Here is an appropriate reply to the video I posted below. Enjoy.

Deep in their hearts, what do liberals think regarding their fellow Americans? Here, in short order, ladies and gentlemen, is the answer -- and I think that we conservatives owe our left-liberal adversaries a vote of thanks for making their position so clear.

Over at the blog of the Legal Times, we learn that election lawyers are bracing themselves for the aftermath of election day.

Washington lawyers who specialize in election law are bracing for recounts, complaints and other aftermath expected from the midterm elections on Tuesday.

Many law firms are working with familiar clients — Perkins Coie, for example, continues to represent the establishment of the Democratic Party, and the firm’s lawyers have already filed some complaints. Others are mounting defenses for newly formed nonprofit groups, such as American Crossroads. Holtzman Vogel partner Thomas Josefiak has been publicly representing that organization, which is spending millions of dollars on behalf of Republican candidates.

One question on the minds of election lawyers is whether there will be an unusually high number of contested results this year, given how close many races are and the fact that control of Congress is up in the air.

Of course, there will be hundreds of individual contested elections decided on election day. By the law of large numbers, many of these will be close contests, often so close that recounts will be required as a matter of state law. But after the recount, litigation comes only if one side wants it.

At this point the story has less to do with elections and more to do with the economics of litigation. Clearly what matters on that view is the cost of litigation relative to the stakes of litigation. Parties decide how much to invest based on what they hope to achieve, given the probability of success.

In cases where the candidates are close to the center, the prediction is that getting your candidate over the top counts for less than it does when the two candidates are far apart politically. The prediction is therefore that in those elections that pit Democratic orthodoxy against Republican tea partiers—think Harry Reid and Sharron Angle—a close outcome will provoke litigation. There are a lot of contests of that type right now, so expect to see more litigation than usual.

And how will that litigation be conducted? One of the dreadful charms of this field is that all local laws are different in detail, but share an extraordinary complexity. The issue is still more complex because it always has a constitutional overlay. There will be no Bush v. Gores coming out of a midterm election. But there could be lots of other legal action, for no matter how big the Republicans sweep, there will always be some close contests.

This is the most effective ad in the Brown-Whitman campaign I have seen. The fact that this, according to the polls, hasn't been able to turn people around here is testament to just how moon-batty this state is...and how unimpressive a candidate Meg Whitman is.

My crazy idea that only France can lead Europe into a future worth having seems a little less crazy today. Today Britain, tomorrow the Continent?

Leave it to the New York Times. Though major pollsters and pundits from all sides of the political spectrum predict Republicans will in all likelihood take the House today, the New York Times' Nate Silver says that all is not lost for Democrats. In fact, there are "5 Reasons Democrats Could Beat the Polls and Hold the House." (Via Hot Air.)

Here is the Democrats' rosy scenario as Silver pictures it:

It was hard to pinpoint exactly when in the night things started to go wrong. But at some point, a trash can was knocked over in John A. Boehner’s office in the Longworth House Office Building. A half-hour later, a hole was punched in the wall at the Republican National Committee’s headquarters.

Republicans didn’t really have much reason to be upset. They were going to pick up somewhere between 29 and 34 House seats from Democrats, pending the outcome of a recount or two and the receipt of mail ballots in some Western states. They gained five Senate seats from Democrats, and won the governorships in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Florida, among many other states. It had been a wave election, indeed — but a wave on the magnitude of 2006, rather than 1994.

For most of the evening, Republicans had still seemed quite likely to pick up the House, perhaps by some margin. Exit polls that (erroneously, it turned out) suggested a nine-point generic ballot win for the party colored the early coverage.

Silver then goes on to explain how Republicans might lose most of the races that they will probably win:

A scenario like this one is possible tomorrow — not particularly likely, but possible — just as a 77-seat Republican gain is possible. It’s probably a somewhat greater possibility than people realize.

(In fairness, on Sunday, Silver published a similar piece, but speculating about how Republicans could do much better than expected today.)

Over at Politics Daily, Patricia Murphy is more sober in her analysis of how the Dems will do:

The outlook for Democrats on Election Day has gotten so bad that estimates of the mayhem require metaphors only Mother Nature can supply. Will it be a wave or a tsunami? An early winter storm or a Category Five hurricane?

On Tuesday night, electoral math will decide which party controls each chamber. Republicans will need a net total of 39 pick-ups to take back control of the House and install John Boehner as speaker.

But the numbers will only tell part of the story for the next Congress. The rest will be revealed by the following four trends, personified by 10 races, that will determine the future for Democrats struggling to keep their power. If Democrats cannot limit their losses among their newest members, their most powerful members, those in the South, and among their record-breaking female contingent -- they can expect a blowout defeat Tuesday whose effects could last a decade or longer.

In other words, Dems will lose big--the question is just how big.

I have done it. I voted this morning shortly after 8 a.m., and my wife did so shortly after 9. I was the 56^th to vote in our ward; she was the 105^th. The old folks who man the tables told me that the turnout was not bad but that it did not compare with that in the general election two years ago. This is pretty much what I expected. I would be surprised if the turnout of registered voters nationwide exceeds 40%. Since 1974, when the eighteen-year olds got the vote, it has never passed that mark in midterm elections.

There is no Senate race in Michigan this year, alas. But the House race here in Michigan-7 is hotly contested. Democrat Mark Schauer, who holds the seat, is up against Republican Tim Walberg – from whom he took it two years ago. It has been a spirited race.

I do not own a working television. We have an old dinosaur, which we use solely for watching rented movies. I want my children to read and read and read – which the two who are older than four do to a gratifying extent. So, I have not seen most of the candidates’ television spots. The material that has come in the mail, however, has been massive; and virtually every time that I go online I stumble across an advertisement targeted on people living in this district.

There seem to be only two issues discussed. Each candidate accuses the other of ruining or wanting to ruin Social Security, and each accuses the other of sending jobs abroad. It is as if no one lives here any more except those who are retired or are out of work.

Something of the sort may, in fact, be the case. Until Nevada caught up with us this year or last, Michigan led the nation in unemployment, and when people start gambling again we will no doubt regain our rightful place in the lead and continue to hold it for a good long time. The automobile industry is not what it was, and I would not bet on Chrysler and Government Motors being around in 2020. Moreover, between 2000 and 2008, the population in Michigan reportedly dropped by 10%. I shudder to think what the 2010 census will show. Here in Hillsdale, over the last decade, seven of the eight small factories that produced parts for the automobile industry have closed their doors. Hillsdale College is now the principal employer in Hillsdale County, and the county has the highest unemployment rate in the state.

Neither Schauer nor Walberg can honestly be blamed for the disappearance of the jobs, but the party to which Schauer belongs has been closely associated in this state with the United Auto Workers – which has contributed more than any other group to the decline of the American automobile industry. Whether this is widely acknowledged in this largely blue-collar district I have no idea.

On the entitlements front, Schauer has to face up to the fact that Obamacare, for which he voted, involves not only raiding the funds supposedly dedicated to Medicare but eliminating as an option Medicare Advantage. On that same front, Walberg deserves praise for pointing out that Social Security in its present form is unsustainable.

In the past, Social Security and Medicare have been sticks with which the Democrats have been able to beat the Republicans. This year, I doubt whether this will work. To enact their agenda, the Democrats had to stiff the elderly – a constituency on which they have relied for more than seventy years. Those under thirty may vote on impulse and emotion. For them, the empty slogan “Yes, we can!” may well have appeal. The elderly are a bit more sober. Experience has taught them that there are things that we cannot do. Moreover, they have learned in the school of hard knocks to calculate their interests with care, and many of them also think hard about the prospects likely to be faced by their children and grandchildren.

My bet is that Walberg wins handily. With regard to entitlements, the Democrats look more and more like the little boy who cried, “Wolf!” Those who play tricks like this too often are asking that their pleas be ignored. That was my reaction to the well-made advertisement that Ursula just posted.

My country is about to do the most amazing thing my country does--transfer power peacefully, in free, fair elections. Both as a journalist and as a US citizen, I wish I were there today. I'd like to wander around and talk to people. I wish I could see this for myself. But I can't.

Share your best photos from the day with me, would you? Local-color stories? Snippets of overheard conversation?

One of Drudge's top headlines on this beautiful day tells us to "Expect Acrimony and Gridlock" in the aftermath of today's elections. The headlined article, which is from the Telegraph, concludes:

Washington will be largely divided between advocates of two competing and fiercely-held notions about the role of government. After today, and with the 2012 presidential election campaign approaching, expect acrimony and gridlock in Washington.

Paired with the word "acrimony," gridlock sounds like a rather bad fate, doesn't it?

But George Will has another take on it.

Will has always been one of my favorite conservative pundits. Whenever I watch him on This Week with Christiane Amanpour, I'm unfailingly struck by how thoroughly he outclasses his fellow panelists. He floats above the partisan squabbling and delivers wise and fresh insights on the political landscape.

A few days ago on This Week, he managed to pack a history lesson, a government lesson, and a political lesson about "gridlock" into less than thirty seconds of talk:

AMANPOUR: George, Senator Cornyn pretty much told us that they didn't expect to win the Senate. Made some news here.

WILL: Doesn't matter, though, because if Mitch McConnell has 48 senators, he will always have 41 senators for whatever he wants to have 41 for.

Let me just say this. The Republican Party is being told to be the party of no. No more stimulus spending. No cap-and-trade. No card check. None of this other stuff. Gridlock is not an American problem. It's an American achievement. The framers of our Constitution didn't want an efficient government; they wanted a safe government. To which end they filled it with slowing and blocking mechanisms. Three branches of government, two branches of the legislative branch, veto, veto override, supermajority, judicial review....What I'm saying...is that when we have gridlock, the system is working.

Brilliant.

I woke up this Election Day and checked Facebook. (Big mistake. Should have known better.)

This video is being posted as status by some of my Facebook friends. What do you think?

Please join us tonight for our first live chat. We'll be using CoverItLive, which allows everyone -- contributors and members -- to participate. We're expecting many of our contributors and perhaps a few special guests to stop by throughout the evening. But what we're most excited about is opening up the floor to the Ricochet community to comment on the returns and report on what's happening in your neck of the woods in real time. It's something of an experiment, but we're hoping it will be more of conversation and less like this.

We'll be starting at 7PM Eastern time/4PM Pacific and plan to go all evening. Please stop by!

This evening here at Stanford, I attended a discussion with Natan Sharansky, the Jewish refusenik, imprisoned for years in the Soviet Union, who is now an Israeli politician. What was life like in the Soviet Union? "Doublethink," Sharansky replied. "I'll give you an example.

"When I was five, my father said, 'Boy, come here. I want to tell you something you should remember all your life but never say to anyone else. Stalin is a bad, bad man. He killed many people. He was bad for us Jews. But now a miracle has happened. Stalin is dead.'

"Then I went to school, and with all the other children I am singing songs to Stalin, praising Stalin, thanking Stalin for our happy childhood. But I am remembering what my father told me. A miracle has happened and Stalin is dead.

"That was doublethink. You tried to hold the truth in your head, or maybe in your home, among your family. But the whole society said the opposite, and you said it with them. The Soviet Union turned everyone into doublethinkers. Millions of people--they were all doublethinkers."

Not here.

We still get to say--and blog--precisely what we believe.

And to vote accordingly.

God bless America.

My idea of the best November ever: Giants win the World Series, GOP takes House and Senate.

One down, two to go.

After all of the weeping and gnashing of teeth about how the Citizens United ruling benefits Republicans, after Obama's claims about foreign money bankrolling the ads we're seeing, this was the last thing I expected to read in the New York Times:

Despite a deluge of campaign spending over the last few months by Republican-leaning outside groups, Democratic candidates and their allies have outspent Republicans over all on television advertising in House races, according to data provided by Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising. In Senate races, however, Republicans outspent Democrats.

I just received Zogby International's latest e-mail blast: "Overwhelming Majority of Americans Support Adequate and Affordable Housing for Everyone," and have a few quick questions for the esteemed pollster:

1) What would possess a self-described "independent and nonpartisan" pollster to conduct such a survey, which strikes me as a virtual push poll, mere days before the elections?

2) Would respondents have answered the same way if you told them the possible results of socialist policies designed (erroneously) to achieve that goal (affordable housing for everyone) would include a sub-prime mortgage meltdown and an overall financial collapse?

No one ever said that intelligence was a prerequisite for "sanity"...

(h/t Ben Smith)

If so, I'm afraid that extracting a big payola from the fast food chain just got a little bit harder -- unless you live in Brazil.

A federal judge in New York has ruled that a lawsuit against McDonalds for causing childhood obesity cannot proceed as a class action. It’s bad enough that the McD's has been forcing children at gun point to eat burgers and spend all day on their Xbox. Now each and every plaintiff will have to – brace yourself – produce evidence to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between McDonald’s “deceptive marketing” and his/her obesity. This kind of setback is bad for self-esteem, which in turn causes more binge eating.

Well, the whole idea of fat lawsuits is ridiculous, right? Sure, they laughed at the tobacco lawsuits at first. The plaintiffs’ bar has been pushing this one for nearly a decade now and they’re not going to give up just because of one bad decision. For a glimpse of the future, look to Brazil where, as Lowering the Bar reports, “a judge has ordered McDonald's to pay a former manager $17,500 based on his allegations that he gained 65 pounds during his years with the company, due to such dastardly corporate practices as offering employees free lunches.”

Voters are scared. Science and facts are not carrying the day. But for voters in Denver, there is hope. Tomorrow they will vote on Resolution 300, which would require the City of Denver to finally face up to the influx of extraterrestrials:

Shall the voters for the City and County of Denver adopt an Initiated Ordinance to require the creation of an extraterrestrial affairs commission to help ensure the health, safety, and cultural awareness of Denver residents and visitors in relation to potential encounters or interactions with extraterrestrial intelligent beings or their vehicles, and fund such commission from grants, gifts and donations?

If Resolution 300 passes, I assume that the Obama administration will sue to have it overturned. After all, don’t they claim pre-emption on all matters relating to aliens? (h/t Lowering the Bar)

The election is now 24 hours away, and unless virtually all the nation’s pollsters are pulling a collective Dewey-Truman, it seems fairly clear that the Republicans are poised to regain control of the House of Representatives and reach at least near-parity in the Senate. And while there will be much rejoicing on the Right over this clear and unmistakable rejection of the Obama-Reid-Pelosi agenda, as well as over individual results (go Rubio!), it is important to remember that the GOP is still digging itself out of a very large (and largely deserved) hole, and that this election, for all the focus on the “Tea Party movement” and “conservative revival,” will represent far more a stern rebuke to the Democrats than an endorsement of any specific, actionable, alternative path forward.

The Republicans actually face three major challenges if they hope to go beyond this tactical victory and build an effective and sustained electoral majority at the national level. First, they have to coalesce around an agenda capable of gaining and retaining the support of a majority of the electorate. In theory, this shouldn’t be that hard to do; this is a center-right country, so a center-right agenda – or even, after the left’s excesses of the past two years, a right-center-right agenda – ought to be broadly popular. A squishy, Bush-ite, “moderate” agenda won’t do – recent experience ought to make that perfectly clear. A “purist” Tea Party agenda won’t do either – there are simply too many moderate conservatives and independents who are cut from different cloth. But an agenda that harnesses the impulses of limited government and fiscal responsibility that are driving both the Tea Parties and the massive turn of independents toward the GOP, that proposes practical conservative policies to reignite economic growth while retaining the irreducible “safety net” that voters want, and that de-prioritizes the most divisive social issues, ought to be an achievable thing.

It’s the coalescing part that I think will be the real challenge. While the GOP is a long way from the “civil war” some liberal commentators have tried to suggest is emerging, there remain some significant fissures in the center-right coalition that is about to de-fang the liberal Democrats – most notably between upscale, educated voters and the “down with elitists” crowd; between “social issues” voters and more libertarian, pro-growth voters; between foreign policy hawks and semi-doves; and even between the “short-ballers” who want to focus on immediate, near-term problems first and move the country gradually to the right, and the “long-ballers” who want to jump right in and go after entitlement reform, scrapping the tax code, and other Really Big Issues right away. These fissures tend to fade into the background in the glow of united opposition to the status quo, but they will come to the forefront again pretty quickly after November 2, and they will need to be addressed.

Second, having united around a potentially winning agenda, the GOP has to sell that agenda to the electorate – to win the hearts and minds of a decent majority. This is not primarily a matter of politics and politicians; it is a matter of the battle of ideas, and necessarily requires regaining the allegiance of a sizeable part of the “thinking classes” (not the super-elite Ivy League professoriate, but the whole broad segment of decently educated people who pay attention to political and economic ideas in some form, and who greatly influence the way other people come to think). I recall vividly – because I was young and aware and very engaged in all this at the time – how in the late 1970s conservative ideas were simply winning the argument almost everywhere. Bill Buckley, Irving Kristol, and Norman Podhoretz were in their prime; George Will and Jeff MacNelly were the rising stars of the editorial pages; and Milton and Rose Friedman came out with Free to Choose – a huge best-seller and highly successful TV series. Ronald Reagan did not “turn the country right” in 1980 – he merely extended and consolidated a rightward movement that had begun over a decade earlier and had really begun to pick up steam in the years before his election. In effect, a large part of the “thinking classes” had been won over to the notion that conservative ideas represented a superior alternative to the stale liberalism of the 1960s and 70s. This process needs to be repeated. The disillusionment with liberalism is there, but the selling of the virtues and practicality of a specific, coherent conservative alternative is far from complete.

Third, the Republicans need to solve their leadership vacuum problem – fast. The GOP has a number of able, intelligent, virtuous “leaders” in Congress, in the state capitals and elsewhere – and there will be several more after tomorrow. But whether any of them would be considered papabile by both Southern evangelicals and Chicago suburban professionals is something I very much doubt. Among those who are national figures today, the prospects are grim. Sarah Palin? There are simply too many thinking people who wouldn’t touch her with a barge pole. It’s true that something along the same lines could have been said of Ronald Reagan, circa 1976. But by 1978 Reagan was holding his own against Buckley and Will in the famous Panama Canal debate and by 1980 was able to destroy President Carter in their debate. Does anyone seriously see Palin reprising this role? Others (Romney, Huckabee) are liked by parts of the coalition but deeply distrusted by other parts – I have a hard time seeing either as a unifying leader. Many others are simply too obscure (by presidential politics standards) or too regional at this stage. Could a Chris Christie or a Marco Rubio or a Mitch Daniels really become a truly national figure with a national following in time for 2012? I don’t know. But conservatives had better hope so, because without a unifying and at least somewhat charismatic leader the Presidency is going to be an uphill climb in 2012, and without the Presidency any victory tomorrow – no matter how big – will ultimately be hollow.

Ken Blackwell writes of Brahmin Sen. John Kerry's recent lament that we live in "a period of know-nothingism in the country, where truth and science and facts don't weigh in. It's all short-order, lowest common demoninator, cheap-seat politics."

For those who think Obama's routine disparagement of the electorate is extraordinary for leftists, note the similarity in Kerry's language. When Obama was berating Americans for being irrational out of fear about the economy, he said, "Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day is because we're hardwired not to always think clearly when we're scared."

Well, Barack, your fear over the upcoming election might explain that ludicrous statement. More to the point, do you see the talking points-resemblance between Obama's and Kerry's statements?

They believe that opponents of failed Keynesian economic policies must be averse to facts and science, just as opponents of Draconian environmental regulations must be hostile to facts and science -- you know, the "facts" and "science" the left must manufacture to build their case.

But Obama and Kerry's formulations are nothing new for the left. Surely, you'll recall the left's denunciation of red state voters as not being part of the "reality-based community." Eric Alterman wrote a few years ago, "The problem is just this: Slightly more than half of the citizens of this country simply do not care about what those of us in the 'reality-based community' say or believe about anything. ... This is not a world of rational debate and issue preference. It's one of 'them' and 'us.' [Bush] is one of 'them' and not one os 'us' and that's all they care about." The reality based community?

One could cite such examples endlessly. The left is so arrogant it believes that those who don't subscribe to their prescriptions are not just painfully and willfully ignorant, but darn near worthless too, i.e., inferior creatures (occupiers of the cheap seats). That's why Obama had no qualms about cramming Obamacare down the people's throats and continues to maintain that we don't know what's good for us.

Well, we may not share Obama's omniscience, but we do still have the voting franchise and will exercise it -- resoundingly -- tomorrow.

Well there's Marco Rubio, for one. But by the end of tomorrow, we'll most likely see two new Hispanic Republican governors and at least three new Hispanic Republican representatives. Carrie Budoff Brown at Politico reports:

New Mexico attorney Susana Martinez is favored to emerge as the country’s first Latina governor. Former federal judge Brian Sandoval is likely to become Nevada’s first Latino governor.

And in a little-noticed development, Hispanic Republicans could win three or more seats in the House – up from three now – including in some districts that are far from majority Hispanic.

The Hispanic vote will be crucial in the presidential election of 2012. And in terms of outreach to this segment of the electorate, the election of well-spoken, attractive Hispanic candidates is a darned good place to start.

The other day, Paul Rahe asked a California question: Would support for Proposition 19, the ballot initiative to legalize marijuana, drive students to the polls, helping Democratic candidates? Trace Urdan and I both said no. Support for Prop 19 seems tepid, even on campuses.

On the other hand, we added, opposition to Prop 23 will most certainly drive a lot of the liberal gentry to the polls. Prop 23, you'll recall, would delay implementation of California's Global Warming Solutions Act until unemployment in the state, now about 12 percent, drops to 5.5 percent. And the Global Warming Solutions Act, in turn, would mandate that by 2020 California return to the level of emissions it produced in 1990. The most cursory review of the evidence, of course, makes it clear that the Global Warming Solutions Act will be unable even to approach its goals without effectively shutting down large swathes of the California economy.

Anyway, just this morning, more evidence of what Trace and I suggested:

Half an hour ago I walked across White Plaza, the usual scene of political activity here at Stanford. Activity on behalf of Prop 19? Zero. Activity to defeat Prop 23? A determined young man, distributing handbills while asking everyone he could, "Have you heard what Prop 23 will do to our environment?"

Anti-incumbency! It's the lede of the year. But we can't understand what's happening to sitting Democrats unless we underscore what's going on within the GOP. This year, a vote against the Democrats is a vote to change the Republican party, too.

And next time? Coming out of Election '10, how much patience -- how much faith -- will Democratic voters retain for their own establishment?

What grassroots movement from the left's bullpen of 'freaks' and 'rubes' is yet to come?

I don’t fly often enough to hate it. I’m not fond of the process of getting to the airport, since I’m one of those people who packs the night before, has duplicate copies of the boarding passes, assumes the route to the airport will complicated by a rollover of a semi carrying 40,000 gallons of nacho cheese, and sixteen marching bands will be attempting to pass through security simultaneously while carrying their instruments, and putting dozens of Heath kits full of unassembled electronics parts through the X-ray machines. So I leave early. Very early. My wife likes to stroll onboard as the jetway is disengaging. She’d swing on a vine like Indiana Jones making the floatplane if she could.

Yesterday morning, though, we were in the Arms of the Mouse, and the Mouse will not let you be late for your plane. If your flight is at noon, you board the Disney Magical Express at 9. If your plane is at 7:45 - well. You can guess. We got to the airport with plenty of time, headed through the enormous atrium of the Orlando airport, and waded into the chaotic, clattering panic of the security line. This I hate. This makes me boil. I don’t mean to insult the TSA employees, many of whom are no doubt serious about their jobs and responsibilities, but when they peer at a boarding pass I printed off my home computer as if it’s an Enigma decrypt, well, you realize you are now an extra in the great impromptu show known as Security Theater.

After your documents are approved, and it’s been confirmed that you are not kidnapping a child - she answers to her name, after all - it’s time to unshod thineself, dump all your electronics in a basket, whip off the belt, get out the computer, put it all in bins, shove it through the machine, while a hundred people behind you are pushing forward to do the same thing. Everything piles up at the other end, because people are trying to put on their shoes while a fresh crop of vetted strangers are coming up behind. It’s worse if someone gets pulled over, as I was, because my bag just had so much peculiar stuff. (I do not mind additional inspection, but it doesn’t put my mind at ease.) At least no one had any cause to worry about my many liquids, because they were in the Magic Ziplock Bag, which cast a Level 3 Spell of Protection.

Then . . . relief. Freedom. The concourse with its bookstores, restaurants, bars, power outlets, and grand parade of humanity, from elegantly dressed women to dull-eyed underdressed louts with their baseball cap brims arrayed to prevent their left ear from any sudden downpour. Here I am happy, especially in a civilized airport that allows a man a cigar in a space walled off from the general public. It is unfair to compare the TSA line with the commerce of the mall; the relative ease of the latter is possible because the messy work of security has been done in advance. But if the jobs were switched, I suspect the people who run the restaurants would smooth the security process, and the people who run security would make the simple act of getting a meal an exercise in aggravation and indifference.

It’s odd how things change when there’s money to be made instead of hours to fill.

Scott Rasmussen has an excellent round up of this election season in today's Wall Street Journal. He begins by pointing out the numbers that astoundingly favor Republicans this year:

In the first week of January 2010, Rasmussen Reports showed Republicans with a nine-point lead on the generic congressional ballot. Scott Brown delivered a stunning upset in the Massachusetts special U.S. Senate election a couple of weeks later.

In the last week of October 2010, Rasmussen Reports again showed Republicans with a nine-point lead on the generic ballot. And tomorrow Republicans will send more Republicans to Congress than at any time in the past 80 years.

This isn't a wave, it's a tidal shift—and we've seen it coming for a long time.

And yet, he goes on:

But none of this means that Republicans are winning. The reality is that voters in 2010 are doing the same thing they did in 2006 and 2008: They are voting against the party in power.

Sounding that note, he cautions "politicians"--though it looks like he's talking specifically to Republicans--"to leave their ideological baggage behind" when they come to Washington to govern next year.

In this environment, it would be wise for all Republicans to remember that their team didn't win, the other team lost. Heading into 2012, voters will remain ready to vote against the party in power unless they are given a reason not to do so.

Elected politicians also should leave their ideological baggage behind because voters don't want to be governed from the left, the right, or even the center. They want someone in Washington who understands that the American people want to govern themselves.

Rasmussen is arguing that a vote cast for Republicans this year should be interpreted as a vote cast against Democrats. And yet, I would say that a vote cast against Democrats this election cycle can be more appropriately interpreted as a vote cast for small government conservatism (if not necessarily for the Republican party itself). After all, Rasmussen himself points out that voters are particularly motivated to vote against Dems because voters "believe that cutting government spending is good for the economy," and they oppose health care reform--two small government conservative stances.

Here's a story to prompt ambivalence.

A Russian secret services expert on Tuesday warned WikiLeaks that the “right team” of people could simply shut down the whistleblower Web site forever, but denied that WikiLeaks poses a threat to Russia after its founder revealed that Russia is next on its hit list. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Monday warned that “Russian readers will find out a lot of new things about their country” through his Web site, which has left Western governments red-faced after reams of classified documents were published on the Internet.

I know, I know, your first reaction is to think, "What an elegant solution to the Julian Assange problem." But get past that. FSB hit squads running around the world "simply shutting down" targets of their displeasure are actually a more significant problem than he is.

Mind you, one would have to marvel at the cunning of our own intelligence services had they planted this story prior to "shutting him down" themselves--and then blaming it on the FSB--but that level of competence, I suspect, exists only a spy novels. (Not in mine, mind you.)

Well, if I were Assange right now I'd probably view umbrellas about the way cats do rocking chairs.

This morning, Gallup released its final pre-election generic ballot poll results. They show the Republicans ahead among likely voters by 15% -- a greater margin than either party has attained in the sixty years in which the Gallup organization has been collecting this sort of information, apart from the 20% margin achieved by the Democrats in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Moreover, this poll assumes a turnout of 45%, which is larger by more than 5% than any midterm turnout of registered voters since eighteen-year-olds began to vote in 1974.

UPDATE: To get a sense of what this all means, you might want to look at Jay Cost’s latest post . As he explains, Gallup has the Republican margin at twice what it was in 1946 and 1994. This is going to be very, very big.

I have said it before; I will say it again: The Times They Are A-Changing.

Don't forget to place your bets in the Ricochet Midterm Pool.

(Illustrated once again thanks to E.J. Hill.)

Denise recently asked whether Obama has put a "kick me" sign on our backs. I have a few thoughts about this.

I recently interviewed Turkey's former ambassador to the United States, Faruk Loğoğlu. He is appalled--like many in Turkey--by the soft-headedness of the Obama' Administration's diplomacy in this region. He finds Obama's speeches about his personal warmth toward Islam ludicrous and inappropriate. “Obama can’t play the religious game," he said. "He should be playing the security game. His policy toward Turkey is a bad imitation of the worst parts of Orientalism.”

It's not merely the ideological color of the Obama Administration's diplomacy that worries me, but its incompetence. I've lately been examining in very close detail the events that led to Turkey's "No" vote on the Iran sanctions package in the UN. I'll be writing about this elsewhere; and the details are too complicated to summarize here. But one thing leaps out: our incompetence. How could there have been any ambiguity--and obviously there was--in our communication with Turkey about our negotiating position on the nuclear fuel swap deal? How is it possible that Turkey was receiving critically different messages from the White House and the State Department on an issue as significant as the Iranian nuclear program, for God's sake? It's inconceivable, but on looking closely at the evidence, it is clear that this is just what happened.

When the State Department Spokesman sends a completely inappropriate birthday message to to Ahmadinejad via Twitter, it is, likewise, a symptom of utter amateurism. Apologists for this incident have suggested to me that this wasn't such a big deal; it was sarcastic, they say, and it wasn't a diplomatic note or official communiqué. I am guessing that had that Tweet said, "Tomorrow we bomb Iran into rubble," the same people would have thought it quite a big deal indeed.

It is hugely significant when the tone coming out of the State Department is childish, inappropriate, and supine; it is fundamentally unserious to put such a message on Twitter; and it is beyond belief that anyone there would think "sarcasm" about this situation--we are talking about kidnapped US citizens who are being held hostage in Iran--conveys American resolve. Signaling counts. Signaling that you are damned serious does not start wars, it prevents them.

More amateurism: I've expressed my reservations about the supposedly surpassing moderation of Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim here. Now I see reports that Clinton may be planning to meet with him on her Asian trip this week. As an appalled Chuck Devore correctly observes,

While Ibrahim enjoys the support of Al Gore and Paul Wolfowitz, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith calls him out as an anti-Semitic demagogue unworthy of meeting with the U.S. Secretary of State. Tellingly, when Ibrahim was recently in New York, shadowing a visit there by Prime Minister Najib Razak, he met with the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). Ibrahim was a co-founder of IIIT which listed the Malaysian politician as a trustee as recently as last year.

The problem is that IIIT is a Muslim Brotherhood front that has repeatedly been tied to terrorist network financing.

As Chuck DeVore also correctly writes, "Malaysia is no Myanmar and Ibrahim is no Aung San Suu Kyi."

A meeting with the US Secretary of State is an important signal of legitimization. If you're in any doubt of this, read the Malaysian press.

Any U.S. acknowledgment of the existence of the Pakatan would be a tremendous blow to the Malaysian ruling coalition. Its message should be taken very seriously by Najib and his Umno-BN. ...

Although, there is no official appointment in Clinton's calendar to formally meet the Pakatan trio, high-level sources tell Malaysia Chronicle that they are likely to be invited to a social function or a meeting that will also be attended by civil society groups.

The Obama administration has said it is keen to show support for democracy and civil society in its foreign policy.

Support for democracy and civil society? It's not clear whether they said this in connection with this prospective meeting, but if so, the Pakatan trio? Meaning among them, Hadi Awang? Surely they jest. I repeat: Right now, Anwar is in an electoral alliance with the PAS, of which Hadi Awang is the president. It takes but three seconds on Google to establish the extent of this party's commitment to democracy and civil society. They're the ones who favor stoning for adulterers and amputations for thieves. Our Secretary of State has no business, none, conveying legitimacy on someone like this, his party, or anyone he's in concert with--ever. No good could possibly come of it.

As for Anwar himself, do we seriously mean to suggest that we have no problem with him? If there should be any unified message coming from the United States, it should be this: Politicians who trade in anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism go straight to the diplomatic deep freeze. They shouldn't even dream that we'll lift a finger to boost them, politically.

I might look at things differently if we needed Anwar, if there was some point to this prospective meeting, if there were any conceivable gain or advantage that might accrue. But it's quite the opposite. All it could do is convey the message, "We don't pay attention to this stuff, so go right ahead, indulge yourself--we'll still pop around for tea and cookies."

Yes, meeting this group of clowns would be like walking around with a "kick me" sign on our foreheads. And it's also just plain incompetent. Doesn't anyone at State know how to use Google?

Apropos of all of this, there was an excellent article in Newsweek (yes, really) last week: Is it Islamic or Islamist? The authors are right; being able to tell the difference between the former and the latter is essential. I'm not sure anyone at the State Department is even trying.

More from this author:

BERLINSKI > Murkowski and Fagan: A Guide for the Perplexed

BERLINSKI > Moderate Muslim Watch: Notes From the Malaysian PR War

BERLINSKI > Sex Scandal--Moderate Muslim Watch Style!

Last week, Pat presented us with the liberal media's cheat sheet for explaining away the results of Tuesday's midterms.

And now, for your gaming pleasure, a handy dandy bingo board courtesy of EJHill to help you keep track of the cornucopia of liberal media excuses.

How to play: Print out your Ricochet bingo board, complete a square by noting the media outlet on which you hear each excuse, and be sure to take a swig of your favorite adult beverage for every square completed. Complete a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line of squares to get a BINGO.