[Vision2020] House almost sure for Dems; Senate not yet sure

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Greetings:

Here are the projections from pollster.com based on five of the most recent polls.

House: 187 GOP; 219 Dems; 29 toss ups.  The GOP has to win 28 of 29 of these races to maintain its majority.  Probably not possibe.  Sali-Grant race is still a toss up.  That's incredible!

Senate: 49 GOP; 47 Dems; 4 toss ups in Montana, Missouri, Maryland, and TN.  Dems lead in all four, but they are statistically insignificant leads. Dems have to win all four to get their majority.  Probably not possible.

Govenorships: 20 GOP; 28 Dems; 2 toss up.  Otter is counted as one of those GOPs, but I would call it a toss up.  Dem victories here means a lot for the 2008 election.  With the Supreme Court OK'ing state gerrymandering of the sort that Tom DeLay did, you can expect the Dems to gerrymander like mad, too.

Don't forget to vote.  I've appended a short history lesson on the privilege of voting, which was sent on to me without attribution.

Nick Gier

A Night of Terror

The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the night, they 
were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's 
blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 
"obstructing sidewalk traffic."

They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and 
left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled 
Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and 
knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and 
suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, 
dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the 
women.

Thus unfolded the "Night of Terror" on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the 
Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the 
suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's 
White House for the right to vote.

For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of 
it colorless slop--was infested with worms. When one of the leaders, Alice 
Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube 
down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was 
tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because--why, 
exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't 
matter? It's raining?

Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie "Iron 
Jawed Angels." It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so 
that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am 
ashamed to say I needed the reminder.

All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the 
actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, 
voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was 
inconvenient.

My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO 
movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. 
She was--with herself. "One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that 
movie," she said. "What would those women think of the way I use--or don't 
use--my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger 
women, but those of us who did seek to learn." The right to vote, she said, 
had become valuable to her "all over again."

HBO will run the movie periodically before releasing it on video and DVD. I 
wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the 
movie in their curriculum. I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere 
else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but 
we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little 
shock therapy is in order.

It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a 
psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently 
institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice 
Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy. The doctor 
admonished the men:

"Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."

Please pass this on to all the women [and men] you know.
We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for 
by these very courageous women