The antidote to conservative malaise

I’m getting emails from committed conservatives who are unhappy right now, feeling that the air has gone out of the election balloon.  I’m looking at things a different way.

The ACORN registration fraud has inflated the numbers of registered Democrats.  Given that some people registered as Dems 72 times, there is no way that ACORN can get 72 fraudulent voters to the booths.  And that’s just one person.  This means that the huge threat they hold over us — that is, the threat of swollen Dem voter rolls — actually isn’t as big a threat as we thought, and that’s true despite inevitable fraud at the voting booth.

One of the volunteer “get out the voters” in Marin sent out an email with an interesting heading:  “John McCain and Sarah Palin will win California . . . if every McCain/Palin supporter actually votes.”  I wrote to her to ask if that was really true,or just blind optimism.  Here’s what she wrote back (just yesterday):

It’s optimistic today (the numbers have changed again!) — but yesterday it was fact-based. Or google “forbes zogby poll obama”.

I was, I think, a little creative in saying that we will win California if…  BUT I believe that it’s true.  There are so many Obama supporters in Marin and other Democratic strongholds that, by and large, I believe that because they feel less threatened they therefore feel less urgency to vote.  Such a small number of people actually vote, you know.

I am absolutely certain that if every Republican who moans about the possibility of an Obama presidency actually votes AND gets other McCain supporters to cast their votes, we would take this state.  It’s not about who loves you, baby, it’s about who’s actually going to make the time to vote for you.

This gal is right.  If Dems are not going to get out as many voters as they’ve pretended they have, and if we can get out all the voters we really have, we can make a difference.

Also, just as they’re trying to depress our vote with all this “landslide” talk, they may also depress their own.  After all, for busy, scattered, chaotic people (and there are those on both sides of the political aisle), voting can be a pain.  If you’re sure that you’re candidate is going to win by a landslide regardless, isn’t that an invitation for you to stay home.  After all, how much can your vote matter?  We, on the other hand, know our votes matter, and we’re going to get out there and do something.