Countdown to Demageddon

Coincidence of the Day: Details of the IPO that would reduce the government's ownership of General Motors just happen to leak out on Election Day! I suppose those paranoid Tea-Partiers will immediately suspect that this is an Obama adminstration PR move to blunt anger at one of its most unpopular actions (the Detroit bailout) by dangling the possibility of a return to private control. Crazy wingnuts! As if the government could tell GM what to do ... P.S.: I still suspect that, after the votes are in, GM may suddenly decide that conditions are just not that auspicious for a big IPO and call it off (or radically reduce it). It's already been cut back from its original target, Bloomberg reports. ... 12:39 p.m.

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Obama's Animus Planet: Isn't it clear that Obama's now-controversial "enemies" remark was simply a rephrasing of union leader Samuel Gompers famous dictum that labor should "reward its friends and punish its enemies"? Standard union (and political scientist) talk. Cut the guy some slack. Gompers didn't have to deal with Jon Stewart. ("We can have animus and not be enemies.") ... P.S.: What's offensive about Obama's statement isn't the use of "enemies," a perfectly good word that has now been unfairly demonized. What's offensive is Obama's assumption, in his Univision "enemies" interview, that people who oppose his version of "comprehensive immigration reform" in fact stand in opposition to Latinos, and to Americans who are Latinos. But that appeal to crude identity politics is pretty much the essence of the Democrats' current attempt to pretend that they are pushing hard for immigration amnesty. It's also why amnesty won't pass anytime soon. If support for it is based on ethnicity, after all, won't that ethnic support also be applied to those Latinos who sneak across the border after Obama's amnesty and demand another one? Voters may wonder when the ethnicity-based amnesties will end. ... Bonus Question: Can you have "animus" without having "enemies"? I'm not so sure. Discuss! ... Or is Stewart really calling for "franimus"? ... 8:04 p.m.

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"Size of Republican Wave Hard to Predict": I needed Nate Silver to tell me that? ... Update: But he's good at this ... 4:45 p.m.

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Mine's Bigger? Stewart vs. Beck: They look about the same size to me ... 4:14 p.m.

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"Why Nancy Pelosi Must Remain Speaker": Finally a Democrat willing to set expectations right where Republicans want them ... 3:33 p.m.

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Sex and Bloggingheads: I try to shock Bob Wright by talking about Grinder. Also the midterms ... 3:32 p.m.

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It's almost Election Day, I live in California, and I haven't been called once by Martin Sheen all year. Was it something I said? ... P.S.: Danny Glover just called, so it's not like I'm not on the list ... 12:26 p.m.

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Making the World Safe for John Boehner: Lawrence Jacobs and Theda Skocpol argue that Republicans won't be able to undo Obama's health-care plan even if they win big tomorrow. If only the argument were more convincing, I could root for the GOP and John Boehner with relative equanimity. (Stopping Obama's agenda after he's achieved health-care reform but before he moves on to misguided ideas like illegal-immigrant amnesty and pro-union "card check"—what's not to like? That assumes his health-care reform stays achieved, however.) ...

P.S.: You have to wonder if the Dems, when they were designing the health reform, planned for the possibility that they'd lose control of Congress. Or did they create a system that needed constant legislative upkeep—confident that they would be in charge to perform it? That may have been Pelosi's most damaging hubris. ...

P.P.S.—Obama's Looming Death Trap: Jacobs and Skocpol predict, I assume accurately, that Republicans will now　

attach amendments to essential, non-healthcare-related legislation to ... undercut cost-control measures (such as the new commission to monitor and control Medicare expenditures).

The danger is that Obama will righteously rush to defend his various cost-cutting commissions, confident in his ability to prevail in a "difficult democratic conversation" about the cost and benefits of various expensive medical procedures, including end-of-life procedures. (After all, it will be "guided by doctors, scientists and ethicists"!)  He'll put Democrats firmly on the side of denying treatments, instead of providing them, and help seal his doom ... The good news is his Democratic allies in Congress, if any are left, will probably abandon him on the issue before the conversation gets too heated. .. 12:15 p.m.

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Tip O'Neill is Dead: From the O.C. Register—

Tip O'Neill, the legendary Irish-American Democratic House speaker ... once famously remarked that all politics are local. That's a pretty good rule of thumb, but there are elections where it doesn't necessarily apply – one thinks of 1980, 1994 and 2008 as elections in which national issues and themes mostly predominated over local issues.

Also ... let me think ... 1998 (impeachment) and 2002 (terrorism) and 2006 (Iraq War) ... In other words, every midterm for the last two decades has been inexorably nationalized. Including this one. ... You would hope that by the next midterm O'Neill's aphorism will be so obviously wrong that even highly paid political analysts won't trot him out, even to disagree. He's no Yogi Berra! But I may underestimate the commentariat's appetite for cliche ... 12:10 p.m.

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