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CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: The president is angry, but not angry enough to fix what’s wrong. Barack Obama, Bewildered Bystander.

JONAH GOLDBERG: The clash of conflicting narratives about America is what’s tearing us apart. The Enduring Power of Story.

TOM ROGAN: Western nations have fought shy of enforcing their treason laws. They shouldn’t. The Traitors Who Join ISIS.

IAN TUTTLE: A teacher at Chapel Hill blows the whistle at academic fraud involving administrators and athletes. Eliminate College Sports.

SLIDESHOW: Terror Attack in Ottowa.

Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty

October 24, 2014

Stay Healthy, New York City

Once again, Ebola is not quite stopped in its tracks:

The first case of Ebola arrived in New York City on Thursday.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that a doctor who recently returned from West Africa, working with Doctors Without Borders treating Ebola patients, had tested positive for the infection.

"We want to state at the outset, there is no reason for New Yorkers to be alarmed," the mayor said. "New Yorkers who have not been exposed to an infected person's bodily fluids are not at risk."

He was identified as Craig Spencer, 33, an emergency physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital after experiencing fever and other symptoms Thursday, less than a week after returning from Guinea, in West Africa.

Demote Harry Reid This Fall

Spencer's fiancé and two friends with whom he has been in contact are under quarantine, officials said. None of those people, in addition to an Uber driver with whom he rode, have symptoms, officials said. One contact has been hospitalized as a precaution, officials said.

"For the relevant period of time, he was only exposed to a very few people,'' Cuomo said.

Officials said he had ridden subways, taken a Uber taxi and visited a bowling alley in Brooklyn, but that they did not believe he was symptomatic at the time.

Mark this down for the coming weeks:

“We are as ready as one could be for this circumstances,'' Cuomo said, contrasting New York's preparations with those in Dallas, where the first Ebola patient on U.S. soil died and two nurses were infected.

Mollie Hemingway responds to all of the folks in media who keep telling Americans to stop panicking: “Expressing interest in an unbelievably deadly disease that has spread quickly is not panicking.”

Voter Fraud: How a Legitimate Concern Turns Into Activists’ Favorite Excuse

Voter fraud, and the fear that nefarious partisan types taint our elections by voting more than once, is a legitimate fear. I refer you to the dogged reporting of our own John Fund, and some of James O’Keefe’s videos showing liberal activists happily condoning his undercover offers to assist them in committing fraud:

When he raised the issue of filling out some of the unused ballots that are mailed to every household in the state this month, he was told by Meredith Hicks, the director of Work for Progress, a liberal group funded by Democratic Super PACS.: “That is not even like lying or something, if someone throws out a ballot, like if you want to fill it out you should do it.” She then brazenly offered O’Keefe, disguised as a middle-aged college instructor, a job with her group.

However, the fear of voting fraud can also turn into a crutch in the minds of Republicans. If every defeat can be attributed to voter fraud, there’s no lesson for Republican campaigns to take from those defeats. And if voter fraud is as pervasive and decisive as some conservatives think, the entire system of elections are sham; Democrats are destined to cheat their way to victory every time.

While there is clear evidence of fraud or suspected fraud — such as 765 North Carolina residents who voted in 2012 who had the same names, birthdays, and final four digits of a Social Security number as voters elsewhere — the scale of the fraud proven so far is in the hundreds, not the thousands. There are cases where key statewide races come down to hundreds of votes, such as Bush’s key victory over Gore in Florida in 2000, and Al Franken’s election in Minnesota in 2008.

Any fraudulent vote is wrong, a crime, and devalues the vote of everyone else who follows the rules and the law. But at this point, we have not seen evidence that suggests voter fraud occurs on a scale large enough to swing most elections.

Over at The Federalist, Dan McLaughlin examines whether Democrats really do always win the close races in suspiciously convenient ways:

Let’s begin with the very closest races, those decided by less than one percentage point. There have been 27 such races since 1998, and Democrats have won 20 out of 27 . . .

That’s a truly impressive showing, and proof of how very unusual George W. Bush’s victory in Florida in 2000 was. For whatever reason, when statewide races are decided by less than 1 point, Democrats win almost three-quarters of the time. When the margin opens to 1-2 points, that advantage dissipates, and the Democrats win only half the races . . . The same is true for elections decided by 2-4 points; out of 50 such races, Democrats won 25.

Some people will look at the above figures and conclude, “Ah-ha! It must be voter fraud!”

Still, to fraudulently generate one percent of a statewide election’s ballots, a cheater would need to create thousands of votes in most cases. The two least-populated states are Vermont and Wyoming. In Vermont’s 2010 Senate election, 235,065 voted, with incumbent Democrat Patrick Leahy winning handily. One percent of that ballot sum would be 2,351 votes. In Wyoming’s 2010 gubernatorial election, 188,463 people voted, meaning a fraud perpetrator would need to manufacture 1,885 ballots.

In more populated states, a fraudster would need to generate tens of thousands of fraudulent votes to swing the election. Let’s take Illinois’ extremely close gubernatorial election of 2010, where Democrat Pat Quinn won by less than one percentage point. We’ve heard all the dead vote and “Crook County” jokes. How many votes do you think the crooks generated?

The margin was 31,834 votes.

Colorado is switching to a vote-by-mail system, which many conservatives fear helps facilitate fraud by having lots of legal ballots floating around through the mail system and in people’s homes. In the state’s key Senate race, Cory Gardner is enjoying a consistent lead in polls, and in the governor’s race, Beauprez is keeping pace with incumbent Democrat John Hickenlooper.

Comments from conservatives that “Democrats will steal the election” are depressingly common.

Oregon votes entirely by mail. If you believe fraudulent votes by Democrats are common and decisive, how many votes do you think were fraudulent in their 2010 midterms? Take a guess.

Those who were paying attention earlier this week remember that the margin of victory for John Kitzhaber in Oregon’s 2010 gubernatorial election was 22,238 votes. Did some liberal or Democratic group manage to coordinate the creation of voting records for 22,238 people who didn’t exist? Or did they steal the legitimate ballots of 22,238 other people who didn’t notice or didn’t care that their ballots were taken?

Again, this isn’t to say it never happens. Oregon prosecuted nine cases of voter fraud from 2000 to 2010 — but in those cases, the number of fraudulent ballots was a handful per perpetrator.

Don’t let fears of widespread liberal voter fraud deter you from taking action this year, and don’t let anyone tell you your efforts are useless because Democrats are going to steal the election.

History Suggests Some Close Races Are Pretty Much Over

Sean Trende deserves some sort of medal for this chart:

As he notes, “This trove of data dates back to 1998, and covers all manner of races: Senate, House, gubernatorial, and presidential.”

As of Thursday, we were thirteen days from the election. Let’s use the Real Clear Politics average and see how things look for the big Senate races.

Let’s start with the good news for Republicans.

In Arkansas, Tom Cotton is enjoying a 5.5 point lead. 86 percent chance of victory!

In Colorado, Cory Gardner has a 4 point lead. 91 percent chance of victory!

In Alaska, Dan Sullivan has a 4.3 point lead. 91 percent for him, too!

In Kentucky, Mitch McConnell has a 4.4 point lead. So 91 percent for him!

In Iowa, Joni Ernst has a 2.5 point lead, right between 2 and 3. Oooh, a 70 to 77 percent chance of victory!

(In Louisiana, Bill Cassidy has a 4.8 percent lead in a head-to-head matchup, but that race is almost certain to go to a runoff. Put that one aside for now.)

In case you were wondering, in South Dakota, Mike Rounds has a 9.8 percent lead in the Real Clear Politics average, but it would be 3.5 if you only used polls conducted in October. So you can interpret his odds of victory as either 97 percent or 91 percent if you round up to 4.

Here’s the kind of intriguing news for Republicans: In Kansas, “independent” Greg Orman’s lead is eight-tenths of a percentage point in the Real Clear Politics average. Rounding that to one, we find on the above chart that Orman has . . . a 44 percent chance of victory. Yup, somehow having a one-point lead 13 days from Election Day is actually a bad sign. However, by 12 days, the chance of victory with a one point lead jumps up to 88 percent; by a few days later, it’s down to 68 percent.

In Georgia, Michelle Nunn’s lead in the Real Clear Politics average is 0.4 percent. So she’s not even on the chart. Bump her up to one point for the sake of argument, and she’s in the same spot as Orman.

Now on to the not-so-good news for Republicans . . .

In North Carolina, Democrat Kay Hagan has a 1.6 point lead, which we’ll round up to 2 points. Bad news, Thom Tillis, that’s a 70 percent chance of victory for her!

In New Hampshire, Democrat Jeanne Shaheen also has a 1.6 point lead, which comes to a 70 percent chance of victory. Considering how steadily Scott Brown has closed these past weeks, you have to wonder if this is one of those 30 percent cases.

Every other Senate race has a 6 percentage-point margin or higher.

This is a nice but not quite ideal scenario for Republicans. Assuming neither Georgia or Louisiana are resolved on Election Night, let’s assume Republicans lose the seat in Kansas and gain seats in Montana, South Dakota, West Virginia, Arkansas, Alaska, Colorado, and Iowa. That’s a net gain of six seats! But as great as that sounds, it would give Republicans 50 seats and Democrats 48. If Democrats win both runoffs, they could keep control of the chamber by having Vice President Biden break the ties. If Cassidy wins the December runoff, Georgia’s January runoff becomes moot to control of the Senate.

Kansas, the Thanksgiving and Christmas vacations of the entire political world depend upon you reelecting Pat Roberts — or North Carolina or New Hampshire making Thom Tillis or Scott Brown one of those underdogs that wins 30 percent of the time.

ADDENDA: Today around midday you’ll find a “very special episode” of my podcast with Mickey White, where I share an embarrassing tale that illustrates why some aspects of the traditional hotel experience do not need to be updated for this technologically-advanced age.

Kurt Schlichter, responding to Laura Fillault’s reference to the fact that the United States government has an “Asian Carp Czar”: “I saw Asian Carp Czars open for Lil' Biden's White lines at Der Zentrum in Stuttgart.” That must have been an awesome concert!

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