Does your vote count if you aren't in a battleground state?

If President Obama wins reelection, the GOP will immediately embark on a full-bore campaign to delegitimize his win--especially if he loses the popular vote and wins because of the peculiarities of the electoral college, as has happened a number of times.

So it's crucial that the popular vote for him be as large as possible.

And don't underestimate the frenzy of Republicans to elect their Great White Hope, and, even more strongly, to defeat the Enemy, who they identify as Barack Obama.

If you listen to the right wing radio and TV stations regularly, as I do, you will see how personal this campaign is--and how venemous. Recently they've been emphasizing the traditional traits racists assign to all Negroes, stating as a fact that President Obama is lazy and stupid (needs teleprompter--can't speak extemporaneously--which his first debate performance reinforced) and unpatriotic.

Many right wingers hate President Obama so much they regularly write letters to the editors of their local newspapers denouncing him in the vilest terms--even in areas that are absolutely certain to vote to re-elect him. Their hatred is so mind-clouding that they appear to think that the latest calumny they got from Rush or Sean or Bill O'Reilly will actually convert Democrats in their Democratic districts. This happens to me at church fairly regularly, since I'm one of very few out of the closet Democrats in the denomination I attend.

That's what we're up against. They claim Democrats were like this about Bush, but we weren't. We despised him all right, but (a) he is one of the worst presidents in US history by the accounts of presidential historians--unlike President Obama, who they ranked #15 last time they were polled--and (b) the vituperation didn't extend to denying that he was an American citizen, or that he wasn't actually of the religion he said he was, or that he was the AntiChrist, which about 20% of Republicans believe (!). What I'm seeing reminds me of the way I imagine people in lynch mobs talk with each other.

So all our votes matter. And if you have relatives in the battleground states, encourage them to vote.