Here are a couple of good articles at Lawyers, Guns and Money that are worth your time. Erik Loomis writes,

I would like to think that we on the left actually do understand history. We do not. There is a clear path to change. Conservatives understand this. You take over the party structure. That’s what they did in the 1950s and 1960s when they were disgusted by the moderate Republicanism of Dwight Eisenhower, Earl Warren, and Nelson Rockefeller. They took over party structures and local offices and turned them into bastions of energized conservatism. Note that conservatives basically don’t run 3rd party campaigns. Libertarians might talk about doing this–but they almost all vote Republican in the end because they know that they are moving their agenda forward by doing so.

Any reading of history shows that change within the American political system does not come through third party campaigns. It comes through the hard work of organizing our communities to demand change. Eventually legal and political changes are necessary–but only after people are organized to demand them. Look at the major movements in the last century. The labor movement, African-American civil rights, the women’s movement, gay rights movement. Each of these movements spent decades (or a century) organizing for change. For each of them, there was a moment when it all came together and they could demand transformations of federal and state law, which for gay rights is happening right now.

Note that not a single one of these transformational social movements used a third party mechanism as an important strategy.

It seems that every other year or so some progressive comes up with the bright idea of organizing a third party, as if such a thing has never been tried before. In fact, there have been many strong efforts to create a third party, beginning about 1830 or so. In the 19th century there were more alternative parties than you can shake a stick at. Yet there are only two nationally dominant parties at a time, although not the same ones. That we remain stuck with two, and only two, nationally dominant parties has to do with the way we hold elections, and until that changes, we’ve got two parties.

The other thing that has saddened me terribly is the way so many people turned their backs on President Obama almost as soon as he was elected. Some didn’t even wait for him to be inaugurated. A lot of those were disgruntled Hillary supporters. But it was naive to think that all we had to do was elect a Dem president and then sit back and wait for him to fix everything in the first half of the first term.

I went back and read the post I wrote after the election in 2008, saying that electing Obama was just the beginning of the fight. I think it holds up pretty well.

Erik Loomis is right; the Left doesn’t understand history and doesn’t understand how to play the long game. That’s why can’t get ahead of the Right. And the fact is, the Dems in the past couple of years have become tougher and more united, and as this campaign has shown they are no longer shy about standing firmly on controversial social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. This is a tangible change from where they were four years ago. We need to build on that.

Scott Lemieux also addresses the issue of third parties, plus see his piece at TAP.

Nate Silver has Mitt’s chances down to 13.7 percent, and a new NPR poll taken entirely after Hurricane Sandy shows the President ahead, 48 percent to 45 percent, among likely voters.

Republicans in Ohio and Florida are blatantly working to suppress Democratic votes and hand the states to Romney. One of the reasons I worked out the Poll Closing Watch List yesterday was to try to understand for myself how much it mattered. It would certainly hurt if Romney claims both Ohio and Florida, but it isn’t necessarily fatal.

And don’t forget Virginia. Virginia is leaning Obama, although it’s very close. If the President does win Virginia, the odds that Florida and Ohio won’t matter are much improved.

Lots of people are laughing at Politico —

Democrats have a liberal problem

If President Barack Obama wins, he will be the popular choice of Hispanics, African-Americans, single women and highly educated urban whites. That’s what the polling has consistently shown in the final days of the campaign. It looks more likely than not that he will lose independents, and it’s possible he will get a lower percentage of white voters than George W. Bush got of Hispanic voters in 2000.

A broad mandate this is not.

The pressure on Obama to deliver for this liberal base will be powerful. Already, top left-wing groups are pressuring him not to buckle on a grand bargain that includes any entitlement cuts.

And if Obama wins, he will be dealing with a House Democratic Caucus more liberal than he is. The past four years have decimated the once-strong bloc of conservative Southern Democrats, leaving behind a caucus more liberal than ever. By POLITICO’s count, there will most likely be roughly 14 conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats in the next Congress, down from 50-plus only a few years ago.

I almost don’t know where to start.

Josh Marshall snarks: “Or to be more specific, Obama’s winning but not with the best votes. I mean really, if you can’t win with a broad cross-section of white people, can you really be said to represent the country? Really.”

Steve M: “Never mind the fact that if you’re a successful Republican presidential candidate, you’re considered to have a ‘broad mandate’ if you get suburban white voters in Michigan as well as suburban white voters in Mississippi.”

Yes, children, if President Obama wins on quantity of votes, he will still lose on quality of votes and therefore have no mandate to govern. He’s not a real President, because angry old less-educated southern white men don’t like him, is why.

Scott Lemieux: “Shorter Politico: Democratic states should get 3/5ths representation in the Electoral College.” Hah.

And, of course, I see the increased percentage of real Dems, as opposed to Blue Dogs, in Congress as a feature, not a bug. And “Already, top left-wing groups are pressuring him not to buckle on a grand bargain that includes any entitlement cuts.” Yes, thank you. Exactly what’s needed.

Clip ‘n’ Save for Tuesday night — Of course, we won’t know winners right away after polls have closed, but this in the order in which polls will close, by state, and the Electoral College votes for each state. “swing” states are bolded, states that ought to be safe for Obama are blue:

At 7 pm EST, polls will close in these states:

• Georgia 16
• Indiana 11
• Kentucky 8
• South Carolina 9
• Vermont 3
• Virginia 13

If Virginia is called for President Obama, Romney’s shot at 270 electoral college votes will already be remote.

7:30 pm EST:

• North Carolina 15
• Ohio 18
• West Virginia 5

Some are still calling North Carolina a “battleground” state, but the chances the President will win there are remote, and I’m assuming Romney will win North Carolina. The President is favored to win Ohio, but if he loses, and Mittens has Virginia at this point, we may be in for a grim night.

8 pm EST:

• Alabama 9
• Connecticut 7
• Delaware 3
• Florida 29
• Illinois 20
• Maine 4
• Maryland 10
• Massachusetts 11
• Michigan 16
• Mississippi 6
• Missouri 10
• New Hampshire 4
• New Jersey 14
• Oklahoma 7
• Pennsylvania 20
• Rhode Island 4
• Tennessee 11
• Washington, DC 3

Mittens is still trying to win Pennsylvania, but Nate Silver says there’s a 97.3 percent chance of an Obama win. A Romney win there would be a huge upset.

New Hampshire is on the edge of being safe for Obama, but not quite.

I keep wanting to call Florida the “silver tuna.” Mitt pretty much has to win Florida if he’s going to get to 270.

So by 8 pm, we’ll be chewing our nails and waiting for the networks to call Virginia, Ohio, and Florida. If Romney wins all three of those, he has a real shot at winning the election. If he loses any of them, he probably won’t. If he loses Florida, especially, it’s probably out of reach for him. He’d have to pull off a major upset in one or two “big states,” like Pennsylvania, to make up for it.

If by chance Obama wins all three of those, we can go to bed on time.

8:30 pm EST

• Arkansas 6

9:00 pm EST

• Arizona 11
• Colorado 9
• Kansas 6
• Louisiana 8
• Minnesota 10
• Nebraska 5
• New Mexico 5
• New York 29
• South Dakota 3
• Texas 38
• Wisconsin 10
• Wyoming 3

Some pundits are still talking about Wisconsin and Michigan as if they were still up for grabs, but Nate Silver has chances of an Obama win above 90 percent for both states.

By 9:30 or so we may know whether Colorado will matter, either way. If Mitt has Florida and most of the other battleground states, Colorado may help him. If not, it won’t matter. Of course, we may not know anything yet.

10 pm EST:

• Iowa 6
• Montana 3
• Nevada 6
• Utah 6

Iowa and Nevada are both “likely” states for Obama.

11 pm EST:

• California 55
• Hawaii 4
• Idaho 4
• North Dakota 3
• Oregon 7
• Washington 12

If everything is going as expected, the West Coast will nail it down before midnight, I hope.

1 am EST:

• Alaska 3

Now, what are the chances a “problem” state like Ohio or Florida will hold everything up by demanding a recount? The good news is that President Obama ought to be able to get to 270 votes without Florida and Ohio, and even without Florida, Ohio, and Virginia, which are the most likely states to hang everything up, IMO. To do that he would need all of the “blue” states above plus Colorado, Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire, but he’s probably going to get them. If President Obama clearly wins either Ohio or Virginia, then barring some upset of a major blue state, Florida won’t matter.

My point here is that some critical states with earlier poll closing times are probably going to tell us where the wind is blowing, so to speak.

7:31 Ohio and North Carolina too close to call.

Right-wing news media claim that Mayor Bloomberg tried to keep the National Guard out of Brooklyn because they carry guns. I find that odd, since there were armed National Guard in lots of places in New York City for several years after 9/11, and this was while Bloomberg was mayor, and he didn’t have a problem with armed National Guard in Grand Central Station or Penn Station or Rockefeller Center or Wall Street or anywhere else I used to see them.

And, anyway, there are National Guard in Brooklyn, according to a Brooklyn newspaper.

Reading between the lines a bit, what seems to have happened is that Borough President Marty Markowitz asked for National Guard to stop looting in places like Coney Island and Seagate. And Bloomberg said no, that’s what the NYPD is for.

Commenters to The Blaze appear to assume that all of New York is being terrorized by roaming gangs of criminals and there is no law enforcement helping them. Actually, the NYPD is not known for being shy about using firearms against suspects, and it’s actually very good at crowd and riot control, although I haven’t heard of actual riots going on — well, a lack of riots never stopped them from doing riot control before, come to think of it — or looting of a widespread nature. Some isolated incidents do not warrant calling the troops.

The NYPD is the biggest police force in the country. If it were an army, it would be the 7th largest in the world. Mayor Bloomberg joked just last year that “I have my own army.”

Keeping the NYPD doing law enforcement and letting National Guard do disaster relief sounds like a sensible use of resources to me.

I’m not sure if the Guardsare under Governor Cuomo’s authority or federal authority, since I believe Guard units from outside New York have come here to help. In any event, I’m not sure Mayor Bloomberg would have any real authority to say where they are deployed, anyway.

New York City actually has a much lower rate of violent crime than most other large American cities, although most of America seems to think New York is the most dangerous place in the country.

Boy howdy, as Rachel Maddow says — are people ever desperate to get gas. I saw long lines to gas pumps on the teevee, but there are lines here, too. A lot of the gas stations are still closed, and the ones that are open have lines stretching easily a quarter mile, some maybe close to half a mile. Glad I filled the tank last week.

On to politics: Nate Silver has Mitt’s chance to win down to 16.3 percent. Whoa. Although individual polls are all over the place, averages at both the national and state level seems to show a clear increase in support for the President. The Sandy effect, perhaps?

Karl Rove already is blaming Hurricane Sandy for shutting down Romney’s momentum. You know argument’s going to be made that the President’s re-election is illegitimate because Sandy impacted the campaigns. How dare the real world interfere with politics!

But I also want to mention something Professor Krugman said a couple of days ago —

Well, what if we’ve been misunderstanding Rove? We’ve been seeing him as a man dedicated to helping angry right-wing billionaires take over America. But maybe he’s best thought of instead as an entrepreneur in the business of selling his services to angry right-wing billionaires, who believe that he can help them take over America. It’s not the same thing.

And while Rove the crusader is looking — provisionally, of course, until the votes are in — like a failure, Rove the businessman has just had an amazing, banner year.

Earlier this month’s Rove’s Crossroads GPS Super PAC was said to be propping up Mitt’s campaign. All a scam to part rich fools from their money? Of course, I’m sure Karl would prefer that Mittens win, especially since the rubes won’t be so likely to part with millions of dollars next election season.

And then there are the other rubes —

I love this —

If you missed the benefit concert on NBC last night, I thought this was the best part (even with microphone malfunction at the start):

And now, the crazy: Fox News accused NBC of holding an “Obama” concert in the guise of a benefit concert.

Update: The Breitbrats also are outraged. “Watch for the network to turn this into an ode to Obama’s grand and glorious leadership during Hurricane Sandy.” Worse, they called Bruce Springsteen an “old hack.” If they’d had any credibility to lose, that would have killed it.

For the record, I don’t recall that anyone mentioned President Obama or any other politician. I might have missed it, though.

The jobs report is out, and it’s decent. Greg Sargent summarizes.

The news will be taken as a relief by the Obama campaign. It will allow Obama to continue making the case that the economy is healing — and it will undercut Mitt Romney’s closing argument that only putting him in charge will bring about a “real recovery.” However, today’s numbers are unlikely to impact the presidential race in a dramatic way. It solidifies the fundamentals that have persisted for many months now — this is a weak recovery, but it is a recovery, which means a very close presidential race, with a narrow advantage to the incumbent.

What these numbers really mean is that the last remaining catastrophe that could have derailed Obama’s reelection effort didn’t happen.

Meanwhile, there are signs Mittens is in panic mode. Alex Seitz-Wald says that Romney campaign ads are getting more desperate. As I wrote yesterday, he’s trying to tie President Obama to Fidel Castro. He’s doubling down on the lies about the auto bailout and has brought back the ads claiming that Obama “gutted” the welfare work requirement. In other words, he’s trying to stampede as many low-information voters as he can to the polls.

Also, Jonathan Capehart comments on a Romney super-PAC ad that reminds black voters Lincoln (a Republican!) freed the slaves! Yeah, that’s gonna work.

Mitt also has been “expanding the map” at the last minute, going into states in which he doesn’t have a prayer. Seitz-Wald:

Now take a look at where Romney is campaigning in the waning days of the campaign. There’s no bigger weapon in the campaign’s arsenal than the candidate himself, so where it sends him is a good sign of where its priorities are. The Romney campaign has been insisting that it’s in such a strong position that it’s expanding the map by making a play for mostly safe blue states like Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Michigan and even New Mexico (where Obama won by 15 points in 2008). And indeed, both campaigns or the super PACs supporting them are now up with ads in these states.

But Romney isn’t going anywhere near those states. He’s doing three events in Virginia today, which he should have put away weeks ago so he could concentrate on other states. Tomorrow he heads to Wisconsin, where’s he’s still the deep underdog, and after that Ohio, which he absolutely needs to win, but is still down. Then it’s to Colorado, where he may win but Obama has been making a mini comeback. Then he’s off to Iowa and New Hampshire, where he’s down, but could really stand to win.

More likely, the “expand the map” strategy is about his campaign and their allies having more money than they need in the real swing states and a desire to “keep the ‘momentum’ storyline going,” as Amy Walter notes, even if it’s no longer true.

Romney must believe he has Florida already, or else he’d be spending half of his time there. If he loses Florida it’s probably all over for him. But the most recent Reuters/Ipsos poll has Romney and the President dead even in Florida. Nate Silver gives Romney a slight edge in Florida, but calls it a tossup.

Steve Kornacki thinks the “expand the map” strategy is a sign of both desperation and incompetence. At the last minute, Romney is pushing his campaign into states he has been ignoring for months and which are all but sewed up for Obama. He might be competitive in those states now, Kornacki says, if he had been campaigning in them all along. But he didn’t, and he’s not.

This is surreal. A man at a Romney rally interrupts Mitts speech and holds up a sign that says “End Climate Silence,” and the crowd snatches away the sign and begins chanting USA! USA!

Righties: Do learn to make sense someday. Thanks much.

Seriously, how miswired do you have to be to assume the USA! chant is a normal response to this situation? Even if you disagree that climate change caused Frankenstorm, what does USA! have to do with anything? And yeah, I kind of know that they associate their twisted opinions with Real Americanism and patriotism, and that’s the problem.

Elsewhere — Jamelle Bouie writes about Mitt’s efforts in FLorida, which really is a must-win state for him. I was playing with the Electoral College numbers this morning, and it became obvious that if Mitt loses Florida, it’s pretty much all over for him unless he pulls big upsets in at least a couple of big states that are probably going to go for Obama, like Pennsylvania and Ohio.

And Florida’s a real toss-up, leaning Romney by only a hair in the polls. I’m wondering if the stories about Mitt wanting to dismantle FEMA might pull it toward Obama. Mittens is trying to tie Obama to Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, which seems absurd to me, but maybe that sells in Miami.

See also Greg Sargent, “Mitt Romney’s Kamikaze strategy.”

First, this morning Nate Silver has the President’s chances of winning the election up to 79 percent, which is 8 points higher than a week ago. It would appear the late deciders are going in his direction. See also “Oct. 31: Obama’s Electoral College ‘Firewall’ Holding in Polls.”

(And I just noticed the lights are on in the hallway, which I hope means all the power is restored to the building. Maybe I’ll have heat and hot water pretty soon.)

George Will spins a column entirely out of straw men to argue that the Obama campaign has become “empty” and “strident.”

Seems to me the Romney campaign is, like, stoned. They think they’ve got Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota — all solid blue, Nate says. They think they have a shot at Iowa, Wisconsin, and Ohio. Nate says, not likely. Paler blue, but still blue.

I gather that the Romney camp thinks Obama voters in these states won’t be enthusiastic enough to vote (or will be prevented from voting). Only Romney supporters are enthusiastic enough to vote. That’s how they are figuring it. Also Karl “I have THE math” Rove has some theory about why the polls are wrong, which Sam Wang shoots down.

Update: I’ve been playing with this interactive map. Going by Nate Silver’s numbers, if President Obama only wins states that are solid blue, meaning that he has at least a 90 percent chance of winning, then Romney wins. But if Obama wins just the states in which he has at least a 75 percent chance of winning, then he’s got 281 electoral votes, and Obama wins.

Obama can lose all of the tossup states — Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, and Colorado — and still win the electoral college vote. Romney has to win all of the tossup states plus Ohio, or if not Ohio at least two other states Obama is likely to win. If Romney loses either Florida or Virginia, the odds that he will pick off enough upsets to make up the difference grow very long.

For example, if Romney loses Virginia, he’s got to pick off all three of the states in which Obama’s chances of winning are above 75 but less than 80 percent — Ohio, Iowa, and New Hampshire — to get to 272.

So, while a Romney win is possible, he’s got to pull off some upsets to do it.