Last election blog before inebriation sets in

It's not even 3:00 pm here in Oregon. But I need to write about today's midterm elections now, before I'm mentally unable to make sense.

After all, soon the polls will start closing in the east. Super-political-commentator Nate Silver will start live blogging on FiveThirtyEight in a few minutes. I'll do my best to resist, yet won't be able to stop obsessively watching online and on TV for early signs of what is to come.

I'm planning to start my late afternoon/evening in a caffeinated state. This is normal for me. However, I may need to jolt my brain into a 2-3 cup energized optimism before the big wave of election returns hit.

For a while I'll probably be able to imagine that the Democrats are going to do just fine, notwithstanding the dreary prognostications. Since I don't want to look like a idiot tomorrow, when the likely news of a Dem disaster is evident, I figure its better to keep my blogging mouth shut when I'm in the brief throes of this election isn't going to be so bad for progressives like me.

I also don't want to write any posts later tonight, when I'll have shifted from the coffee pot to a wine bottle.

Usually I only drink a single glass of red wine. However, it doesn't take a weatherman to know which way the inebriation wind is blowing for Dems this day: toward as much as necessary to blunt the pain of some distressing defeats.

Sure, maybe the election won't be as bad as expected. If the registered voter turnout is just a few points higher than the pundits are predicting, "D" losses could be limited to the normal mid-term result -- a marked, but not huge, rejection of politicians belonging to the president's party.

I'm aware, though, of how my psyche is engaging in some illogical thinking. In 2008 I perused the predictions of FiveThirtyEight several times a day, lapping up what turned out to be highly accurate forecasts of the election results, both presidential and other.

Currently Nate Silver says the Republicans will likely gain 53-54 seats in the House, which is quite a bit more than a normal mid-term. But instead of accepting that FiveThirtyEight is probably right, I've been seizing on a possible scenario Silver set forth where the Dems manage to hold the House.

(Naturally I did my best to ignore his mirror-image post, where the Republicans do much better than expected.)

The bottom line, though, is that when all is said, done, and reported tonight, my state of mind -- in whatever consciousness-altered form it is resting in -- will be largely determined by how Oregon results turn out.

If John Kitzhaber becomes governor, and Chris Dudley is sent back to his wealth management job, I'll be pretty happy no matter how the election goes nationally. If Kurt Schrader is re-elected as our congresshuman, even better.

And if Jason Freilinger beats out Patti Milne for Marion County commissioner, I'll be super pleased.

After all, even if the rest of the country tilts toward the crazy Republican side of the political spectrum, we Oregonians can create our own island of sanity and spend the next few years sitting under a pleasant palm tree of progressiveism.

I can only wish... if not, a bottle of pinot noir awaits.

Comments

[Rain]

Your prognostications sound about right to me except I am heading for a bottle of Merlot *s*

[tucson]

I'm getting set to pop the cork on a bottle of champagne.

But really I am not all that optimistic as rebublicans and democrats are two sides of the same malignant coin, milking dry the tit of a system doomed to failure:

The fiat money system is at last meeting its nemesis, spiralling into a self-destructive vortex from which there is now no escape. Prospects for gold and silver never looked better. This ignominious end to a despicable monetary system was its guaranteed fate from the outset when President Nixon signed away the gold standard, because the principal flawed characteristics of the fiat money system are indiscipline and profligacy, which is of course what makes it so attractive to politicians of either party. However, now that they have taken indiscipline and profligacy very close to their ultimate extremes, payback time is arriving. Faced with the stark choice between global depression caused by the massive debt overhang, and accelerated monetary easing, we can rely on politicians and business leaders to choose the latter course as this will buy them more time. That means currency wars and more QE (Quantitative Easing) , not just in the US but worldwide, as other countries are not going to stand idly by and watch the US trash the dollar to wiggle out of honoring its debts and gain a competitive advantage - they are going to get in on the game and do some easing of their own, and in fact they already are. We'll get the depression the politicians are trying so strenuously to avoid anyway via bailouts, etc., not because of deflation, but instead as a result of hyperinflation caused by the expanding money supply whose growth will become exponential as the race to patch the gaping financial wounds by creating ever more money becomes more and more frenzied.

I think we are now in the endgame (2012?), and the countless millions who don't understand what is going on, and believe the talk in the mainstream (lamestream) media about recovery and that somehow we are going to return to "the good old days" are going to be financially wiped out and end up as bloated fly-ridden corpses floating down the river (How's that for imagery? I think I'll pat myself on the back for that one.)

Pause... to bask in the glory of my erudition. OK, OK. It really wasn't that good.

Anyway, the perfect storm is bearing down us. While the whole world will be affected by it, the worst effects by far will be experienced by the overstretched debt-wracked countries such as Britain and the US, which are parasitic service economies with little manufacturing capacity that nurture the mistaken belief that the rest of the world will continue sending us cheap goods produced by real labor in exchange for electronically created worthless credits and IOU's including junk such as US Treasuries.

Cheers. Whatever you're drinking.