HillBuzz

There’s something about MSNBC’s Chuck Todd that we just can’t stand — it might be his red goatee (which makes it look like he was eating cold spaghetti out of a Boyardee can), or it might be the fact that he’s always wrong, but acts like he’s the exalted Oracle of Delphi, or at the very least, Dom Deluise. Todd is probably the 5th most in-the-tank-for-SoetorObama personality on television right now (behind Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Campbell Brown, and Donna Brazile, in that order), and one of his favorite topics of conversation is “new voter registration”. Merely mentioning this on the air sends every Eeyore we know running for the hills shouting, “We’re doomed! We’re doomed! SoetorObama is unstoppable!”. Eeyores believe everything the MSM tells them — Todd in particular, for some reason — without thinking critically about any of it.

Sorry, but we never listen to anyone who looks like he’s got spaghetti sauce all over his face and buys his suits at the Men’s Warehouse. No offense.

Today, we thought we’d take the time to go through an exercise all Eeyores should perform on a regular, daily basis:  reading an MSNBC propaganda piece critically, and asking questions that beg to be asked.  You’ll see “new voter registration” will not win the day for SoetorObama the way Todd claims, because none of this is happening in a vacuum, and none of it is going down the way Todd claims.

Here is the article we’re looking at right now: Obama May Benefit From Registration Gains (Voter Rolls Are Swelling For Democrats In Crucial States).

The first thing that happens with Eeyores is misreading this title.  It’s clearly phrased as “may benefit” from registration gains, where ”may” means this might happen and might not happen, the way all things in life may or may not happen. John McCain may also benefit from these registration gains, since “may” opens the door for more than one possibility. The article does not read, “SoetorObama Will Benefit From Registration Gains”, but that’s how Eeyores will read it — and when they get on the phone later today to call everyone they know and say, ”We’re doomed! I read it on MSNBC that new voter registrations will win it for SoetorObama!”, this is the article they’ll use to inadvertantly depress McCain supporters, and also take their time and focus away from doing productive things for McCain.

So, the propaganda department at MSNBC is effective — a headline like this clearly says one thing, but it’s most likely designed to have the effect on Eeyores we described above…and Eeypores in turn will be the carriers who spread this false information to as many people as they can, spreading the propaganda’s effect. It is our firm belief the SoetorObama camp knows full well how to manipulate Eeyores — and turn them into carrier mules to spread depression and malaise in McCain camps wherever Eeyores can reach. We’re sure these people were utilized during the primaries — and we’ve actually had to tell the Eeyores in our lives (who are people we truly love, but can’t listen to all the time) that talking to them when they are in SoetorObama gloom and doom mode literally sucks the life force out of us.

And it all starts with headlines reading “may” that Eeyores read as “will” — then translate into DOOM!

Paragraph One:

As the deadline for voter registration arrives today in many states, Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign is poised to benefit from a wave of newcomers to the rolls in key states in numbers that far outweigh any gains made by Republicans. 

Here, we think the important fact is that voter registration ends today, which should calm Eeyores obsessed with “voter fraud” in this election. The second important bit in this article is the claim that Democrat gains will outweigh those made by Republicans: this means that, contrary to what Eeyores insist, Republicans have made gains this election cycle in registration as well. That poses a question to us: what groups did Republicans make gains in, and how likely are those groups to vote on election day? Did Republicans lose the numeric game to Dems, but register more LIKELY voters? Are the people Democrats registered higher in quantity, but not likely at all to show up to the polls? These are questions unaddressed in this paragraph — but instantly make us think about where this propaganda is going.

Paragraph Two:

In the past year, the rolls have expanded by about 4 million voters in a dozen key states — 11 Obama targets that were carried by George W. Bush in 2004 (Ohio, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Indiana, Missouri, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico) plus Pennsylvania, the largest state carried by Sen. John F. Kerry that Sen. John McCain is targeting.

For starters, we find it interesting the emphasis is on the last year of voter registration, and not the last two years since the 2006 off-year election in which Democrats took back Congress.  With Nancy Pelosi as Speaker, Republicans have been re-energized since 2006’s loss of Congress, and we wonder how many new Republicans were registered to vote in 2006-2007, while MSNBC is looking at numbers squarely from 2007-2008…which are numbers they are attributing to SoetorObama, rashly we believe. The next fact should disquiet Eeyores: this article claims 4 million new voters were registered, which to us is not a worrisome number — when considering all of this in the big picture. Remember, you can’t look at voter registrations in a vacuum alone to themselves. First of all, the article isn’t clear where the figure of 4 million comes from…did the states provide this, or is the article taking the SoetorObama campaigns word on registrations, or is the author just guessing here? No source is sited, so we’re skeptical of that figure (remember: the press routinely reports whatever fundraising totals the DNC and SoetorObama campaign wish to report, despite the fact FEC filings are often tens of millions of dollars less — particularly where the DNC is concerned). Secondly, we believe new voters on the Democrats’ side will be canceled out by Democrat defections over to John McCain. There will be more Democrats voting Republican for the first time in their lives this year than there will be new Democrats voting for anyone for the first time. The way the DNC behaved during the primaries alienated many lifelong Democrats who are now supporting John McCain. New voters, who’ve never bothered to register to vote before, are less likely to show up to vote than are lifelong voters who are pissed off enough at Howard Dean, Donna Brazile, and Company that they’ve eagerly been awaiting a chance to vote for John McCain. The latest poll on the subject suggested only 58% of Hillary Clinton’s 18 million votes will go to SoetorObama, with the rest going to McCain, McKinney, Nader, or into the void. That figure doesn’t include a percentage for SoetorObama primary votes that won’t go to him in the general election (cast by those who wanted McCain to run against SoetorObama and not Clinton). Our estimate is 8 million Democrat votes that would have gone to John Kerry in 2004 will go to John McCain in 2008. So, even if SoetorObama got every single one of those 4 million newly registered voters, he’d still be 4 million votes behind John Kerry in 2004.

Paragraph Three:

In Florida, Democratic registration gains this year are more than double those made by Republicans; in Colorado and Nevada the ratio is 4 to 1, and in North Carolina it is 6 to 1. Even in states with nonpartisan registration, the trend is clear — of the 310,000 new voters in Virginia, a disproportionate share live in Democratic strongholds.

Once again, this article fails to state exactly when these voters registered to vote: if they registered to vote in the primaries, these voters could be Hillary Clinton voters who registered to cast their ballot for her…and the percentages we noted above would apply here, in terms of how many will actually support SoetorObama. We believe only a small percentage of people who registered to support Hillary Clinton will even vote this year — if they bothered to vote for the first time, only to help Clinton, then we believe they are more likely to be disillusioned enough by the DNC’s treatment of Clinton to just sit home this election. We doubt their commitment to politics is strong enough to bring these people over to McCain…because if they were inspired enough to leave the house and vote for the first time, because they wanted to vote for Clinton, not having her on the ballot gives them no incentive to be part of a process they very well could see as flawed and corrupt, considering what happened this year. People in Florida, in particular, could very well be feeling this way. As for Virginia and North Carolina, we believe, once again, that a large portion of these registrations were Republicans deliberately taking part in the process for the very first time just to help push SoetorObama forward so he could be more easily defeated by McCain — Hillary Clinton would win this race in a cake walk, while many voters have always believed SoetorObama was the one Democrat who could lose running against the one Republican who could win in 2008. None of this is factored into the article’s argument.

Paragraph Four:

Republicans acknowledge the challenge but say Obama still has to prove he can get the new voters to the polls. “The machine that has been put in place by the Democrats is effective. They have a lot of people holding clipboards,” said Brian K. Krolicki (R) , the lieutenant governor of Nevada. But he added: “There’s a difference between successful registration and a groundswell. It’s mechanics versus momentum.”

We don’t believe a majority of these newly registered voters will actually show up to the polls. That’s because every 4 years Democrats hitch their hopes on new voters — and these new voters don’t show up. This, in our opinion, is especially true this year, since the people holding clipboard referenced above worked low-income areas in urban centers (where they were most likely to find young and black new voters for SoetorObama), where people don’t have a strong tendency of following through on anything. The key problem emerging in this article is the fact that, yet again, this MSNBC propaganda piece assumes all newly registered voters will actually show up to vote, and will vote for SoetorObama.  We don’t believe either assumption is fair or smart to make.

Paragraph Five:

Campaign stressed registration from outset
The Obama campaign says it expects the numbers of new voters in swing states to swell even more later this month as elections offices process the tens of thousands of registrations still pouring in. And it exudes confidence about its ability to turn the new voters out with a vigorous follow-up operation. “This a lesson we learned. The old-fashioned way of registering voters was to stand on the corner of the street, stand on the campus quad and register one by one, which we still do,” said Jon Carson, the campaign’s national field director. “But another important component is getting people the information they need to participate.”

First of all, we wonder how many of these new registrations are duplicate, redundant, or bogus. We also have no idea what Jon Carson means in the above quote: what is the new way of registering voters, if the article previously talked about “people with clipboards”, which would be the person standing on the street corner Carson talks about. That makes no sense. And what information do people need to participate? It seems like very little information is needed — besides where and when people need to vote. It’s not complicated. But, Carson just rambled for a while and was quoted above, without any explanation for what he was talking about. Eeyores would just take the paragraph as it stands and say, “Oh, Heaven help us! New Voter Registration! We’re doomed!”.

Paragraph Six:

Obama, who led a major voter drive in Chicago in 1992, has stressed voter registration from the outset of his campaign, seeing younger or disaffected Americans as a crucial pool of support. The campaign intensified its outreach over the summer, dispatching hundreds of staff members and volunteers to states with large percentages of unregistered voters.

What’s not mentioned here is that SoetorObama worked for ACORN, the nation’s largest voter fraud organization — which in Chicago pays drug addicts with cigarettes to get them to vote and hires gang members to intimidate voters to do ACORN’s bidding on election day. We personally have it on strong authority that the SoetorObama campaign intends to use gang members on election day in major cities such as Cleveland, Detroit, Gary, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Richmond to drive as many black and low-income voters out as possible. They will hang around in front of polling centers discouraging anyone who looks like they could be a McCain voter from voting, and going door to door to literally drag people out of their homes and force them to vote for SoetorObama if they have to. We’ve heard SoetorObama fundraisers actually admit all of this at fundraisers here in Chicago — thinking it was a wonderful plan to use ACORN to intimidate and threaten and win this election by any means possible. This is a good part of why Eeyores are upset about voter fraud: but we believe it’s only part of the story. The more ACORN flexes its muscle, the more we believe a backlash against their activities in the wider electorate will cancel out any gains ACORN makes using thuggery. We also believe the McCain camp will expose ACORN in the last weeks of the campaign — thereby making average Americans question the patriotism of a man like SoetorObama, who puts himself in league with criminals like this to do anything it takes to win. Eeyores are afraid he will get away with the fraud — while we believe the obvious fraud will convince Democrats and Independent voters alike to side against SoetorObama.

Paragraph Seven:

Complementing its efforts are organizations that have been registering hundreds of thousands on their own, such as Democracia USA, which registers Hispanic voters; ACORN, the anti-poverty group; and Women’s Voices, Women Vote, which targets unmarried women. More generally, this year’s registration tilt is part of a broader shift since 2004 away from Republican affiliation, particularly among younger and Hispanic voters and among college-educated professionals in former GOP strongholds such as New Hampshire, Colorado, and the suburbs of Philadelphia and Northern Virginia.

We don’t believe there is anything new happening here since 2004 — younger and college-educated voters were supposed to win the 2004 election for Kerry. Eeyores have incredibly short memories: they forget that all the reasons they list why SoetorObama is unstoppable are the ones we all gave for why John Kerry would cruise to victory against the much-hate Bush. With the amount of time McCain’s spent in New Hampshire through the years, we still believe the Granite State will be red this fall. SoetorObama’s support there was WILDLY exaggerated during the primary polling — and Hillary Clinton won the state the way we always knew she would (Eeyores, however, insisted she would lose, because Eeyores listen to Chuck Todd and MSNBC). We also believe Colorado, Virgina, and Pennsylvania will be in McCain’s column too — as the young people, black voters, and college-educated professionals combined don’t equal a majority of the population in any of those states. Instead, those states have a majority of blue collar, middle to low income, white, older, voters…and people who have been described by SoetorObama as being bitter and gun-and-religion clinging. When new voter registrations are discussed for these states, a demographic is never given to determine exactly WHO is being registered.  Are they the young, black, and professional voters that would pick SoetorObama? Or, are they the blue collar, middle to low income, and older voters who don’t relate to SoetorObama and don’t like him — despite his spending close to half a billion dollars so far, while failing to define himself well enough for the majority of Americans to trust him?

Paragraph Eight:

Growing edge in Florida
In Florida, 800,000 voters have been added to the rolls this year, fewer than were added in 2004. The secretary of state’s office attributes the drop to registration efforts reaching a saturation point and to the slowing of the state’s population growth since 2004. But the Democratic edge is still more apparent than it was in 2004, when Republicans made a big push to register evangelical Christians in the state. As of Sept. 1, the most recent date for which new registrations are divided by party, Democratic rolls were up by 316,000 and GOP rolls by 129,000 this year. The GOP figure falls short of the gain of 155,000 among independents.

This paragraph is a good example of where critical thinking comes into play:  they claim Democrats registered 316,000 voters, while the GOP and Independents combined equal about 285,000 new voters. Historically, independents have swung to the Republicans in the past several elections. In the primaries, voters listed as independent or undecided broke for Hillary Clinton at a rate of 4:1. We also believe not all of those registered Democrats will vote for SoetorObama, as his ticket is the most liberal ticket the Democrats have ever run, while McCain’s ticket is the most moderate and centrist the Republicans have run in our lifetime. Independents skew towards being moderate and centrist. There is a much higher chance of these moderates (and conservative Democrats) voting for moderate McCain than there is of them embracing liberal SoetorObama. Especially in Florida, where SoetorObama has a problem relating to older voters, gay voters, the working poor, the middle class, Jewish voters, and voters connected to the military. Cubans favor Republicans, and Hispanic voters of all stripes in large cities have failed to embrace SoetorObama. We don’t expect that to suddenly change. There is nothing we’ve seen showing SoetorObama with a real change in Florida – the fact that he’s pulled staff out of there, and out of Georgia, just confirms this to us. Governor Crist will deliver the state to McCain.

We could go on through the rest of the article, but you get the idea.

When it comes to this voter registration business, you have to ask critical questions of all the numbers being tossed around.

In 2004, in Ohio, Democrats claimed they registered 230,000 new voters in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland area) alone. The New York Times reported this number, and Democrats used it as part of their argument that Kerry would win Ohio handily. Well, when the County actually confirmed voter registrations, it found only 119,000 new voters were actually valid — the rest were fraudulent. Conspiracy-minded Democrats claimed this was evidence of Republican dirty tricks, and that thousands of people were purged from voter logs erroneously. The reason these conspiracy claims never went anywhere was that the discrepancy of 111,000 voters stemmed from the fact that many on the Democrats’ lists were duplicate, redundant, or bogus. ACORN hires homeless people and college students to go out into economically depressed neighborhoods and fill as many voter registration sheets as they can: they are paid per sheet. The more sheets they turn in, with the more names they can either find or make up, the more money they make. It is no surprise to us that almost half of the voter registrations reported for Cuyahoga County were bogus.

We believe the same will hold true with the registrations this year — especially since such a strong push was organized in 2004 and 2006.  There just isn’t that large of a pool of valid unregistered voters left…and of those, as we’ve stated before, there is a very slim chance they will actually show up and vote on election day.

Every article the MSM does on this subject is designed, we believe, to freak Eeyores out and send them running for the hills with their trumpets of doom — distractions from the work that needs to be done, and also a VERY effective psyche-out that depresses Team McCain’s energies.

It’s psychological warfare — and the MSM and Team SoetorObama are VERY good at it, we admit.

But, every day, we hope just a few more Eeyores see the light, and critically question what they are reading, before they toss more rain clouds out there.

And, not to put too fine a point on it, what everyone also forgets, and what’s gone completely unspoken, is that Republicans INVENTED voter fraud and political trickery. if you think they suddenly forgot all of this — and that the party accused of voter fraud in 2000 and 2004 is going to be gamed by Chicago thugs playing in the big leagues for the first time – you’ve got a major surprise coming. That’s just not going to happen.

UPDATE: We were asked by a reader to comment specifically on what is going on in Ohio right now. Some of us here at HillBuzz are from Ohio and lived all but the last few years of our lives there — in Cleveland, Akron, and Dayton. We do not believe the state will go to SoetorObama, no matter how much fraud is pulled. Here’s why:

SoetorObama will not win the Applachian regions of any state. This was true in the primaries, where a map of hill country really was HILL country, as in Hillary Clinton country (see above, for Patrick Ottenhoff’s map of counties contained within the geographic reach of the Appalachians). Appalachians didn’t like SoetorObama then, and don’t like him now.  A map of the Appalachian mountain range matches PERFECTLY with a map of counties won by Hillary Clinton in the primaries. The MSM chalks this up to racism, but it’s actually a cultural barrier between people in this region and SoetorObama himself. Democrats typically have problems with these people — regardless of color — but Hillary Clinton was different because people here love the Clintons (and trust them). Otherwise, these voters think Democrats look down upon them, and Democrats’ presidential candidates come off as elitist snobs (like Kerry in 2004, and like SoetorObama this year).

Here’s the thing that makes Ohio out of SoetorObama’s reach in the general election, and it’s something we haven’t heard anyone in the MSM talk about.  Clinton won the counties in the map above in the primaries — with only Democrats voting.  These same areas have many more REPUBLICANS in them than Democrats. We believe in the general election the Clinton Democrats in the map above will vote Republican at a rate of 4:1 — and they will join the Republicans who will be voting for McCain at 95% or above. The Independents in these counties will also go to McCain, so the Applachians will be a voter powerhouse for McCain, where we believe he will win Democrats, Republicans, and Independents decisively.

We believe this will also hold true for southern, central, eastern, and western Ohio.  SoetorObama will with northeastern and northwestern Ohio because of Cleveland and Toledo.  He’ll also win Akron/Canton, Dayton, Columbus, and Cincinnati: because his coalition of black voters, young people, and post-graduate degree professionals are strong in these urban areas. The rural areas will all go to McCain.

Despite what the MSM insists, Reverand Jeremiah Wright sunk any chance of SoetorObama reaching out to voters in Ohio. Though he was last discussed in great detail in March/April, people in Ohio remember Wright. He is the first thing people back home talk about when we bring up the election. These are all lifelong Democrats who are now voting McCain – and voting Republican for the first time in their lives. This year was a perfect storm of bizarre political events that makes voting Republican possible in Ohio:

(1) Rev. Jeremiah Wright and SoetorObama’s other unsavory connections, coupled with his remarks on how bitter and clingy Midwesterners are, keeps Ohioans from trusting SoetorObama.

(2) John McCain is the least-threatening Republican possible and is perceived as moderate in a state that loves George Voinovich – who was mayor of Cleveland and then governor of Ohio, before going on to become Ohio’s Senator. A state that keeps re-electing a man like Voinovich, who also speaks out against the Republican party when need be, is a state that will support John McCain. This is a state that likes moderates — not liberals, and not crazy conservatives.

(3) The current Governor is Ted Strickland, a major Hillary Clinton supporter (who we believe would have been her VP). Strickland is a moderate Democrat, from southern Ohio, with more than a little in common with Sarah Palin.  He’s a hunter, an outdoorsman, and is a committed Christian — but he doesn’t inflict his views on others in any radical way. Strickland is more like McCain/Palin than he is like SoetorObama.  He’s also a popular governor following Bob Taft, who was the worst governor the state ever had (and who left office with an approval rating so low, the margin of error put him in the negative). We believe having Strickland in office, doing a good job, takes pressure off people to vote Democrat this year, just because. If Taft was still in office, we believe more Ohioans would hold their noses and just vote for SoetorObama to send a message to the Republican party. However, we believe that message was sent in 2006 when they elected Strickland (where Strickland beat out Republican Ken Blackwell). With Taft and his cronies long gone, there’s no pressing urge to punish the Republicans for anything in Ohio. And Republicans who lost the governor’s mansion and other key positions in 2006 because of Taft’s corruption are poised to get back to the ballot box and vote Republican again — for a moderate like McCain.

(4) Ohio has never gone to a liberal candidate.  Gore, Kerry, Dukakis, Mondale and Carter all lost Ohio (though Carter won it in 1976 against Ford, coming off of Watergate). Bill Clinton is the only Democrat to win Ohio in the last 30 years. Population in Ohio’s major cities have also dropped since 2004, as the sort of young, up and coming professionals who support SoetorObama tend to leave Cleveland, Akron, Columbus, etc. and move to Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles as soon as they can afford to. The people who stay in Ohio aren’t the sort who shop for arugula at Whole Foods. It would actually be a seismic shock for Ohio to go with a liberal candidate — let alone the most liberal tickets Democrats have ever run. It actually would have been similarly STUNNING if Ohio elected Ken Blackwell governor in 2006: he was too far right and too conservative for this Goldilocks state. To win, you need to be a moderate of either party, and someone who doesn’t seem to put on airs. People relate to Strickland. They relate to the Clintons. They relate to Voinovich. SoetorObama is an alien presence to them…just like Kerry, Dukakis, Mondale, and to a lesser extent, Gore, was as well.

(5) Sarah Palin is a big draw in Ohio — she talks like a lot of people in central and southern Ohio. She doesn’t have quite the Ohio accent, but she’s got a little of the twang. What sinks SoetorObama with most Americans is the way he pronounces some words: like Pakistan, which in Ohio we’d pronounce as Pac-is-tan, like the game Pac-man, where SoetorObama says, Pock-ee-stuhn, which sounds alien and strange to us. He does this with a lot of words, the way some people say Meh-hee-ko instead of Mex-i-co. It just makes that person stand out, and not in a good way.  It makes them separate, and odd, and not someone regular people in Ohio can relate to. It’s part of his larger package that’s not a natural fit for the state. And there’s absolutely nothing he can do to change this at this point. SoetorObama will get the black vote in Ohio no matter what he does, and he’ll likewise keep the white professionals and college kids. But he’s going to lose the seniors, the Hispanics, the working class, and the working poor.  So, basically, he loses the bulk of Ohio voters, while retaining the urban centers. That’s no better than Kerry did in 2004. It’s not enough to win.

Considering the above, we don’t believe the same-day register/vote scam going on will be enough to win the state.  We’ve talked to people on the ground in Ohio who have already heard about SoetorObama people trying to rig the election in Ohio, and these people are now voting for McCain because of that. They were going to sit home and not vote, but now are determined to vote just to cancel out some of the fraud. THAT’S classic Ohio, right there. If people think thugs in Cleveland or Columbus are rigging the election with those ACORN radicals, they’re not likely to go along with it. And in Ohio, Democrats have no problem voting Republican.  Reagan Democrats came from Ohio. They only came back to the party for Clinton. This isn’t like Massachusetts, where seeing lifelong Democrats vote Republican would be apocalyptic. In Ohio, Democrats tend to vote for the better candidate in the race — that’s why Voinovich keeps getting re-elected, and up until 2006, there were two Republican Senators and a Republican governor in Ohio. The only reason Democrats picked up Mike Dewine’s Senate seat and took the governor’s mansion away from the Republicans is because the Democrats put a better candidate up for voters to pick between.

That’s what it boils down to.

And between McCain and SoetorObama, we believe Ohioans will pick McCain.

And remember, the last time the Democrats won the White House without winning Ohio was back in 1960. Democrats have never won without Ohio since.