With Election Day less than 24 hours away, it's now time for the official Liberal Freak Out that it is all for naught. For that reason, Spencer Ackerman and I are here to hold your collective hands and guide you through all the reasons you shouldn't freak out at Matt Drudge's numbers tomorrow or what anyone has to say today. Except for one, small, game-changing November surprise...after the jump.MEGAN: So, Spencer, at what point tomorrow do you think that the Democrats will be well and truly freaking out to the point that crisis counselors will be called in to pry people off the ceilings and out of the fetal position? 2:30? I really feel like there's a big difference between not being cocky and trying to cope with loss in advance of ever actually losing. SPENCER: I know nothing but pain and regret in presidential contests. In 2000, as I believe I've written on CH before, the refusal of the election to end at the agreed-upon hour led me to lose my chance at sex with a reporter for the U. of Oklahoma student newspaper. The less said about 2004, the better, but it involved a pizza that I no longer felt like eating. But my guess is that the first wave of Drudge-linked exits, probably around early afternoon, will be the firing pistol for liberal panic. MEGAN: Side note: why do people trust Drudge so much? SPENCER: It's not a matter of trust, it's a matter of speed. Drudge updates a lot and fills the void in the newsworld's soul. People go along with it — sensible people, even — out of a herd instinct. Now that lots of blogs update incessantly, there's a diminishing return. I haven't read Drudge in months. Whenever I hear people say "...didja see that Drudge ran Story X" I take that as a prelude to Story X's eventual discreditation, if that's a word. MEGAN: Like Ashley Todd. SPENCER: My guess is Politico is the new Drudge. Yeah, like Ashley Todd. GOD how I wish we were CHing during that Friday afternoon. The panic on liberal email listservs was really like nothing I've ever seen. People were furiously debating what to say about the story, or to say nothing at all. The consensus was that Ashley Todd really was going to lose Penn, Ohio and the remaining Bush states for Obama. But look liberals: it was a ratfuck, quickly exposed, and now they've got... what, exactly? Please stop clogging my inbox with imaginary reasons why Obama is going to lose. MEGAN: It's Monday. It's the day before the elections. SPENCER: In fact, can we make a checklist, Megan? Can Crappy Hour provide this valuable service? Can we be Ativan for the electorate? MEGAN: Reasons why you should stop freaking out because it's kind of annoying? I'm down with that. Reason number one: the sheer level of Republican panic at the moment. If they didn't think that they were losing so badly, they wouldn't be pulling such stupid desperate shit. SPENCER: I like how Bill Kristol is like, "conservatives will greet [an Obama victory] with our usual resolute stoicism or cheerful fatalism" when instead it's going to be a coded-racist cavalcade of Panic For The Republic. He's doing that Jew thing where we put on a happy face for the Goyim. MEGAN: Speaking of panic for the Republic, Republican Congressman Chris Cannon and his equally tin-eared brother in law try to hire an British professor to "prove" that Bill Ayers ghost-wrote Obama's memoir but then backed out when the guy was like, you're full of shit but I'll take your money as long as we publish my results either way. The idiot brother-in-law (on whom Cannon, up for re-election in Utah, is trying to pin the entire caper) told Politico: "'This is no last-minute smear,' Fox said. 'I'd say it's a desperate attempt to save the republic.'" Like, this is the new Republican meme. Obama will be the end of America As We Know It. It's stupid, disgusting, sickening, race-baiting and, above all else, unconvincing. (Side note: Republican friends and acquaintances is of mine: stop emailing me that shit if you wish to continue being called a friend or even an acquaintance. It makes me want to smack you.) SPENCER: So that's one reason to calm the fuck down. Perhaps the most important is this: the GOP turnout machine is nothing compared to the Democratic apparatus:
Republican spending on field staff has grown just slightly since 2004, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis covering reports from the presidential campaigns, as well as national and state parties. The GOP spent an estimated $22 million on personnel from June 1 to Oct. 15, compared to $19 million over the same period in 2004. Democrats have increased their staff expenditures from $30 million to $56 million — and they employed an estimated 4,500 workers making more than $1,500 a month as of mid-October, the latest information available. Sen. McCain and the Republicans had about 1,100 at that point.
More than anything else, I'd think that should be the Irish in your coffeee MEGAN: Well, I'm not even done with Republican desperation yet! How about Republibitch Julie Myers possibly leaking Obama's aunt's immigration status despite laws against it. She's desperate enough to fuck up her own legal status to try to score points for McCain. SPENCER: Friends & housemates of mine, for instance, drove into Virginia to canvass for Obama at 2 pm. By 5 pm they were Twittering that the campaign took them as far south as Richmond. Clearly northern Virginia is locked up. In fairness, that's Tim Dickenson's guess as to who leaked the Auntie tape. But a more important question is this: if McCain is hitching his campaign's last hope to outrage over illegal immigration, doesn't that mean he's writing off the southwest? I don't see how you win NM, CO, NV and even ARIZONA if you start down the path of immigration-hysteria. MEGAN: I don't know why you would bother so close to the election, except that your desperation to win — and win at any cost — in the face of an obvious and overwhelming loss has overcome whatever political sense you once had. At which point, man, you really are Joe the Motherfucking Plumber, just like McCain's commercial says. SPENCER: Anyway, no one gives a shit about the immigration status of Obama's aunt. But everyone gives a shit about white people! And white people are more open to Obama than they were to Bill Clinton. So when Barack Obama becomes the first black president, white people will have a simple message: You're Welcome! MEGAN: It does warm the cockles of my heart that the majority of white people aren't stupid racists. One more blow to the Southern Strategy, Republimorons. Yeah, we noticed you thinkin' we're all racists, it might only have taken 40 years, but many of us are sort of peeved that you think we're so stupid. Those that aren't, well, those are the people yelling the n-word at your rallies and the rest of White American would like to disavow them. We'd like to be Peach America, or Light-Brown America, which is a more accurate description of our skin tone, and they can be White America, as in the hoods they'll likely take up wearing again on November 5th. Actually, maybe we can just tag 'em with a big white "R" on all their clothes, so we know the Krazy is Komin' Kwik. SPENCER: Do Crayola crayons still call the peach-colored crayon "flesh"? If so, THAT ALL ENDS UNDER PRESIDENT OBAMA. [LOL -Ed.] MEGAN: No, they stopped doing that ages ago. Maybe they can make an special Obama pack, with ALL THE COLORS OF THE RAINBOW. SPENCER: Also, every taxpayer earning over $250,000 will have to freestyle over the "A Milli" beat. Man, can I not wait for the Second Holocaust! This one will be a Holocaust I can believe in. Holocaust the shit out of me, Barack! MEGAN: I keep saying this, but WHAT THE FUCK is up with all this Second Holocaust talk? Is this the new rapture plan or something? I forget what reason we're up to now, but I think the fact that the McCain campaign is serving up more idiot backbenchers to get chewed up on TV is another reason to not be so scared. When even their senior campaign people don't want to be associated with some of their new talking points or hurt their regular career prospects and serve up Michael Goldfarb, who Linkins says "prior to hooking up with the McCain campaign, lost many jobs to houseplants and particularly aggressive airborne diseases" and this Ben Porrit idiot, that ain't a good sign either. SPENCER: Don't bait me into a Goldfarb-hookup-joke, Megan. MEGAN: Do not use the words "Goldfarb" "hookup" and my name in the same sentence, Spencer. SPENCER: Last reason not to panic: my friend Avi Zenilman — one of the few Politico employees who has to fear a second Holocaust — points out that all the big states except Florida have Democratic secretaries of state. Watch this become the seedbed for the conservative contention that the Negroes stole the election. MEGAN: I mean, they are really only going to be talking about one "of them." SPENCER: Oh wait one more reason not to panic: Our friend Angela Valdez reports for Salon about how miserable it is to phonebank for McCain.
A moment passes before I wince from the familiar screech of a disconnected line "ooo wee ooo." And that's the first trend I discover. Not just that this particular land line is dead, but that land lines in general are dead. In my first half-hour, I make 20 calls and speak to two live people. Mostly, I leave messages. Over a period of several days I make a total of 100 calls for McCain. I reach eight disconnected numbers, 12 wrong numbers (including three fax machines) and 12 unanswered lines. I get a busy signal just three times. I leave 35 messages and reach one line that will not accept incoming calls and can only be used for outgoing calls. I speak with just 26 people. Fifteen of them hang up on me within the first 30 seconds and six others last a little longer but still beg off before I can finish my spiel.
Editors! You need to commission pieces from Angela Valdez. Remember when she exposed the seedy underbelly of GOP fratsex? MEGAN: Poor thing! Phone banking sucks, that was my first legitimate job (for the American Cancer Society and $4.25 an hour) when I was 14. Soul-killing. It could be how I ended up a lobbyist, really. But this Republican walked door-to-door for Obama and liked it, which is even more heartening.
I've learned that this election is about the heart of America. It's about the young people who are losing hope and the old people who have been forgotten. It's about those who have worked all their lives and never fully realized the promise of America, but see that promise for their grandchildren in Barack Obama. The poor see a chance, when they often have few. I saw hope in the eyes and faces in those doorways. My wife and I went out last weekend to knock on more doors. But this time, not because it was her idea. I don't know what it's going to do for the Obama campaign, but it's doing a lot for me.
SPENCER: That shit is CORNY. Starting tomorrow, the heart of America will be officially located at the Junction of Flatbush & Nostrand Avenues. MEGAN: Aw, corny or not, it's sort of sweet. It's also reason number whatever: the sheer number of rats jumping off the Straight Talk Bullshit Express. That makes no less than 3 writers of the fucking National Review that have been like, fuck it. SPENCER: We already did that reason up top! This CH has gone on so long that you've forgotten. OH SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK! Larry Johnson just finally released the Whitey Tape! FUCK HE JUST LOST THE ELECTION!!!