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The October surprise is Sandy.

By: barleycorn (Diary)  |  October 28th, 2012 at 12:23 PM  | 

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I’m not seeing much discussion on how Hurricane Sandy will effect the election but effect it she almost certainly will. The maximum damage will be inflicted from early Monday through early Wednesday.  However a storm of this strength doesn’t just move on and immediately everybody gets back to normal.  Bad stuff keeps happening in a ripple effect that can go on for several days. Trees weakened by the storm can wait a few days before crashing.  People are displaced, roads are blocked. People behaved badly. Officials are incompetent.

After the derecho back in June, many people were out of power for up to a couple of weeks and some roads were blocked for several days. If this storm is as powerful as we are being told, the clean-up will last past Election Day.  It seems rather unlikely that the election could go on as though nothing happened.

In a perfect world President Obama and Mitt Romney (or designated representatives) would be privately discussing contingency plans for election day.  Given Obama’s standard modus operandi, I don’t expect that will happen.

This could be a disaster in many more ways than one.

COMMENTS

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  • jamesmpratt

    This will be called “hurricane voter suppression” if Obama were to lose any state impacted. If Romney loses any state impacted it will be called an “unfortunate diasater” affecting our citizens.

  • tngal

    Was thinking all this and more Barleycorn. This isn’t one storm involving one state its suppose to hit half the eastern seaboard plus effect inland states. I’m linking to the National Conference of State Legislatures, and was updated in July. It is a map of the US color coded showing which states do early voting, and there are a bunch on the east which don’t. It also shows which kind of absentee ballot system they use. Excuse or no excuse.

    http://www.ncsl.org/legislatures-elections/elections/absentee-and-early-voting.aspx

    Since its a federal law, requiring election day be the “first Tuesday after the first Monday in November”, it’ll be a mess if they can’t vote on the 6th.

    • The_Rebel

      Laws, federal or otherwise, don’t seem to matter to this regime. As I said yesterday in another thread, the projected path would take it right into Dem strongholds of DE, MD, NJ, NY and maybe even CT, RI, and MA, with power outages that could last for weeks, not to mention the cleanup. Voter turnout in these areas would be devastated, thus ensuring a Romney win in the national popular vote for sure. Is Obama going to let that happen?

  • http://travismonitor.blogspot.com Freedoms Truth

    Obama will lose. Liberals will be casting for any excuses for the ‘unexplainable’ loss, and it wont be found in a President who is a big fat liar …
    http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_lies_MJzki1FNDq5BmavHw9FloI
    … it wont be found in the lousy economic stats and the 23 people looking for a real job.

    Nope. They will never admit that Obama lost fair and square and deserved to lose due to his failed policies and broken promises. They will conjure up “GOP voter supression” and if an act of God gives them an excuse, they will use it.

    Like most storms, this one will be over-covered and over-rated. No election will be changed because of it. But the media will make it a scapegoat if they need one.

    • tngal

      Maybe Sandy’s last name is Bush. That way if Obama loses they can blame it on Bush. Oh, and storms are racist too. And fwiw, I seriously hope people take heed and evacuate. No lives should be lost because people are too arrogant to believe THEY’ll never get hurt or worse.

  • Viet71

    For Obama, Sandy is like Benghazi — he doesn’t know what to do.

    Almost as if he’s being given final exams in full public view just before the election.

    This one would be easy to pass, except he’s got to focus on a bunch of swing states, and Sandy’s not going to let him do that.

    Go Sandy! Go New Jersey! Go New York! Go Connecticut!

    • rightwardmarch

      I know it’s almost the election and passions are high, but if you’re cheering for a hurricane there is something seriously wrong with you.

  • kowalski

    Heh. What’s really interesting is that all the models – until very recently – were predicting a drastic change in the storm’s path to occur almost precisely at the border between North Carolina and Virginia, which is (just about) parallel 36°30′ north: That’s the line of the Missouri Compromise and all the forecast models had the storm making a drastic left turn at almost precisely that location.

    It was that way until a few hours ago and the very latest track cones from NOAA emerged: now instead of a drastic left turn at almost the exact location of the Missouri Compromise line, the left turn begins a little farther south so that it doesn’t exactly hit the line as the cone had been drawn since last night.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_Compromise

    Here’s the current forecast cone track:

    http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/storm_graphics/AT18/refresh/AL1812W5_NL+gif/204249W5_NL_sm.gif

    In the most recent image, the “turning point” has shifted south of the border between North Carolina and Virginia, but for most of today it was almost exactly at the border, very close to the Missouri Compromise parallel location. On the latest one, the left turn begins at the 35th parallel instead.

  • kowalski

    I’m not cheering for the hurricane. It already has taken hundreds of millions of dollars people didn’t need to spend on hurricane preparations and robbed them of their sense of security going into the holidays. People are freaking out. Even here in Massachusetts (where the storm isn’t projected to even hit!) the gas stations are out of gas. Doubtless some of that gasoline was loaded into containers and is being driven to New Jersey in the hope of selling it at $10 a gallon or more – at ripoff prices.

    It’s going to drastically disrupt people’s lives regardless of where it hits. Let’s hope the BAM-D, BAM-S and BAM-M models are more correct and the storm never makes the turn toward the coast and instead keeps drifting east and dissipating energy as it travels toward Maine and Canada. I hope it never makes it anywhere near NJ/Delmarva.

    http://my.sfwmd.gov/sfwmd/common/images/weather/plots/storm_18.gif

    The country is in bad enough shape as it is: we don’t need a big storm blasting straight into the I-95 corridor between New York and Washington at the beginning of a week. People’s lives and livelihoods are going to be disrupted in the extreme if it makes that turn.

    • The_Rebel

      Those BAM models yesterday had it slamming into CT. Those are about the worst models out there.

  • http://www.bohnetlaw.com rightappeal

    Obama is probably right to be worried as the storm is projected to hit several swing states in a way that particularly affects the most liberal regions – Philly in Pennsylvania, DC suburbs in Virginia, and with a bit of a shift Cleveland in Ohio and even Detroit in Michigan.

    On the other hand, all of those states have very competent Republican governors, so the disaster response will probably be pretty effective.

  • tngal

    I have never seen this before out of the NAtional Weather Service. (h/t drudge) Its a Public Information Statement and includes the general warnings you expect to be given out by the NWS. It offers 5 warnings to the people on the Jersey Coast. Points 2 and 3 are particularly strange, coming from the NWS. ( Sorry their in caps, that’s how its sent out.)

    “2. IF YOU ARE RELUCTANT TO EVACUATE, AND YOU KNOW SOMEONE WHO RODE OUT THE `62 STORM ON THE BARRIER ISLANDS, ASK THEM IF THEY COULD DO IT AGAIN.

    3. IF YOU ARE RELUCTANT, THINK ABOUT YOUR LOVED ONES, THINK ABOUT
    THE EMERGENCY RESPONDERS WHO WILL BE UNABLE TO REACH YOU WHEN YOU MAKE THE PANICKED PHONE CALL TO BE RESCUED, THINK ABOUT THE RESCUE/RECOVERY TEAMS WHO WILL RESCUE YOU IF YOU ARE INJURED OR RECOVER YOUR REMAINS IF YOU DO NOT SURVIVE.”

    “http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NWS&issuedby=PHI&product=PNS&format=CI&version=2&glossary=0

  • sengokunadeko14

    Is it really gonna have an effect? All the states that are gonna be hit are deep blue states that will vote Obama no matter WHAT happens.