Three Signs Of The Apocalypse

Sign one:  Nate Silver is now calling Brown the winner tomorrow, 3:1.

The FiveThirtyEight Senate Forecasting Model, which correctly predicted the outcome of all 35 Senate races in 2008, now regards Republican Scott Brown as a 74 percent favorite to win the Senate seat in Massachusetts on the basis of new polling from ARG, Research 2000 and InsiderAdvantage which show worsening numbers for Brown's opponent, Martha Coakley. We have traditionally categorized races in which one side has between a 60 and 80 percent chance of winning as "leaning" toward that candidate, and so that is how we categorize this race now: Lean GOP. Nevertheless, there is a higher-than-usual chance of large, correlated errors in the polling, such as were observed in NY-23 and the New Hampshire Democratic primary; the model hedges against this risk partially, but not completely.

Sign two:  Sully is breaking out the hemlock.

Democrats can stop hoping at this point.

I can see no alternative scenario but a huge - staggeringly huge - victory for the FNC/RNC machine tomorrow. They crafted a strategy of total oppositionism to anything Obama proposed a year ago.

Remember they gave him zero votes on even the stimulus in his first weeks. They saw health insurance reform as Obama's Waterloo, and, thanks in part to the dithering Democrats, they beat him on that hill. They have successfully channeled all the rage at the massive debt and recession the president inherited on Obama after just one year. If they can do that already, against the massive evidence against them, they have the power to wield populism to destroy any attempt by government to address any actual problems.

This is a nihilist moment, built from a nihilist strategy in order to regain power ... to do nothing but wage war against enemies at home and abroad.

What comes next will be a real test for Obama. I suspect serious health insurance reform is over for yet another generation.

Sign three:  Jane Hamsher poses this question:

Should Dems Give the Money Back If They Don’t Keep Their Public Option Pledge?

The only way the Senate bill can be jammed through the House is if those 65 members who said they would vote against any bill without a public option violate their pledge. And since the 60 vote Senate bar has now apparently been lowered to 51, that would be something they did because they wanted to, and not because they had to in order to pass health care at all.

So, we’d like to know what you think. Should those 65 members who received $430,000 in donations because they pledged to vote against any bill that did not have a public option keep the money if they break that pledge, or should they give it back?

Rutger Hauer said it best in Blade Runner.

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

Time to die."

I don't know about you, but I really expected the end of the Obama moment to go out with...I dunno, more explosions or something.  Not in a cloud of emopants stupidity.

Well, actually yes, I expected it to go down in a cloud of emopants stupidity.  Just not this f'ckin' quickly.