Tuesday 11/2 links

Wall Street Journal political columnist John Fund provides a concise yet useful hour-by-hour election guide.

Mark Steyn sums it up in today's London Telegraph: "Well, it's the big day, when Campaign 2004 moves from its electoral round into the litigation round. For John Kerry to become President, he has to win 270 of the 538 electoral-college votes. For George W Bush, it's not quite that simple: he's got to win big enough to be outside the margin of lawyer."

Syndicated columnist Bruce Bartlett is confident that the Democrats will win one race this year: "The Shrill Meter."

Washington Times columnist Tod Lindberg thinks that Bush will win because the "Democrats' main expectation about this election, namely, the collapse into discredit of the Bush administration under the weight of negative public opinion, simply failed to materialize."

Syndicated columnist David Limbaugh charges that biased campaign coverage amounts to "A media coverup of Watergate proportions."

London Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips: "This is the September 11 presidential election. John Kerry is the September 10 candidate. In short, the proper American view should surely be 'anyone but Kerry.'"

Syndicated columnist Dennis Prager fisks an Internet hoax in: "'Things you have to believe to vote Republican': A response."

Last night Tom Daschle filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to ban Republican--and only Republican--poll watchers from Indian reservations--no doubt to allow the massive vote fraud he's planned to continue in peace. Weekly Standard books & arts editor Joseph Bottum thinks that Daschle just "threw his campaign into the shredder." But Power Line blogger "The Big Trunk," aka Scott W. Johnson, reports that a judge threw out Daschle's suit, and "Hindrocket," aka John H. Hinderaker, rips Daschle a new one: "I have to think that after Daschle pulled this stunt--a last-ditch, deceitful attack on the Republican Party obviously intended to facilitate fraud--whatever Republican support he may have had will be gone. Daschle is toast."

In a column appearing in The Hill, a Washington insiders' paper, leading Democratic pollster Mark Melman positions himself well for the postelection recriminations by admiting that he thinks Bush will win with app 51-52% of the popular vote.

Those with historical perspective will enjoy juxtaposing two pieces: William J. Stuntz's Tech Central Station piece comparing this election with the Civil War election of 1864, in which the incumbent Abraham Lincoln was reelected to finish the war. But Instapundit Glenn Reynolds recall the result of the 1945 UK general election, near the end of World War II, in which the voters chucked out Winston Churchill.

Washington Post columnist George F. Will supplies lots of interesting electoral facts, such as: "In 2002 Bush became the second president since the Civil War whose party increased its House and Senate seats in the middle of his first term -- although a switch of just 82,763 votes out of 75.7 million votes cast would have given Democrats control of the House and Senate." And: "If Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle is reelected in South Dakota, a great anomaly will continue: four Democratic senators from the two Dakotas, where Bush's 2000 victories were by an average of 25 percent. Perhaps this will reconcile liberals to the fact that 16 percent of Americans elect half the Senate."

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius suggests that the real "October Surprises" are the Bin Laden video--and how weak he appears to be.

Former seventies' Navy Secretary William Middendorf wrote an article solely to hint that John Kerry received a less-than-honorable discharge--but that he couldn't state so directly due to privacy laws.

Blog satirist ScrappleFace Scott Ott breaks his latest scoop: "Kerry Votes for Bush, Before Voting Against Him."