I haven't seen anyone diary this but even if it was this is probably a different enough take on it to do a diary.
George and Karl are both talking confidently about the outcome of the upcoming elections. I'll ignore Bush's confidence because he's simply a follower and saying only what he's supposed to say. Karl is the one who scares me when he is (acting?) supremely confident about retaining control of both the House and the Senate with this election. Given that every poll that's been out shows that at least Congress will fall to Dems why is he so confident?
Before I wrote this diary I as shaking scared that Rove was confident that Republicans could steal this election. I'm not so sure of that so I went back and changed the title of this diary from "I'm scared" to what you see now.
Markos and others are being conservative and maintaining some reserve by saying that they don't think Democrats will take control of either the House or the Senate. Unless someone is not being honest with us here and is giving us only the good news how could anyone doubt what the polls are saying? It's not even close in enough to take at least the house. Of course, that could change so I have to assume it's the uncertainly that is causing some including Markos to hedge on this.
So, in an attempt to analyze this for myself I come up with some points to consider:
1) Rove is acting confident to convince those who only go with winners to vote Republican.
2) Rove is an idiot - this feels so good to say even if I don't believe it.
3) Rove is whistling in the dark and is really scared shitless.
4) Rove's confidence is based on knowing that no matter how the voters vote they have disenfranchise methods we haven't even heard of.
5) Rove has enough vote theft mechanisms in place to pick up what disenfranchisement doesn't.
6) Rove still has enough left in his pocket in terms of surprises and media manipulations that he believes is enough to turn the tide before Nov 7th. This assumes that the numbers should very quickly start to reverse directions. It's unlikely that they could really sway as many House races as they need in the last 1-2 days.
Let's do a quicky analysis of the liklihood of each without worrying about weighting.
Item 1 - certainly comes into play. How could he say anything else? Even a few votes could be crucial and critical.
Item 2 - not at all
Item 3 - May or may not and actually could be a supplement to item 1.
Item 4 - certainly part of his formula
Item 5 - there is enough anecdotal evidence to suggest this is part of the formula. Think back to 2000 and Max Cleland.
Item 6 - certainly part of the formula
If you take the relative liklihood of each of these and supply equal weighting it's easy to see why he is confident. It's also easy to see why he could still be wrong.
I'm not as afraid now that I've thought it through. Am I whistling in the dark?