Rats on the sinking ship of state [added musings]

dr. elsewhere here

Only days ago, we were wondering here why Bush and Rove were presenting (and pushing) such a bizarre, upbeat confidence in Republican wins and retention of Congress next week.

Rove promised the full heft of their powerhouse and war chest reversing the polling trends back in their favor, all orchestrated against the themes of "stay the course v. cut and run" and "winning democrats equal winning terrorists," and variations thereof.

And, of couse, Rove has "THE math" to calculate beyond the public meaning of the polls, somewhere up in the heady netherworld where only he can divide the country and multiply votes by subtracting principles and rights and decency for his zero sum game that remains perpetually in the red.

So, what's happening here? Just as Bush is setting up his generals to take the blame for his Stay the Course non-strategy, it appears Rove may well be setting up his very own Republican candidates to take the blame for what may very well be inevitable losses in Congress.

And potentially big ones. Despite Rove's "genius" strategies, the trends in polling just are not reversing. In fact, they appear at least steady, and in many cases, increasing. So much so that the NRCC and NRSC are pulling money from battles that appear to be already lost and putting them into races that were once not even questioned but have now become vulnerable.

And if their losses are big, they may well be too big for Rove to manipulate a wholesale theft. Remember, voter disenfranchisement strategies notwithstanding, the electronic thefts are predicated on close numbers, so as to avoid arrousing suspicion.

The numbers have now gained so much traction, and resisted all Rove's traditional scare tactics, too many Republican wins are bound to raise too many eyebrows. And actually, the numbers may be trending so blue at this point, outright theft may not even be feasible.

Dare we hope?

Again, note that Rove is not blaming Democrats for his apparent failures, but his own Republican candidates.
(To read the "additional musings," click "Permalink" below)


Looking over the comments, it appears readers have the same general sense I do in this. Republican numbers are so bad right now, and have been so consistently for so long, that retention of the House just does not even seem feasible, at least in a legit race. In fact, Votemaster puts the Dems in the lead now with 241 to 193 (one tie)! The Senate is harder, but I mean, bringing around over 25 seats that appear to be Democratic now, they'd have to proclaim Rove a miracle worker on par with Jesus, and not even I can believe the evangelical faction that gullible. Georgie, mmmmmmaybe, but not Karl.

The situation raises some very interesting questions, though. If you think about it, we may have some dangerous complications emerging for Rove in this current picture. Consider:

The logic of really manipulating numbers to steal an election requires at least two assumptions. The first one is not trivial and is so delicious you'd think it would get more airplay in our vote fraud cult, but probably because it is so obvious it's not worth mentioning. But stated simply, if you believe in our democratic process, how could you cheat? Ergo, if you consider cheating, you don't hold democratic principles in high regard. Obviously. A second, similar assumption is, if you know you will or should win, why cheat? If you believe in the strength of your convictions, what is the point? Which brings us back round to the first assumption; if you consider cheating, the strength of your convictions is already out the window because it's no longer about principle, it's merely about winning. And winning is about gaining and keeping power, a position that is so far removed from the democratic principles this nation is founded on as to be, well, criminal.

But there it is; a cold, hard truth about Karl Rove and his colleagues that no one can really argue with. In fact, just this morning on Democracy Now!, James Moore (author with Wayne Slater of Bush's Brain and recently The Architect) pointed out that Karl Rove has for his entire career been ruthless and lawless in his pursuit of power, so why should we think he would suddenly get a conscience with regard to our electoral process?

All truths as obvious as all hell, but just never really stated as such. In fact, it's just downright creepy how the media actually parade Rove's expertise in such cloaked terms, using Bush's "Architect" reference, and even noting in footnotes only the nature of his strategies, not at all genius but diabolical ruthlessness, crimes without fingerprints, hit-and-runs with victims and no evidence or convictions. And no one bothering to point out just how anti-American all that really is, forget about how criminal.

When NPR remarked to Rove in interview how the polls on American sentiments were tracking so far away from Republican support, Rove was not bothered by dismissing the marjority; he focused on the micro-races that would keep them in power. And, I suppose predictably, Siegel let him get away with it! Why didn't the question of how Rove felt about the desires of the majority of the voters even enter into the interview? Why didn't the question of Rove's history of dirty tricks and shenanigans get brought up, and why oh why didn't he or anyone else ask about Rove's announcement that he had an October surprise or two up his sleeve? Again, what a stupid thing for Rove to publicize! Yeah, I'm planning to inject something into the political process that will flip the election in our favor, so watch for it! If nothing happens, then everyone is left wondering if Saddam's verdict is "it" (oh, please), and if ANYthing does happen, Karl is then forced to take credit - or blame - for orchestrating history to throw an election! That's just plain idiotic; who ever claimed this man to be a genius?? He's nothing but a hoodlum.

But we all know their crimes eventually catch up with hoodlums, at least most of the time, and certainly if they dare to be as public as Karl is. And certainly if they are as misguided, delusional, and arrogant as Karl appears to be. And if that statement doesn't carry enough convincing clout for you, think chocolates and roses, think Mission Accomplished, think of the arguments just made above. The man is so misguided and self-deluded he is forced to construct victories, and then actually swallows his own spin. Wag the Dog was written about him, either really or presciently; if he didn't already exist, someone would have had to make him up.

Ok. So Karl has apparently accepted the fact that he can't win honestly, so he cheats. And he cheats on all dimensions, from replacing policy with politics and replacing honest debate with emotional screeds and replacing real contests with sound and fury, all of it signifying nothing. And this includes his phantom votes in the elections themselves. Again, why would we expect such a man to stop short of manipulating elections?

Practically speaking, if one manipulates the actual votes themselves on election day, then he must also manipulate the expectations of those numbers leading up to election day. The first step of a lie always requires the second step of the cover-up, as they say. Oh, what tangled webs we must weave to successfully deceive....

Rove has managed to cover up his actual manipulation of vote counts on multiple dimensions; purge lists, voter IDs, provisional ballots, dirty tricks of all kinds, ad nauseam, he's used them all, in addition to getting Bob Ney of Ohio to craft HAVA, requiring the shift to the highly hackable electronic voting machines, the mother of all manipulations. But to manipluate expectations, Rove has mastered those intensely emotional wedge issues (abortion, gay marriage) and legislative blackmail (USAPATROT act, Iraq resolution, torture bill) to motivate voters and double-bind democratic politicians. When the issues are emotional and the numbers are close, anyone will believe that a legitimate counting of the electorate exposes those "real" influences. Perhaps that is "genius," but when you've already started painting yourself into corners by deciding to cheat, solutions look more like the offspring of necessity. Or desperation, depending on the pre-election poll margins.

Those margins are key; they must remain razor thin to allow for number manipulations, "THE math," to look legit. This has been Rove's strategy all along, and it worked well enough until the public got wise. Which exposes why Rove is not at all a genius but a cheap carnival barker who makes a quick killing and woos all the susceptible young ladies until folks figure him out. And then he's run out of town, kicking and screaming and blaming everyone in view for his crimes. A smart public will really mess with those margins, no matter how hard you try to manipulate them.

Herein lies Rove's folly. The stupidest mistake he made, second only to assuming that cheatin would achieve his goal of maintaining power permanently was assuming the electorate is permanently stupid and permanently plastic, just dumb livestock to be led around by the nose. I will not tire of saying this: With catastrophic irony, the Republicans are rapidly proving the wisdom of their noble founder: you can't fool all the people all the time. Rove's focus on politics at the exclusion of policy was always doomed, precisely because his strategy is based on the assumption that voters and citizens are malleable idiots who do not know or adhere to the wisdom that his boss so wretchedly botched (to our infinite amusement): fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice....won't get fooled again!?! Have eiher of them ever followed history or stories or films through to the end? Have they just never really processed the message of the morality plays?

Now Rove finds himself in a situation his assumptions did not allow for. He did not calculate for the possibility that the electorate would get wise and stop swallowing his bait. He did not calculate for the possibllity that the media would slow down their lockstep march, and even show a defection here and there. He did not calculate for democracy actually working.

Ah. That little diatribe was quite satisfying for me; was it good for you, too? I hope so, because here is where it gets really interesting, and really dangerous for Rove.

Let us suppose that many if not all machines have been fixed to flip votes. We're already seeing evidence of it in Florida and Texas, and never in the direction of Democrats; the fix always favors the Republicans (although there is new evidence Sequoia machines allow you to vote as many times as you like. Suppose most machines are already set to reverse the percentages or subtract votes or whatever other algorithms have been applied in whatever machines wherever. Is this a done deal? Is there no reversing it?

This scenario is rather bizarre to imagine. In addition to the close races going red, all those locked Democratic races will flip, producing the "miraculous" results we've already agreed no one will buy. I honestly don't think even the media will buy that. I shudder to think about how that path unfolds; major chaos, accusations flying, red hands, pants down, ooh, the horror.

But the evidence we have suggests that the fix may not already be "in" but "set." In other words, switches must be flipped in order to flip the "official" vote counts.

Recall in '04, after it was fairly clear Kerry was winning, suddenly the numbers started reversing, and reversing in ways statisticians have found astonomically improbable. That is the point at which, come next Tuesday night, we need to know the exact whereabouts and whatabouts of one Karl Rove.

Suppose for a moment you are Karl and you are manipulating this upcoming election. What will you need to do and what will you need to know in order to do it? First, would you preset everything and give up control beyond the fixed workings of the voting and counting machines? Not likely, but you may not have much choice. If you do have some level of micromanagement controls, you need to restrict those to the closest races, a list of which will equal the number needed to retain control of the House, no less. The way trends are going, the length of needed close races will far exceed the number of real (as in really real) close races, requiring some serious manipulations on Karl's part and leaps of faith on the public's part, but that is the field you're working with, and hey, miracles - and "stuff" - happen.

But then, think of all the individual machines out there, the ones that count into the negative numbers and the ones that keep paper trails and the ones that break down, and so on. How could anyone keep up with all those details? It's not even feasible to think that Karl could micromanage at the individual machine level, not in such a way that election day trends reverse themselves in the evening as if on cue. They must be set up by company and headquarters that allow things to "happen" when the machines or tabulators, say, phone in on election night, for instructions?

How could Karl manage all those variables going in directions he never counted on with THE math he uses? With only a couple of outliers scattered around the country, Max Cleland here and a Cynthia McKinney there, it was not that hard to pull this off. Oh, woopsie, they were both in GA, the first state to go full tilt electronic voting machines after HAVA. And thanks to a Democratic Secretary of State, go figure. Hey, the sentiment in '02 was still so close to 9/11, and Bush was already beating the war drums for invading Iraq. Manipulation was just so easy then.

But, this is now. Supposing you're still inside Karl's head trying to manipulate this particular election - with SO much at stake (you say terrorists, I say corruption/you say cut&run, I say get a clue) - how are all those assumptions working out for you now? The stupid voters and the lapdog media and the rubberstamp Congress, how do all those players look in your future now? Not so malleable, eh? Not quite so compliant? Not quite so blinded by money and power?

And where are you in all this? Feeling safe? No? Well, of course not, so the only thing left to do is to blame the victims, blame the voters, blame your own candidates, blame your friends, and then blame your bosses. That should be easy, too; you've done it before, God knows. But then, so does Fritz.

Karl blaming his bosses will be ever so delicious to watch, when you get yourelf out of his head and back in the reality-based community. Then start thinking about how realistic it really is to believe Karl could actually pull off full-scale theft of the House (the Senate's so close, it doesn't matter, especially with Loserman and Cheney in the mix, Dems really need to have 52 seats there). In fact, if those voting and tabulation machines are set, Karl may well be sweating a "miraculous" win, far more than the predictable losses.