Going to attack Iran prior to the election, I'd bet.

Desperation. Pure and simple. What other attitude can they express? Graceful defeat? No.
Hope for the best? No. They are lying cowards with no shame. They are brazening it out.
Full stop.

Probably a combination of tactics, including, as mf2112 implies, vote fraud and disenfranchisement, and (I think I read it here) ships massing in the Persian Gulf in preparation for some sabre rattling.

A proven track record of being able to fool enough of the people when it really counts? Messianic complex? Disdain for polls as a product of the Liberal media, or as an inherently liberal-biased obsession with facts?

I just think these guys are posturing to their base. If they show concern, the base will give up and stay home.

It's a bluff and from my observation, a pretty common political technique. Act like a winner to look like a winner to be a winner. Rove did a similar thing on election day '04 by excitedly talking on a cell phone in full view of about 20 news cameras. Granted, at that time he had reason to be excited, but I get the feeling he would have put on the same show if the news had been bad.

The reports that I read (NYT) said that Rove and Bush were expecting to lose 8-10 seats but not the majority in the House. If we expect that things will close somewhat by election day, I think the safest prediction is that the House will be almost evenly split (a 12-18 seat Democratic gain). Many prognosticators are predicting that the Dems will pick up 30 seats which seems just as unlikely. Yet we don't consider them delusional. I'm no Bush supporter. But his confidence is a good reminder not to count our members of the Democratic majority before they are hatched!

They know they can stave off loss of the Senate by redirecting money and attack ads to VA, TN, and possibly NJ. They can TRY the same tactic for holding a slim majority in the House, but even if they lose that, they can still ram SCOTUS and similar appointments through and stonewall objectionable legislation the House DOES pass. The mindset, therefore is, "Things could be worse. We could be in jail."

I'm not sure a military strike against Iran would be beneficial for the administration at this point. I would guess there would be a backlash given,what we all know, transpired prior to the Iraq invasion.

I'd be curious to know if anyone remembers how the Clinton administation was reacting when they were about to lose control of congress? Did the polls seems to reflect how badly they would lose and what were they saying in the press?

Voter suppression and electronic voter fraud gets my bet.

It's Bravado. If the polls are right and they lose no one really remembers or cares about their prediction. On the other hand if they do keep control of the House and Senate they look like geniuses. They become Joe Namath in '69 or
Mark Messier in '94 guaranteeing the win.

How, exactly, would they 'fix' 468 separate elections for Congress?

The opposition has to play their designated role in the political Theatre. Just like Alan Colmes. Any talk about election rigging opens them up to tin foil hat charges. When the polls are 90 to 10, it is hard to rig an election. But when the polls are 47 to 49--it becomes extremely easy. Our elections are easier to rob than Bank of America.

"If you talk about it, even the simplest thing becomes complex and incomprehensible." -Herman Hesse

Bluff. Mostly directed at their putative supporters.

I've been wondering, by the way, how well their GOTV database is gonna work this time around. Their identification techniques (by periodicals read, products consumed, etc) may break down in this environment. The may turn out voters who are fed up and disillusioned rather than on board the wingnut bus, especially those who are not registered republicans.

They've had no time to do the work to adjust the models to reflect the Foley scandal.

Maybe this whole idea that Bush and Rove are so confident is just so much bs. Think about it: the only people who would know this are people who are pretty loyal to the Bush administration. Maybe the spin is being made to buck up the hearts of GOP volunteers in the face of so much bad news. That's the trouble with sources that won't go on the record, there is no way for us to judge their credibility.

If you have to ask that question--then you have not been following the issue very closely. And anyway, they don't have to fix 468--far fewer seats are in play--many of them quite close. As I type this,there is an ad to the right that says: Election officials try to steal another Florida election. Paid for by Tim Mahoney. Anyway, do your own due diligence.

"If you talk about it, even the simplest thing becomes complex and incomprehensible." -Herman Hesse

I'm a programmer. The fix is in, and this is why.

1. Exit polls did not fit election results in 2004. This is flat out impossible to believe; those same exit poll operations were in danger of being shut down in the 90's because they were *too* accurate, and the western states were complaining that the preditions were so spot on that voters might be staying home instead of voting in an already decided race. Statistics don't stop working, suddenly, in contested areas only. One side doesn't just start lying to the pollsters. It can't happen.

2. Election results didn't match pre-election telephone polls in 2004. Again, impossible.

3. Documented case of media being shut out of an electronic recount in Ohio because of a "threat received from Homeland Security" that was never issued. Results in that recount swung wildly for the Republicans and Bush.

4. I'm a programmer, and I state categorically that there is no way to secure a computer system against intentional manipulation. And it seems that these machines are set up for manipulation; they weren't even trying to hide.

5. At least two attacks, one sanctioned and one independent with a machine somehow obtained from the field, showed that the machines can be manipulated so many ways, without detection, that my fingers would fall off trying to list them.

6. A very small number of people are needed to change the results. No actual human intervention at the machine or the agregator is needed. They can phone the changes in.

7. Exit polls have been discontinued because they are "inaccurate". Garbage. They are no longer being done because the exit polls will not match the coming election results. This isn't a prediction, this is a flat out statement of fact.

8. I'm guessing that someone in the Republican party is well aware of the fix, even if Bush and others are intentionally left out of the loop, and this explains why Rove is so very, very confident.

9. The Republicans will hold on to both houses, impossibly, by slim margins in the most constested areas. Recounts will be useless, as they simply feed the same doctored tabulations through the aggregators again.

10. The only evidence of the coming theft will be the results of the phone polls conducted prior to the election. Another prediction: the news outlets will discover that telephone polls don't work anymore, either.

I think it's less of a bluff than it is Rove keeping up appearances for his boss. Rove has built an inpenetrable shield of lies around Bush akin to the Matrix and he knows that a collapse of that facade would risk Bush actually seeing the world for what it is. The prospect of that moment must be too awful for old Karl to contemplate.

I would say they're bluffing. They've done this before. Remember back in 2000, Bush and Rove went on their victory lap the week before the election claiming they had a 3-5 point margin of victory only to essentially lose the election (if it hadn't been for dumb look and the Supreme Court, instead of being hailed as a genius, Rove would either be teaching at some state university somewhere or running some senate campaign somewhere).

They might know something we don't know, but I can't see where anyone at this point would think invading Iran, even if it were feasible, would be a good election trick. The Republicans look like they're going to lose this election because of the Iraq War, so the best way to prevent that would be by invading an even more powerful version of Iraq? Does anyone really think that's a good election idea? And even if by some odd chance it would work in 2006, such a strategy would almost certainly insure the Republican Party would go the way of the Whigs and the Federalists?

At this point, barring some major, unforeseen twist in the Republicans' favor in the next few weeks, if the Democrats don't win a substantial victory in November I would say we'll have to admit the paranoid fear that the Republicans are tampering with the computer voting booths is probably correct.

One last post, why isn't anyone talking more about the fact that the Hussein verdict is going to be announced 5 November? I don't see it having much of an impact on the election, if anything it might anger voters even more by reminding them yet again about Iraq. But I still think it's signficant and I think it's interesting that no one's talking more about it. Clearly the Bush Administration must have thought the verdict would help them in the election, what do others think about this.

But in order to pull this bluff off, they have to take the same positions in internal discussions. Any expressions of concern or uncertainty will leak. It's hard to tell whether keeping a confident demeanor disrupts strategy or not--they seem to moving their money around in realistic responses to poll numbers. In most endeavors, though, an honest assessment of your position is pretty much essential to any kind of success.

Voter suppression, Diebold, court challenges with claims of voter fraud, challenges in the HoR, rallying round the flag when they begin to bomb Iran.

Seems like a long time since we've had "major" terror arrests. I'd expect the ol' rainbow homeland security scale to be on red in about a week.

That's the only card they've got left - deflated gas prices aren't working - they'll play it up big time.

-----
Romani Ite Domum