This thing working? Yes? Good. And don’t click on Florida too much, or you’ll go blind.

So here we are: The Greatest Night in American History. Maybe. We’ll post any notable developments up here, but otherwise the party’s in the comments. Remember to drink every time Tim Russert gets mentioned on MSNBC.

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Our Obamaseltzer Open Thread begins, as is customary, with an invocation from the Most Rev. Howard Beale:

I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be!

We all know things are bad — worse than bad — they’re crazy.

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This is just remarkable, if true:

Obama’s campaign says it has deployed 500 paid staff members and boasts 160,000 volunteers in Florida, an unprecedented network that is hunting for votes via telephone, e-mail, and old-fashioned, door-to-door personal contact.

[snip]

The McCain campaign and Republican National Committee do not disclose staffing figures, but one RNC staff member said the Obama campaign “probably has more [staff] people on the ground in Florida than the RNC has in the whole country.”

A rough sketch based on Census estimates shows that there are about 14.5m voting-age people in Florida right now. Suppose a 65% turnout — that makes 9.425m voters. That means there is one Black Eagle volunteer for every 58 voters in Florida. In truth, about a quarter of these may be written off from the jump, based on research. Another quarter is counted on. So the bottom line is that there is probably one volunteer for every thirty people in the lean-Geezer / toss-up / lean Barry universe.

Yes: Diebold, black box, [scare quotes] “voter fraud” [/scare quotes], etc. Granted. But it may not matter. I’ve never seen something where a state the size of Florida is just saturated with political volunteers. And they are all on Barry’s side. Retail politics FTMFW.

You know, I was worried about the one line from the Geezer that did not have to do with Joedaplumbah. Emphasis on was.

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Strike ’em out, throw ’em out. But, of course, this is a NEGATIVE AD, so Barry is just an awful, awful person, just like Rep. John Lewis. (Insert your own reference to “waaaambulance” here.)

(Sidenote: hey rptrcub? Please give me Georgian Voter opinion on John Lewis. Revered as a sainted man who can do no wrong? Reviled as showboating hack with a good backstory? To the point of whether hitting John Lewis actually helps Barry in Georgia.)

Sure, everybody’s thinking Ali-Frazier, or maybe Gibson-Glover, but we fear that like the last two times, what’s promised as the Fight of the Century will end up looking like a couple of guys dancing, and without Rita Moreno to distract us.

But if there’s gonna be a rumble, tonight’s the last chance. And so we open the final 2008 Presidential Debate Liveblog/Open Thread/Chorus Audition, in the hope that somehow, somewhere, we’ll find a new way of getting through this without emptying the liquor cabinet.

As usual, you’re on your own with drinking games, although we’ll toast anyone who manages to tie in a remark with one of the many lyrics we’ve left untouched. Two toasts if it’s Officer Krupke.

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We can only hope. After John McCain failed to blow his head off last time, we despaired that we’d ever get to see the Bruckheimer-quality conflagration we paid good money on beer to watch. But coming off a weekend calling Barry a terrorist and a liar and a bad tipper, we expect the Psychogeezer to show us the Right Stuff that destroyed three jets.

And so we open tonight’s Live Blog/Open Thread/Snuff Film with the anticipation that we’ll be witnessing history, finally putting to rest Richard Nixon’s 48-year record as America’s Sweathog. Whatever your drinking game, make sure you save a bottle for the post-meltdown celebration.

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