running ads during the 2002 Senate campaign that attacked Max Cleland’s patriotism and commitment to the security of the United States. The ads were called “beyond offensive to me” and “[I]t’s worse than disgraceful, it’s reprehensible.” These aren’t the words of some liberal whiner. They are the words of Republican Senators Chuck Hagel and John McCain, respectively.

These were the same kind of ads that Karl Rove developed and used against John McCain during the 2000 Republican primaries in South Carolina. McCain said “I believe that there is a special place in hell for people like those.” referring to the people that used his daughter in push polls. But he had the same people working for him in his 2008 campaign.

And that same primary showed that McCain was not all that committed to his principles. The controversy over the Confederate Flag during that campaign resulted in him admitting “I feared that if I answered honestly, I could not win the South Carolina primary. So I chose to compromise my principles.”

For a man that is supposed to be a maverick, who promised to always tell the truth about his beliefs, McCain seems to spend a lot of time failing to actually follow his principles. He showed “poor judgement” in the Keating Five mess, lied about his beliefs regarding the Confederate Flag controversy in South Carolina, then hired people he earlier called reprehensible to work for him in his Presidential Campaign. And now he is campaigning for Chambliss, a man that uses any means he has to win.

Maybe all of this isn’t a failure of his principles. Maybe his principles are actually exactly what he has been showing us. He wants to win, and is willing to do anything he has to in order to do that. I do not know the man personally, I have to go with what is on the public record. And that record is getting more and more damning.

The Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner (D) has been having a bit of a tiff with the Republican Party the last month or so. They keep insisting that too many people are wanting to do radical things like vote in the General Election. Unlike her predecessor, she keeps telling them that, well, that is allowed, even if the voters are probably Democrats. So the two sides went to court until the US Supreme Court said the GOP was not actually allowed to go to court over the issue.

Since they were not allowed to bring suit, the GOP decided to pull out the big guns. Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) asked President Bush and the Department of Justice to investigate, saying that otherwise “there is a significant risk if not a certainty, that unlawful votes will be cast and counted.” He is correct to a certain extent, there will be unlawful votes cast and counted in the upcoming election.

But that will happen no matter what is done. Expecting that out of the millions of votes that will be cast in Ohio all of them are legal and that nobody in the entire state is trying to vote illegally is naive. But trying to say that there will be enough illegal votes cast to have any kind of affect on the outcome of the race is disingenuous. Increasing the work loads of the various county Boards of Elections and the poll workers (and since I have volunteered to be a poll worker, this has a direct effect on me) along with the possible disenfranchisement of thousands of legal voters, makes this a very bad thing in my opinion.

There is good news for people wanting to vote in Ohio. As reported in the New York Times, the Justice Department will not be pursuing any litigation before the November 4 election. They do not way what will happen after November 4 (If I were a conspiracy theorist I would worry about that.) but at least this should end the court battles for a week or so. Not that it will stop the GOP from innuendo and other attacks.

Speaking of GOP attacks, TPMMuckraker has a listing of what is going on around the country with regards to attempts to suppress or intimidate voters. I do not see any Democratic organizations trying to do any of the suppression. But the only Republican that seems to be making it easier for people to vote is Charlie Crist, the governor of Florida. He is supported by some of the state Republicans, although some of them just seem to realize that trying to fight his move would not be a very good idea politically.

The two stories that bother me the most are the ones from New Mexico and Colorado. The New Mexico story because these are new citizens, exercising their rights and getting intimidating visits because of it. Welcoming new citizens, and giving them the same rights as those born here is one of the foundations of our society. I don’t like it when that is threatened. The Colorado story bothers me because it is somewhat like what happened in Ohio in 2004. A Republican Secretary of State making decisions that constantly take away the opportunity of people to express themselves in the voting booth.

The Republican party and McCain/Palin campaign have been really hitting things hard with their messages. It is apparent that they are really starting to feel the pressure of the polling numbers that are coming out daily. There is some movement in the polls, including some tightening of the race in the national numbers, but the state polls are not looking good for McCain and it is hurting the down ticket Republicans. Although several of them have managed to shoot their own foot, i.e. Michelle Bachman.

The most irritating Republican talking point is the idea that it is a bad thing to have both the White House and Congress in the hands of the same party. As someone who tends toward the middle of the road, I generally agree with this sentiment. It does help keep the country more toward the center of the road when the President and Congress have to compromise. Unfortunately, it can also lead to gridlock and necessary work not getting done when both sides refuse to compromise.

David Frum, a conservative political commentator at the Washington Post, has written an article with this talking point. He is really afraid of the leftist domination of the Democratic party and what it will do to the country. But Brad Delong, in a very short post called, I Call Bullshit on David Frum, did just that. If it is so bad now, why wasn’t it bad in 2000? or 2002? or 2004?

The interesting part of this tactic is that the Republican Party is using it to push voting for Republican senators and representatives. John McCain is using it to say vote for him. Considering the polling numbers for McCain, unless something really drastic occurs, it is doubtful his use of this message will do much. The Republican senators and representatives may have better luck, probably depending on how closely they have tied themselves to the McCain/Palin ticket.

Carl Huse and David M. Herszenhorn point out in The New York Times that even a veto proof majority in congress does not mean that everything can get passed. Both the major parties are in reality, coalitions of smaller groups that tend to work together. In a parlimentary system, neither would be nearly as large as they are in the US system. Blue Dog Democrats can easily align with fiscally conservative Republicans, with the blessings of their constituents, to block bills they think go too far.

One of the things that has hurt the Republicans this year, especially in the Presidential campaign, is that they seem to have forgotten they are a coalition. McCain/Palin seem to be working hard to pull in the social conservatives, but they are losing the fiscal conservatives and social moderates. And losing the moderates, whether fiscal or social, is a losing strategy in the United States.

Another meme that seems to be flowing through various comment sections on the web is that John Kerry was ahead of Bush in 2004 at this point and McCain can still come back. In reality, Kerry was mostly behind in electoral votes for the last month or so. He had some good polling days, much better than McCains to be honest, but Electoral-vote.com has all of their pages from the 2004 election up, showing that Kerry and Bush were close all through the last month, with Bush usually polling ahead. From the looks of his data, who won was almost random, depending on who had a headache when they got up and decided to skip voting that day.

In comparison, Obama has been leading on the Electoral-vote.com site since mid September just before the economy crashed, with his lead in electoral votes growing steadily. He makes it easy to compare the two campaigns with graphs on this page. Combined with the work that Nate Silver and compatriots have been doing at FiveThirtyEight.com, and it looks like it would take something truly catastrophic to stop Obama.