Elections 2010: Still Time To Have An Impact

Only 19 days remain before the elections, but that is enough time for you to have an impact on the outcome.

According to Nate Silver at the Five Thirty Eight Blog (recently annexed by the New York Times), despite all of the money outside groups have poured into this election, the Republicans have secured only about a 6% advantage among “likely voters.” Nate, the savviest survey guru out there, notes:

Those 6 points are significant: were Democrats to have them back, it would alter the disposition of three to six Senate seats and around 25 House races, according to our latest set of forecasting models.

Can you help push an extra 6% Democrats and progressive independent voters to go to the polls? It’s possible. If everyone who reads this contacts all of their friends and associates and those friends and associates contacted theirs and so on. If 10 people read this and they contact 10 fiends and each of those friends contact 10 more, that’s 1000 people contacted. Starting with 10 people contacting 10 others, 5 generations is all it takes to make a million contacts.

Do I expect this to happen? No, but it could, and every little bit helps. [And this is no “get rich quick” scheme on my part. You will find no Google or other banner ads on this site and I will post none until after the election.]

Maybe some of you have contacted your local Democratic Headquarters, and you will be out there knocking on doors or making phone calls to get out the vote. Most of you, I would guess, are too shy or too busy for that. So isn’t passing on the message to independently evaluate the candidates and then go out and vote the least you can do?

 In independently evaluating candidates I would recommend reading my post Elections 2010: Tax Cuts and Job Creation for two essential differences to look for.

To those who remain disappointed by the progress President Obama and the Democrats have made, disappointed that not enough has changed, I would ask you to imagine how much progress on the things you care about would have been made if the last two years if the Republicans had been in charge for the last two years. Where would we be now under President McCain?

In Bill Maher’s words, we “need to realize there is a big difference between a disappointing friend and a deadly enemy.”

Just like brushing your teeth, you don’t have to be enthusiastic about voting, but you need to do it for your own good.

Pass it on.