We need to educate our friends, relatives and coworkers!

The Detroit Free Press released an astonishing poll recently that showed that in the two Supreme Court races, one for a partial term and one with two seats open for full terms, more than 75% of voters are undecided. Three-quarters of the voters don’t know who to vote for. Of course, Eclectablog readers know:

• Bridget Mary McCormack (interview)
• Connie Marie Kelley (interview)
• Shelia Johnson (interview)

Now it’s time to share this information with as many Michiganders as you can. An easy way of doing that, of course, is to print out the Eclectablog Voters Guide (pdf) and hand it out widely.

As your reward, I present you with the the bloopers and outtakes from Bridget McCormack’s massively viral West Wing public service announcement (after the jump.)

Whoa. Now they’re getting REALLY desperate

Congressman Gary Peters sent out a statement today revealing that the anti-union, pro-Big Business “Protecting Michigan Taxpayers” sued the Michigan Parent Teachers Association (PTA) for their endorsement of Proposal 2, the Protect Working Families ballot proposal that would put collective bargaining protections in our state constitution.

Details after the jump.

That’s the way it’s done, kids

In downtown Ann Arbor, tucked into Braun Court in Kerrytown, sits one of two offices for the Obama campaign. We’re right across from the Farmer’s Market and surrounded by some of the coolest stores and eateries in the city so we get a lot of foot traffic going by while we do our work to get out the vote (GOTV) for President Obama, Democrats in general and the variety of ballot proposals that Michiganders have to vote on this year.

The Kerrytown office is one of several GOTV staging locations in Washtenaw County and we are surpassing our goals on all fronts. See what that looks like after the jump.

Heh, heh…

Taking a break from the political scene is probably not something I’m going to be able to do between now and election day. I spent about 11 hours training canvassers and keeping their data organized yesterday at our downtown Ann Arbor office. We had over 1,100 door knocks by the end of the beautiful fall day.

However, there’s no reason we can’t have a little fun so here are a couple political videos that gave me a chuckle this morning. The first actually came out in August from the cast of the Broadway production of Les Miserable. The production values are amazing and the message is both hysterical and dead serious. It’s called “One Term More” and you can learn more about it at their website.

That video and more after the jump.

Clear eyes. Full heart. Can’t win Ohio. Mitt Romney’s campaign has been doing the Charlie Sheen-iest to pretend they’re winning. But the facts are pretty obvious. If they can’t win Ohio, Wisconsin and Nevada, they’re done. Romney has never led in Ohio. President Obama has basically been running for “President of Ohio,” as Jon Stewart calls it for four years. […]

“[Nate] Silver’s facts are being fired like bullets into the heart of the Romney campaign.”

Dan Hodges has a great piece in The Telegraph today titled “Nate Silver, the geeky statistician who is single-handedly dismantling the myth of Mitt-mentum”. It goes into great detail about the fantasy world that the Romney campaign is trying to hypnotize American voters with, creating a completely false narrative that Obama is on the ropes and they are in the lead with all the momentum.

As Hodges so perfectly shows, it’s a complete sham. Details (with GRAPHS!) after the jump.

Now THAT’S foreign policy!

Pete Hoekstra sat down for a radio interview and call-in show with Michigan Radio’s Rick Pluta today and one of the things they discussed was government investments in clean energy. Hoekstra made an astonishing statement about the major world powers whose governments are making investments in moving toward more clean energy, calling them “stupid”.

Details on this and on Pete Hoekstra’s change of heart on clean energy investments after the jump.

It’s a complicated ballot this year. Here’s some help!

I’m going to pin this to the top of the blog today to make sure everyone sees it before they head to the polls to vote. In this post is a link to a printable Voters Guide for the non-partisan parts of the Michigan statewide ballot. There are two on each page — one for you and one for a friend. Please share with others.

The 2012 ballot in Michigan is a complicated one, particularly the non-partisan section where we will vote for the Supreme Court seats and the various statewide ballot proposals. In order to help you sort through this part of the ballot, we have put together a Voters Guide. You can download it HERE (pdf). We’ve put two on each page so you can have an extra one for yourself or to give away to friends, family and coworkers.

Obviously, I am recommending that you vote a straight Democratic Party ticket. We have been assured by our County Clerk that you can fill in the spot for your favorite Democrat (like President Obama, for example) and still fill in the straight party spot without spoiling your ballot.

Aside from that, after the jump are the Eclectablog choices for the statewide non-partisan candidates and ballot proposals along with links to interviews with the Michigan Supreme Court candidates and my posts on the six ballot proposals.

Let’s go to tape, Mark…

Mark Ouimet rode the 2010 Republican wave to replace Democrat Pam Byrnes as the Michigan State House Representative of the 52nd District. In a dirty campaign with hideous robocalls against his Democratic opponent Christine Green (listen to them HERE, HERE, and HERE), Ouimet appealed to voters with a claim of being moderate and willing to work across the aisle with Democrats. Two years have passed and just how many times has Ouimet voted against the majority of his own party?

0.8%.

Much more after the jump.

Yes, that’s right. Just like Peter Jackson’s production of The Hobbit, I’ve found so much raw material to work with that I decided to break what was originally a single story into two, and now three sections. As I reported yesterday, in addition to being front-paged here at Eclectablog and at dKos, the first chart went utterly viral, hitting everything […]

This dude knows foreign policy and doesn’t like what he sees

Four Star General Colin Powell, the Secretary of State under George W. Bush, gave a full-throated endorsement of the reelection of President Obama this morning on the CBS This Morning show that was as much a condemnation of Mitt Romney’s “Romnesia” and constant shifting of positions on foreign policy and other issues as anything else. Four Star General Colin Powell, the Secretary of State under George W. Bush, gave a full-throated endorsement of the reelection of President Obama this morning on the CBS This Morning show that was as much a condemnation of Mitt Romney’s “Romnesia” and constant shifting of positions on foreign policy and other issues as anything else. He told Charlie Rose and Norah O’Donnell, “You know, I voted for him in 2008 and I plan to stick with him in 2012, and I’ll be voting for he and Vice President Joe Biden next month.”

In his endorsement, he characterized Romney’s foreign policy as “a moving target” and pointed out that the candidate is advised by and has views enspoused by neoconservatives with a thirst for war in the Middle East.

Video and transcript after the jump.