Vee

Wow, I never thought I'd see her exit.

When I thought of the characters returning, I always thought of them coming together after they both left the show, and then reconciling and splitting again and again because of Carla's headstrong ways, full of causes and activism and drive, choices that drew her away from home and family - still a runner, just as she started out on the show. If you brought on a new generation of Halls, they would be coming from a background where Ed and Carla were more separate than united, where Grandma was kind of nuts, and an older Carla would be up to her own game while a weary Ed is just trying to manage the youngsters. Eventually, of course they would reconcile for good, as that story played out and then probably exit the show or fade into elder recurring status (as Carlotta and Renee once had, before they barely ever appeared) while their descendants played on the show.

Obama will always try to work with both sides of the aisle. That's who he is, that is his brand and that is what he believes. He is not often overtly aggressive and emotionally fulfilling in the way a lot of angry liberals (of which I can certainly be counted at times) feel they require after the trauma of the Bush years. But he also acts when he feels it is necessary, just often without a lot of fanfare or chest-thumping. Remember, this is the man who smiled at Donald Trump's nonsense at a press dinner the day before he oversaw his risky (and pooh-poohed by much of his cabinet) operation to kill Osama bin Laden. And he pushed back for health care when others wanted to walk away. He's a quiet operator. I expect he'll become more aggressive in that arena in his second term, but we won't always see it coming upfront.

I think most of the Obama machine is far more aggressive than many of the defeatist pols and pundits (and voters) we saw in the last twelve years. They got called arrogant by everyone, but in truth they won it and continue to win it.

Too many baby boomer liberals live and thrive from a position of weakness and downtrodden trauma - it's a mindset that works for them, breeds populist fire. But it doesn't work in practice, and it's dying out.

Morning Joe is digging up any obscure poll he can to claim this race is still tied, as are people I believe on main line NBC. Hilarious. They're even entertaining the possibility that Mitt will take Pennsylvania. If Mitt Romney wins Pennsylvania I will go out Wednesday, pick up a woman (any woman - I'm not picky) and have boisterous, Christian heterosexual sex.

And Carl is right - this comes out of, IMO, far too many of the Beltway elite coming up in the Reagan dream. They have a preexisting mindset (like a lot of older liberals) through which they see the world - liberals wusses, Republicans awesome. Obama has fucked with that in a major way.

The Republicans - particularly Karl Rove - have already begun spinning, claiming it was only Sandy that won it for Obama. In reality, Obama was well up at least two weeks before.

It's always "a thin margin" or "eked out" when it's a Democrat.

Obama trounced McCain and he's about to trounce Mitt but the DC press has refused to ever admit that a Democrat could possibly have a substantial lead, a mandate or a landslide. That's fine. Wait and see.

In other news, Vivica Fox is finally doing something to make me proud again.

State Senator Nina Turner is a beast.

Yeah, that's all I'd have to say at this point if I was a Republican voter, too.

Incidentally, the new PPP poll has Obama at 50, and Romney at 47.

With momentum on Mitt Romney's side and a growing consensus that he will take the Presidency...

Do you read any polls?

It's the absolute opposite and has been for several weeks. Paul Ryan has begun leaking stories about his post-election plans, and campaign staffers have begun making excuses for the disastrous campaign and claiming only Sandy won it for Obama. Obama is ahead in virtually every key state and his current odds for winning are overwhelming both among gamblers and pollsters.

This is the problem with the right wing echo chamber. You guys are shocked, shocked when you only surround yourself with 'good news' and 'unskewed' polls and come out on Election Day and find out that you haven't been paying attention.

Six paragraphs and you already hit Godwin's Law. Kudos.

I think the electorate can be lazy and mean-spirited when it wants to be. God knows we saw the worst of that in the Bush years, and in many other times in our history. But I think we also are capable of greatness as a people. That prismatic state is the same in any country the world over, and I think it's part of the human condition. I think at core most of us believe in the American dream and a spirit of coming together, even if we don't always practice what we preach, even if sometimes it's just superficial lip service to an ideal. But I don't think it's always lip service, and I don't think it's always a sham. I think there's always been greatness possible, and common decency, and I think that's one big reason why Obama is being reelected. People know he's worked hard, people want to see the country continue to recover, they want to have hope. I think they take immense pride in seeing the auto industry recover and seeing people get back to work. A lot of the public likes to cast itself as cynical and jaded for the sake of cool points, but at heart I think we are a very earnest people. Often we just don't want anyone to notice.

I just don't see it being that tight when Romney cannot possibly take several of the key states he desperately needs to win. And when the conservative estimates have Obama at 290-295.

Politico has been known to lean right for years.

The David Brooks gambit of a few days ago - an editorial declaring that because Mitt is a shapeshifter with no true beliefs or morals that he will be forced to govern "from the center" and magically create more bipartisanship than mean old Obama - was the most hilarious commentary I've ever read.

Good job numbers and finally Rasmussen is beginning his move today back towards the real numbers. Obama up one, Romney down.

Did you see Christie's speech at the RNC? It was about him, not Romney. He'll run. And he's done a lot in the last few days to build up goodwill with moderates and Democrats - me included.

New ABC poll has Obama up. Basically everyone is saying Mitt can't do it.

I'm hoping for 300+ EV.

Christie knows Romney can't win. He's positioning himself as the lone moderate Republican in 2016 (though Jon Huntsman is far superior). Get ready for a "Biggest Loser" weight loss saga, too, I'll bet. He's a smart man.

The reason Romney has backed off Libya is because clear-headed, incisive reporting on Libya has proven there is nothing there. The CIA has backed that up. A series of unfortunate coincidences and yes, possible security failures, and a national tragedy. But not a cover-up or a gross failure from any department. The other reason is because every time Mitt has tried to go there he has humiliated himself and looked like a fool. Starting in September, and capped off with the second debate. After that, you couldn't get him to say Benghazi on TV with a cattle prod to his nuts. The Republican Congress also doesn't want to explain why they cut embassy security funding.

In the right-wing noise bubble you can get away with the endless conspiracies into conspiracies based on no real evidence. You can get away with gleefully reprinting pictures of Chris Stevens' ashen corpse being dragged through the streets and claiming without proof that the Libyan citizens were not taking him to shelter, but instead off to mutilate his body after - this is actually part of the RW coverage - raping him before his death. And maybe that will even work for you in a Republican primary. But it doesn't work in the national race, or in the national eye. It's a paranoid right wing fantasy of a Jimmy Carter reprise, 24, xenophobia and homophobia all wrapped in one insane package. It just doesn't work in the light of day, and that's why the nation has rejected it. It's a loser. But Rush Limbaugh and Drudge and Breitbart say it's still hot, even when America has forcefully rejected it. They never get out of the bubble and take an honest look at the state of the nation. That is why they lose.

You mean these numbers, Casey? Here, I'll even put in RCP's laughable version of "national average."

Election 2012 Obama Romney Spread RCP National Average 47.0 48.0 Romney +1.0 Favorable Ratings +4.2 +6.8 Romney +2.6 Intrade Odds 63.4 36.8 Electoral College Obama Romney Spread RCP Electoral Map 201 191 Obama +10 No Toss Up States 290 248 Obama +42 Battlegrounds 1 2 Obama Romney Spread Ohio 48.6 46.7 Obama +1.9 Florida 48.0 49.3 Romney +1.3 Virginia 47.8 47.8 Tie New Hampshire 48.8 46.8 Obama +2.0 Colorado 47.8 47.8 Tie Iowa 48.7 47.7 Obama +1.0

You'll forgive me, but I think the Obama edge in many of these and the very tight race otherwise looks pretty good - particularly since RCP is a known, slanted and shamed right-wing organ.

As for Scott Rasmussen, he's another infamous right-wing hack who has been criticized heavily by the media for years now because of inaccurate and poorly-sourced polling which often tightens just before Election Day. And then there's Gallup, which has been a laughingstock for months but particularly in the past month, or as the New York Times puts it, it's Gallup vs. the World.

The ABC poll completely avoided and low-sampled the Northeast, and really, there was no point in polling during Sandy because of that. But some people will poll anyway to try and preserve a horse race.

If you really want to go with this, though, and never step outside the right wing noise bubble courtesy of Breitbart, Drudge and RCP or look at the real numbers, sampling and other factors, then good luck, Casey. Just don't look at me with doe eyes on Election Night like you guys did in 2008 when everything was 'good news for John McCain.' Republicans are always baffled when they lose, but a large part of that confusion stems from the fact that they never get out of the RW bubble, and only accept the facts and numbers that they choose to believe. All inconvenient truths are blamed on bookish homosexuals like Nate Silver.

I'm saying you're not showing me any actual polling to deal in.

I'm also saying that even RCP's electoral maps have Obama at 290 - and that's the one with no toss-ups in the mix.

RCP? Those crusaders against "anti-conservative, anti-Christian media bias?" LOL.

The only person whose campaign has collapsed is Romney's.

Everyone knows it. The numbers know it. It's been like this for weeks and it's only gotten worse for him. Rasmussen and Gallup are outliers, and the press knows it. And Chris Christie certainly knows it. The media has been trying to preserve the horse race, but it's been falling away from them for days. The only way to keep it up is to keep pushing the outliers.

"Unskew" the polls all you like, but the most conservative estimates have Obama at 290-295 EV.

And I haven't even mentioned the debacle that this national tragedy is for Mitt.

The thing is, the Romney momentum myth was dispelled in the last week or so - it was all a bluff. The numbers did not back it up. They've started coming to terms with that, but they continue to pretend he is competitive in Ohio when he's really not very competitive. Except without Ohio there is no game.

Sandy or no Sandy, they'll have to face up to that sometime late next week in order to avoid looking like fools on the 6th. I think Nate Silver and most other reliable predictions had Obama at 290-295 EV.

There's nothing official on Romney and Ohio. It's just scuttlebutt right now, though I could swear I had seen a few reputable articles regarding backchannel talk in the past couple days. Let me see what I can find.

The media is trying to pretend Romney still has a shot in Ohio, because without that shot that's the end of the horse race. He really doesn't. As per Nate Silver (who the right wing is now smearing as "an effeminate castrati"):

Nate Silver looks at the polling average in Ohio -- made up of roughly a dozen polling firms who have surveyed the state over the past 10 days -- and notes it shows President Obama with a 2.4 percentage point lead over Mitt Romney.

"There are no precedents in the database for a candidate losing with a two-or three-point lead in a state when the polling volume was that rich... It is misinformed to refer to Ohio as a toss-up. Mr. Obama is the favorite there, and because of Ohio's central position in the Electoral College, he is therefore the overall favorite in the election."

Not going to happen. They'll start facing up to it more next week.

Oh, no, they've gone full bore with that stuff in the last two or three years in particular. BBCA began a much bigger national push starting with the Moffat era. I've seen it around in comic shops and so on.

I'm not surprised River is back. I figured she would be around at least until shortly before Smith and Moffat left, whenever that may be. Matt is signed through at least 2014, I believe, and I think it's confirmed he is doing Series 8, though I don't know whether that airs in fall 2013 or early '14. They never gave her a goodbye in TATM, so I knew she'd be around. Lots left to do.

I would cry if they did another tie-in with the SJA kids sometime during the anniversary. Have Luke, Clyde and Maria (or Rani, or whoever that little girl was they added in the last series I haven't watched) pop up to help the Doctor.

Pretty much all the legit polling shows Obama pulling out a commanding lead.

Which is why I laughed my ass off when I saw CNN the other night showing Obama up four points in Ohio and Wolf Blitzer staring into the camera calling it "a tie." I've heard Romney may be pulling out of Ohio and trying to peel off Nevada. It can't be done. He cannot win.

From the anniversary celebration today at MCM London: Matt Smith confirmed River Song would return soon enough. Also, there was this cute bit:

Little three year old Elliot stole the show, by saying that he loved the Doctor, and asking where Amy was. Matt told him that she is in New York, happy, and eating fish fingers and custard every Thursday lunchtime