Your worst Nov 4th, 2008 election fears

Snipers at the polls in the battleground states. :-(

(Sure, this would only help Obama's getting elected, but fuck, I don't want people getting injured or dying over this.)

Riggings

Palin promises to strip live on tv if elected.

Zombie Guy and Bible Spice win.

My personal worry is that I accidentally sleep 14 hours and don't vote.

(I sleep during the day)

Dems win 59 Senate seats, cut deal w/ Lieberman to rename themselves Infinite Pentagon Budget Party.

(reach, not win, you know)

Snipers at the polls in the battleground states. :-(

(Sure, this would only help Obama's getting elected, but fuck, I don't want people getting injured or dying over this.)

― Woman Who Force Madonna At House Party To Make Bold Statement (Mackro Mackro), Monday, October 20, 2008 12:19 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

what the hell

and what, if you think that's crazy talk, I welcome you to poo-poo the idea and snap me out of it. seriously.

I don't know about snipers but there will almost certainly be some violence in the form of fistfights or something at polling places, esp. in battleground states.

My personal worry is that I accidentally sleep 14 hours and don't vote.

Vote early.

Oh yeah.

Vote early.

I voted absentee at City Hall yesterday.

YOUS YER GRANS ELECT FLANGE MATE FOR POOS AND WEES ESPECILLY POOS

and what, if you think that's crazy talk, I welcome you to poo-poo the idea and snap me out of it. seriously.

― Woman Who Force Madonna At House Party To Make Bold Statement (Mackro Mackro), Monday, October 20, 2008 12:27 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

thinking maybe the burden of proof is on the guy who thinks there'll be snipers at polling places??

thinking maybe the burden of proof is on the guy who thinks there'll be snipers at polling places??

Fair enough. I can't predict the next day or two in the campaigns much less what will happen on election. That said, I don't think I'm alone in watching the stoking of the hate fires on the side of the GOP campaign. Chances are these are all barks and no bite. But this is a fear thread, so I admit that I feel a few individuals will take it up themselves to "take care of" certain polling places if they feel their Savior Palin will be demoted in their state. This could happen in any state really, but I'm guessing moreso in the battleground states due to the would-be snipers probably be caught off-guard about their state not necessarily going red anymore.

I'm not saying "rednecks be killin' Obama lovers". However, I do fear of some very isolated election day terror that will quickly spread to the entire country. It's not even a case of how this will effect Obama or McCain. It's a concern about the rise of extreme right wing fringe groups trying to mess with our basic democratic process.

If you think that p.o.v. is irrational, great! I need this to be de-rationalized. But if you think this is just knee-jerk "anti-redneck sentiment" on my part, and what, you're wrong.

anti-anxiety drugs are your friends

Already taking them. :/

McCain wins

o people get cocky and don't vote when it looks like he has it in the bag by 7pm

Wholesale repub voter fraud. There's already tons of evidence that this is taking place NOW.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/robertxcringely/archives/2008/10/vote_early_vote.html

"McCain wins"

^^^ ding ding ding

i know this is for fears and they're irrational but people who are voting for obama are so excited to be voting for obama. this "cockiness" is not going to happen. i got a totally cheesy sense of civic duty + voting in a historically important election thrill when i early voted + so will everyone else.

McCain wins, has heart attack from the excitement and dies.

obama wins, mccain dies sometime in the next 8 years and the news orgs do all these "where is she now" palin pieces and find her working as the mascot for a carwash in juneau

wait wrong thread

I'm a Former Vice-Presidential Candidate: Get Me Out of Here!

Not that this needs to be concurred with again, but I have zero fear that we're going to see any kind of significant election-day unrest. Even in some kind of ridiculous Bush v. Gore situation, I wouldn't expect it.

I do think that, given an Obama win, we're going to see a number of fringe conservatives converted back to a firm anti-government position, and I think that's going to combine with current McCarthyite thinking about our alleged critical struggle against "anti-American" freedom-hating, and that's going to create a kind of rancor that we'll probably spend a while watching warily and worrying about. But modern America is generally very good about these things not spilling over into widespread problems or extreme acts. Maybe it's because of our fundamental decency or maybe it's because of our fundamental apathy, but as nations go, we're relatively good about this.

i'm going to be working on south dakota on election day, so i guess my biggest fear is watching the results in a bar full of disgruntled republicans. actually, i'm kinda looking forward to that.

(^^ And when those things do play out horribly, they don't really play out around political events -- they tend to revolve around social stuff and the movements of people into new places. Things like immigrant-bashing or gay-bashing have some relation to politics, yes, but they tend not hinge on anything like a national election; they probably have more to do with the demographics and dynamics of specific places.)

I think there's gonna be a lot more public blow-ups over the next two weeks, at the very least one or two Imus-y situations where some well known TV or radio personality says some dumb race-related shit and loses their job over it.

I couldn't figure out how that sentence made sense until I realized you were referring to blow-ups and not blow-jobs.

Although they are already trying to start as much shit to call the election into doubt as possible, which we mentioned on the other thread. Everything from casting a voter reg group as lying traitors for turning in obviously fraudulent registrations to actively committing registration fraud themselves(see the repub-funded dude who just got arrested).

Of course, there's also the deliberately dishonest conflating of registration fraud with voter fraud with election fraud, and also not mentioning the fact that ACORN is required by law to turn in all registrations, even tho ACORN staffers take pains to filter the obvious bullshit reg sheets, and pointing out to local election officials which ones are good, bad, or questionable.

So, yeah, expect another round of "NOT MAH PRESIDENT," only this time with people who tend to pack more heat.

Agree with some dude. A few specific issues aside, our rancorous American flashpoint stuff tends to happen on that level, not with bombs or sniper rifles.

http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/3720/269yc6.jpg

http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/USPics43/2000-florida-recount01b.jpg
Omaha, Neb.

http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/13/74213-004-AD8ABD98.jpg
Bangor, Maine

http://www.breakitdownblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/florida_hanging_chad_recount.jpg
Richmond, Va.

Post photos of worried/agonized vote recounters here

xp the keweenaw peninsula falling into lake superior is indeed one of my fears, but if/when it happens I don't think an election will have anything to do w/ it

McCain wins

― ILX MOD (musically), Monday, 20 October 2008 18:22

this is certainly not impossible by any means, he could hang onto "swing states" like florida and ohio quite easily.

DONT GET COCKY!!!

Results 1 - 10 of about 29,000 for "vote from the rooftops".

(I suppose that should've been in bold. Oh well.)

this is certainly not impossible by any means, he could hang onto "swing states" like florida and ohio quite easily.
McCain would have to win way more than FL and OH to win it. Even if he won ALL the true battleground states it still isn't enough. He'd also have to eat into the likely dem states. This is because he has totally screwed the model from 2004 that vaulted Bush to victory.

See:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/election_2008_electoral_college_update

I am worried I'll get depressed if the results are bad & I'll stay in bed for three days like I did in 2004.

I already voted, tho, so I won't need to worry about that fear. Some campus group drove us to a place and fed me like four burritos and two pieces of pizza! Thanks Democratic Party of New Mexico for feeding me.

Does anyone find all this hushed craziness that Obama will get assassinated 0.34 seconds after inauguration rather bitter and dispiriting? This from folks who love him, mind.

Does anyone find all this hushed craziness that Obama will get assassinated 0.34 seconds after inauguration rather bitter and dispiriting?

Extremely. I've cut back on a few sites I'd otherwise regularly read because of it.

I was telling my coworker that there's always a select portion of americans who get totally excited about black helicopters when the opposition party takes a majority, the crucial difference is, democratic-identified loonies don't already own like 15 guns

Like, do people WANT it to happen? wtf? Are Americans so enamored of the sixties that they want all the assassinations, too?

xp

Fucking nineteen-sixties.

We have 15 papier-mache political-theater puppets just waiting in our closets

both sides of the spectrum right now are running through their "worst case scenario" shit, and each side has one in the event of a win or a loss. i.e. "assassination/palin becomes prez two weeks in" on the dem side, "minorities will revolt/obama will put us all in camps" on the repub side.

melanoma, the silent assassin

the sun has cast ITS vote

ugh, i immediately regret that

victor charlie over here

My real fear? My honest deep-set nightmare fear? "Bradley effect" in extremis, every swing state going to McCain, every white person in this country secretly haunted by nightmares of having a black president.

Second on the list, every black person in America being afraid to vote.

Neither seem likely.

Does anyone find all this hushed craziness that Obama will get assassinated 0.34 seconds after inauguration rather bitter and dispiriting? This from folks who love him, mind.

― Abbott, Tuesday, October 21, 2008 8:38 AM (50 minutes ago)

i hate this, it gets predicted a thousand times a day here, i have taken to sternly stfuing it as a conversational topic.