Dave Johnson of Seeing the Forest looks at the numbers: Catching The “Swing” Vote

Here is what is very important to understand about the “swing” vote: No voters “switched.” That is the wrong lesson. There are not voters who “swing” there is a segment that swings, depending on who turns out.

The lesson to learn: You have to deliver for YOUR part of that swing segment or they don’t show up and vote for you. That is what makes the segment “swing.”

Dave links to Greg Sargent of Plum Line: Progressives and centrists battle over meaning of indy vote

Now a leading liberal group is set to push back on that argument with a counter-intuitive case of its own: Independents are not a monolith, and what really happened is that indys who backed Obama in 2008 stayed home, because they were unsatisfied with Obama’s half-baked reform agenda, while McCain-supporting indys turned out in big numbers.

Elections were, are, and always will be about turning out your voters, not trying to appease the voters of the other side. Again, when given the choice of a “Democrat” claiming to support Republican policies, and a real Republican, the Republican wins. This is why the number of Blue Dogs in the House was halved.

As Lambert of Corrente notes Obama just doesn’t understand. He obviously doesn’t have anyone reading the polling on policy, and doesn’t know what Americans want. He is assuming that the conventional wisdom that he shares with the Village is true, and it isn’t. People didn’t vote for a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President to see Republican policies enacted. The Democratic “swing” voters stayed home and Democrats lost seats.

People are talking about the video taken from a news helicopter that shows what many people think is a missile launch off the coast of California at around sundown yesterday.

At sundown yesterday the surface wind was out of the North at about 15 miles per hour. Do you see that contrail being pushed South [to the left of your screen]? No you don’t because the aircraft that is making the contrail is probably above 30,000 feet approaching the coast from the West. The contrail stretches back to the horizon indicating relatively calm air at its altitude.

Because the aircraft is flying towards the camera it looks like it’s raising.

The setting sun and the elevated camera add to the illusion of something launched from the sea, but a check of the radar logs will show a flight approaching the coast at that time.