The above image comes from a ridiculous interview with Palin by John Ziegler, a right-wing buffoon who is making an unintentional self-mockumentary about how the Republicans would’ve won if only the self-hating corporate media (who McCain described as his base) hadn’t been so — get this straight — biased in favor of Obama.  (Yep, those corporations would do just about anything rather than serve their own self-interest.)  This is the same John Ziegler who did an incredibly biased poll that Zogby, to its shame, signed off on, and then cussed out Nate Silver when the latter interviewed him about it.  Even with the laughably softball questions Ziegler lobs her, Palin barely manages to stay coherent.  She’s certainly color-coordinated, though.  Cute boots.

Map 1

Well, I’ve been playing around on the New York Time’s wonderful “Electoral Explorer” page, and I’ve discovered something very interesting. The red America you see above isn’t the real America.

First of all, let’s take a look at a better, more nuanced county map that uses shades of blue or red to show how strongly Democratic or Republican particular counties are, courtesy of the Electoral Explorer.

Map 2

Except, this isn’t the whole country. It isn’t even the real country. As you may notice, certain areas are blank. Those are the counties with at least 200 people per square mile. The map above only gives the more thinly populated counties with under 200 people per square mile, and, as you can see, while Obama carried some of them (in blue), McCain won these counties overall, 56-43%.

Here are the other, more densely populated counties, where Obama won by a nearly identical margin of 57-42%:

Map 3

You might well wonder, with these mirror-image results, how Obama wound up with a decisive victory. Map 3, above, looks like just a few counties strewn all over the place, while Map 2 looks like the vast majority of the nation.

Well, that’s the funny thing. The counties on Map 2 are actually only 30% of the electorate, and a similar share of the population. Those few-and-far between counties on Map 3 are 70%.

This isn’t Abraham Lincoln’s America any more. The population today is very urbanized and concentrated. That doesn’t mean we’re all crammed into one corner of the country. We now have big cities all over the place, not just in the north-central/northeastern corridor the way it used to be. The 70% includes urbanized counties in all but four states (Alaska, North Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming, all won by McCain, by the way). It’s also true that many counties within the 70% are suburbs rather than “inner cities.” Mind you, we’re talking the inner suburbs—densely populated areas that tend to cluster closely around large cities, not far-flung exurbs. Other 70-percenter counties contain smaller but significant “inner cities.” Even in Kansas, a state many think of as the essence of rural America, the five Map 3 counties (all in the Kansas City, Topeka, and Wichita areas) contain 54% of the electorate! Out of such components—along with more obvious ones, like the Northeastern Megapolis—is made up the 70%.

This 70% of the population, dense but scattered all over the country, is the real America. The thinly populated 30%, where McCain won, is the not-real, not-truly American America—you know, the people who just have to be different, who can’t or won’t fit in with ordinary folks. We’re talking rednecks and yahoos, hicks and evangelicals—people who, instead of playing basketball like regular people, bowl and watch NASCAR. These are people with such an itch to do their own thing, they eat at Applebee’s instead of an arugula-dominated salad bar, drive SUV’s instead of hybrids, and have unwholesome small-town values instead of urban sophistication.

Okay, before I offend anyone, let me make this clear. I don’t really believe any of what I just said. I take it for granted that every part of this country is the real America, and I certainly don’t believe in the silly stereotypes I’ve just enumerated. I’m just making a satirical point here.

We’ve been told in innumerable ways that the big-city, liberal parts of the country aren’t the real America. This has been going on, not just for the last few years, but for almost three decades. It didn’t take poor, nutty Michelle Bachmann to do this. It took the corporate media from the Reagan era, which were infatuated with the idea that Reagan, most of whose aggressively right-wing policies actually had little popular support, was the leader of a grass-roots swell to the right that was overwhelming the supposedly shrinking urban holdouts that were all the poor Democrats had left. Back then, even most liberals seemed to buy into this garbage. Worse yet, many of them perpetuated it, spewing forth patronizing comments about how “the sad truth is, people in the real America aren’t so enlightened” and such. Happily, in the last few years, most liberals seem to have woken up from this bad dream of their own creation.

My point is that once you start engaging in that ultimately fascistic kind of reasoning, treating one part of America as somehow realer or truer or more American than another, the shoe can just as easily fit the other foot. The 2008 election shows the more rural, small town, and exurban 30% of the country out of synch with the majority. It shows that majority manifesting itself in a thinly scattered 70%, consisting of the most urbanized parts of the population. This deserves to be highlighted.

Not that it’s as simple as 70-30. The 70% can be split down the middle, rendering America into three roughly equal pieces. Here’s 35% of the electorate, representing the middle-density communities:

Map 4

In these counties with 200-1000 people per square mile, the election was almost a tossup, with Obama barely edging out McCain, 50-48%. But in the very densest counties, with more than 1000 people per square miles, it’s quite a different story:

Map 5

These very thinly spread bits account for another 35% of the population, and here, Obama crushed McCain by almost thirty points, 63-35%. Twenty states have no counties in this grouping. (Fortunately for Obama, although that’s two-fifths of the states, they have only about one-fifth of the electors; McCain won 70 of his 173 electors in these states, Obama only 39 of his winning total of 365.) This ultra-urban 35% is the Democratic hammer, the tool with which they can smash Republicans despite racking up sizeable deficits in the acreage-dominating other 65%.

Indeed, the Republicans are now in a great quandary. They have decisively lost both houses of Congress and the presidency; worse for them, the two groups that grow the population, youth and immigrants, are overwhelmingly against them. Thus, even if there’s a good chance that some of the next few elections will be a bit better for them due to better short-term circumstances (i.e., no W), in the long run they are likely to find themselves falling further and further behind. Perhaps the GOP’s only real hope is a constitutional amendment:

The Arboreal Rights Amendment (ARA)

Section 1

All trees born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

Section 2

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of being a tree.

Section 3

In the event that the vote of a tree standing on private property cannot be easily determined, its owner shall be the judge of the tree’s preferences.

Section 4

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

If they could just form a big enough coalition with tree-huggers to pass this amendment, Republicans would be able to turn their Map 2 dominance of the land mass into genuine supremacy. Without it, they are likely to find their vote shares sinking still lower, even as the great, green expanses of the Republic stain the map with defiantly bloody streaks of red.

I’m normally not much for photo-essays, but please do see Callie Shell’s awesome pics of Obama and family in Time, of which this (without the text) is only won…uh, one.

It’s possible Obama could have the election effectively won very early on election night. Alternately, we could be in a for a long night and short fingernails. However, you have to know what to look for (or else leave yourself at the mercy of biased and woodenheaded corporate media pundits). Even if Obama wins decisively, he probably won’t officially clinch the 270 electors needed until the polls close in the Pacific at 11 o’clock Eastern time. At that time, California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii will all finish voting—and their 77 electors are in the bag for Obama, meaning he only needs to have 193 electors at 10:59 to be assured of victory a minute later.

If Obama gets to 193 before 11:00, even the media pundits will no doubt point out that he’s almost sure to win—interspersed with some McCain surrogate ranting on about how the people haven’t yet spoken and Oregon is somehow still in play. However, you don’t need to wait that long to figure out what’s going on. In fact, you may be able to foresee the final outcome between two and three hours earlier—while the pundits are still arguing.

There are two methods you can use.

Method #1: by 8 p.m. Eastern time (5 o’clock if you happen, like me, to live on the Sparkly Blue Left Coast), the polls in about half the states will have closed. Barring unforeseen delays, no other states will close their polls in the next hour except for Arkansas, which is safely Republican and not really an issue. Meanwhile, networks will start projecting states to one candidate or the other. Some will be projected as soon as polls close, others, where it’s closer, will be a little later.

If the networks project that Obama has won at least 126 electors BEFORE 9 o’clock Eastern, he’s essentially won the election. This is true even though even though McCain may be in the lead with as many as 194 electors. Fear not, tremulous progressives—truth shall prevail.

The reason? Among the states that close at 9:00 Eastern or later, there are ten states with 144 electors in which Obama has great big leads, well over 10% if you average the recent polls: Rhode Island, New York, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, New Mexico, California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii. 126 + 144 = 270, which is how many you need to win. Obama’s lead in the relatively more competitive of these states has only been increasing lately. Forget the pundits and McCain hangers-on telling you how Iowa is up for grabs—the six most recent polls as of this writing all show Obama with an 8-17% lead there, a 12.5% average. Double-digit leads very rarely vanish on the eve of a general election. For McCain to win Iowa, he’s probably have to steal more votes than is likely in one state, even in our corrupt semi-democracy—unless there’s a bizarre McCain swing in the last days before the election. If no evidence of such a swing surfaces in the latest of the late polls, massive fraud, far greater than W seems to have perpetrated in any state in ‘04, would be the only likely explanation.

If you want to play Cassandra and expect this kind of unprecedented theft—or get neurotically hung up on the idea that, because Bush “won” New Mexico and Iowa in 2004, they are in play again, no matter what current polls say—bear in mind that they have only 12 electors between them. McCain isn’t really even contesting the other eight late-Obama states, except half-heartedly in Wisconsin and Minnesota, where he’s getting slaughtered. Therefore, you can still rest easy, so long as Obama scores 138 electors before 9:00 Eastern. But 126 is really the magic number, not 138.

Method #2: Among the states that close early—at 8 Eastern or earlier—are eight swing states, each with eleven electors or more. They are not the only states in play (there are 30 electors in swing states in the West), but these eight states are the largest as well as the earliest swingers. Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Missouri—these are the eight divining rods of a perceptive early-night poll-watcher. Call them the “8-at-8” states.

The states whose polls close at 8:00 Eastern or earlier

Now here’s the part where your media pundits may fail you. It’s not that they don’t know that these are the swing states. In fact, they will helpfully point them out to you. (They will probably try to tell you that New Hampshire, where Obama leads all the last eight polls by 7 to 18 points, is a swing state too. Suffice to say, if McCain does win New Hampshire, or comes even close, suspect possible foul play.) But they will confuse the issue by speaking of red states and blue states—defined in terms of 2004, before the great Democratic tidal wave that has since swept the nation, rather than current polls. A few of the pundits may get it right, but it will hard to tell which are the good ones and which are the idiots. Most of them will probably tell you that Obama is ahead in most of the swing states, intone some ponderous-sounding historical prophecies about how nobody gets elected without winning Ohio or Missouri, and leave you with the vague impression that whoever wins most of the swing states will win.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In actual fact, if Obama wins any two of the 8-at-8 states, he will almost certainly win the election. At least, he will unless McCain pulls off an unlikely double-digit comeback/theft in some other state. If Obama wins three of the 8-at-8, even these bizarre scenarios for a McCain win pretty much disappear.

Why are two enough? Well, if you leave aside Indiana and Missouri, any two of the eight contain at least 28 electors. 98 early electors are in safe Obama states, so if he gets 28 more, he makes the magic number 126 before 9 p.m. But what about Indiana and Missouri, which only have 11 electors each? Well, apart from Georgia, they are the McCain-friendliest of the 8-at-8 states. If Obama wins both of them, or one of them and some other 8-at-8er, though theoretically he could fall barely short of a electoral majority, it’s actually very hard to imagine anything but an Obama landslide once all the results are in. Indiana and Missouri are must-wins for McCain, icing on the cake for Obama. Realistically, Obama’s not going to win Indiana and Missouri and then lose Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

So Obama only needs to be projected the winner of two 8-at-8 states before we can start cautiously celebrating. Save the really strong booze for when he wins three—at that point, you can safely afford to lose consciousness (as long, of course, as you are still a Politically Conscious Person when you wake up).

On the other hand, McCain is far from assured of victory even if he wins 7 of the 8-at-8. In fact, if Obama wins only Florida, that should be enough for him to win. If Obama wins Pennsylvania or Ohio, he can lose all the other 8-at-8 states and still be assured of a safe but narrow victory if he takes Colorado and New Mexico later in the evening. Though Colorado is still in play, the latest polls show Obama with about a 7-point lead in the state, where two-thirds of the likely voters have already cast their ballots in early voting. Obama’s heavy support among these early voters makes it very difficult for McCain to catch up.

The same is even more true in New Mexico, a state that Bush stole in 2004 even more certainly than he stole Ohio. While the commentators will use W’s miniscule official victory margin there to describe it as a “red state that might turn blue,” it is for all practical purposes a blue state this year, with Obama leading by 7-17% in recent polls. There, too, most of the voters have already voted.

The states whose polls close later than 8:00 Eastern

(New York and Rhode Island, not pictured, also close later and are very blue)

Only if McCain wins all eight of the 8-at-8 states is he pretty well assured of the White House. Even then, scenarios can be constructed where he loses, and they don’t require Obama to win any states where he’s a long way behind. However, this do require Obama to win McCain’s home state of Arizona, currently about a 4-point lead for McCain. I don’t realistically see Obama blowing all of the 8-at-8 states, in some of which he has a significant lead, and then turning around and magically stealing his opponent’s home state where he’s behind. Not all mathematically possible scenarios are plausible.

In other words, of the 8-at-8 swing states, Obama needs 1 or 2 out of 8; McCain needs 7 or 8 out of 8.

Now here’s the deal. In most polls Obama leads McCain in five of the 8-at-8, including all of the three biggest and most important ones, Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania. McCain only leads one (Georgia); the other two (Indiana and Missouri) are pretty much toss-ups at this point, perhaps barely leaning to McCain. In three of the 8-at-8, Ohio, Virginia, and especially Pennsylvania, Obama has a quite convincing lead, given how close we are to the election.

You get the picture. The 8-at-8 group leans, overall, heavily towards Obama, but McCain needs to win almost all of it. This is why even the dimwitted folks called T.V. pundits generally recognize that McCain’s chances are not looking good right now!

But wait a minute, you may ask me. If I’m aware of the recent past history of electoral (not voter) fraud, how can I be so blasé about all this? Why should we trust pre-election polls when the election may be stolen?

Tune in to tomorrow’s thrilling episode, “Do Polls Mean Anything in an Age of Fraud?”, where I will discuss this very issue.

My sentiments exactly…

In boxing, when you win a round, you normally gain one point on your opponent. So what does a boxer do if he figures he’s behind by more points than there are rounds to go? Theoretically, he could try for two-point rounds: if you really smashingly dominate a round, once in a blue moon you’ll be given two points instead of one. But the chances of doing this in more than one round are negligible.

So what does he do? He stops trying to win on points. He puts all his hopes on a knockout.

It’s been evident for some time now that Hillary Clinton is in similar straits. People have long since pointed out that she has no practical chance to win the pledged delegates count. Instead, they’ve argued, she could win the national popular vote compiled from all the primaries and caucuses, and make the case that this represents the true will of the people, which the superdelegates should honor.

Horsepucky. She’s not winning the national popular vote. Bloomberg.com, in an article that expresses skepticism about her prospects of doing it, but not enough skepticism, remarks that

Clinton would need a 25-point victory in Pennsylvania, plus 20-point wins in later contests in West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico. Even that scenario assumes Clinton, 60, would break even in Indiana, North Carolina, South Dakota, Montana and Oregon — a prospect that’s not at all certain.

It’s not just not at all certain, it’s very unlikely. Indiana is uncertain. North Carolina, South Dakota, Montana, and Oregon are natural states for big Obama wins, based on the pattern so far. In North Carolina, there are even polls to back this up. It would be miraculous if she broke even cumulatively in those states. For that matter, a 25-point win in Pennsylvania would overturn all the polling that’s been done there lately.

And 20-point wins in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Puerto Rico? Well, she’d need 60% of the vote. So far Hillary’s broken the 60% barrier in only one race–her husband’s home state of Arkansas. Obama, meanwhile, has scored over 60% of the vote in 18 races—15 states plus D.C, Democrats Abroad, and an astounding 90% in the Virgin Islands (where his boyish looks apparently enabled him to pass for a virgin).

In fact, the consistent difference in this otherwise very close race has been precisely Obama’s ability to win some races by big margins. Because the delegates are allocated proportionately in each state, you really need this to build up a lead.

Anyway, for Clinton to get 60% in four of the ten remaining races, when she’s only done it once out of more than forty chances so far, is a pretty gigantic stretch. Obama’s consistently shown the ability to use his combination of cash, appealing T.V. ads, and energized base to put up sizable numbers even where he’s relatively weak.

So Clinton’s not going to win the national popular vote, and she’s not winning the pledged delegates either. If she doesn’t win the pledged delegates, she needs a majority of superdelegates. So far, they’re almost evenly divided, so she has to pick up a sizeable majority of the remaining ones. But, she can’t argue to them that she’s the people’s choice unless she wins either popular votes or pledged delegates.

Quite a dilemma, ain’t it?

However, she is a shrewd and experienced enough practical politician to know that there is, in fact, one possibility still open to her. It’s not exactly likely, but it’s by no means impossible either. And although it depends heavily on events beyond her control, she has been moving heaven and earth to make it happen. (Or hell and earth, depending on your perspective.)

Does the delegate count make Obama’s nomination inevitable? Actually, very few things in life are truly “inevitable.” He could suddenly have a heart attack, but that possibility isn’t enough to keep her in the race. More plausibly, something could come up that politically damaged him badly. If the superdelegates thought Obama was unelectable, they would gravitate towards Clinton. Maybe even some of Obama’s delegates would peel away. Sudden falls have been known to happen in the wild and wooly world of politics.

But what about the reaction of the Democratic rank and file? Would they stand for this? Aren’t the superdelegates scared of antagonizing them for life? After all, every poll shows that the people want the superdelegates to pick the winner of the popular vote and/or pledged delegate count, even if that isn’t the most electable candidate.

This is true up to a point. However, if something came up that damaged Obama late–and it’s already late–after most people had voted, they wouldn’t be able to change their votes. Some of them would wish they could, and the pro-democracy sentiment that the popular vote winner should get the nomination might start to yield, not so much to the electability issue, but to the fitness in office issue.

Let’s take an extreme example. Supposing it emerged that Obama had committed a bank robbery in his youth. Do you really think that most Democrats would continue to want him to get the nomination? The popular vote and pledged delegate count wouldn’t matter. The people would not only allow, but DEMAND, that the superdelegates, and even Obama’s pledged delegates, abandon him.

Clinton isn’t hoping for anything quite that “good,” but good enough to give her a chance. After all, the race is really quite close. It has been all along. It’s just that his rather slim margin is surprisingly sturdy and difficult to overcome. But if something happened that damaged Obama irreparably, well…Clinton could build on the rather considerable pile of delegates and voters and connections and money that she has and slip past him.

Let’s go back to our boxer. How does his strategy change when he figures he can’t win on points? Very simple. He stops trying to land good punches, per se. Don’t get me wrong–he still wants to land them. But his purpose is different. It no longer does any good to land a nice, clean punch that impresses the judges. What he wants to do now is to hurt his opponent. Anything that dazes him, or renders him unable to see straight, or makes him feel like lying down, is good. Anything less is useless.

Clinton’s hopeless delegate and popular vote situation has been apparent since her “big wins” in Ohio and Texas, which, in fact, weren’t nearly big enough. That’s why, ever since then, she’s been trying to come up with anything she can to sully her opponent (so far with inadequate results).

It’s not just the usual mudslinging that candidates always use to try to get a leg up, or even the usual, more desperate mudslinging they tend to use when they’re losing. Damaging Obama, at this point, is not primarily, for Clinton, a means to the end of getting more votes. It IS the end. If she can get more popular votes and pledged delegates as a result, all the better–but mostly, she wants to damage him so she’ll get the superdelegate vote at the end. She wants the rank and file voters to support her too–she’ll need that–but they can always support her AFTER they have voted.

The regular democratic process isn’t where Hillary’s head is. Bear that in mind, as Pennsylvania votes.