Out On A Pretty Fat Limb

Nate Silver is not wrong, he is insufficient.  So are his smug, genotronic acolytes.

Data don't vote.  Data are not grains of sand on the beach, nor levees - the water's edge.  Data don't steal elections. 

And in recent times, the last 50 or 60 years anyway, it has been the plutocratic/crypto-fascist interests which have stolen both national and local elections.  As a convenient, down-and-dirty shorthand explanation and support for this claim, I'd simply reference the relative decline and disappearance of urban, populist accented political machines, and their replacement by the wall-to-wall, blinding white noise dominance of money.  I won't bore you with a recitation of specifics.  Readers of this blog know what I'm talking about.

This is not to say that I think ZerObama will lose.  God forbid he does.  But he well may.  By now, those of us paying attention should all understand that God gets the hell out of the way, and demurs acting to forbid things we should.  He is painfully patient.

In 2000, the Supreme Court blatantly stole the presidential election for Bush, and there was no price. No price other than human loss and suffering.  No price for the plutocrats.  No loud declamations. No demonstrations.  No civil unrest.  Nothing but slavish acquiescence.  No opposition to the slaughter of countless innocents, civilian men, women and children, victims of warrant less war in far off lands.  God did not intervene.

The plutocrats got what they wanted.  The thinnest margin of privileged Americans have been made extravagantly wealthier.  99.9% of Americans have been punished with cheaper and cheapening employment, and the threat of hopeless demotion to membership among the  ranks of the utterly discarded.

 Of course, you can also absolutely forget the survival of  public education - even on the grade school level- and the  overarching reach of a meaningful social safety net.  This is a rich irony given the line of rhetoric that many working class - white, black and brown - people have swallowed regarding even the price of being a union member.

The dollar cost of union dues is tiny, especially compared to almost any regular voluntary expense that can be brought to mind.  I mean, com'on, let's get real.  Think cell phone, cable, or almost any other superfluous splurge spending by knuckle headed, genotronic age, pseudo-gastronome, with-it twitter-ite smart asses.  Utterly clueless.

More to the point, union dues today are social.  Completely.  In the past few decades, when a relatively ascendant liberal outlook reigned as a result of hard won, street fought battles, the burden of being a union member was regarded as more or less a gratuity-styled financial chipping-in.

But not now.  The flame throwing, lying right wing would have us believe that union membership is economically onerous.  However, every serious study continues to report that union workers are far better compensated than their unorganized counterparts.  Moreover, unionized workers enjoy a rights protected working relationship with their employer completely absent in the naked "at will" employment regime inscribed in state law.   Into the bargain, being fired from a  job for union organizing activity today is, financially, as likely a blessing as a hardship.

But the genotronics are better than us.  They think.  They are tragically wrong.  I would spare them unintentional ignorance, but theirs is disreputably willful.
 
So, we come to the only question that matters:  Is this thing close enough to steal?  Yes.

Why?  Well, 3 or 4 things: Money and power - those can be counted 1 & 2 or just the same thing, next comes bigotry, and then simple vanilla ignorance and genotronic smugness.

So, if it happens, don't tell me, "we was robbed."  You done throwed it all away, smart guys.