. . . November 5, 2004

Is it Too Early to Get Out the Vote?

According to the latest United Nations guesstimate, in about three hundred years the planet earth will be populated by a cool 9 billion people living to an average age of 95.

A few thoughts.

First, at the rate we're going, I really wonder whether we'll still be walking upright. Stayed tuned for a right wing, religious, creationist school board in the South (circa 2304) to point to a picture of one of us and proclam, "There's no way we evolved from that."

Second, if we're going to be pushing 95 in three hundred years, I think that bodes well for the prospect that we'll see the bipartisan will to fix social security within about 250-260 years, max.

Third, 9 billion people. That should mean 3 billion Starbucks and at least 12 billion political blogs.

Fourth, it's all going to be about turnout, baby.

Let's Hear it for the Crowd

Bill Bennett wasn't the only bettor celebrating on Tuesday.

So which election models, bets, predictions and gimmicks turned to be right and which turned out to be wrong?

- The Guamanian's have it. In just about every presidential election (Carter/Reagan the exception) the Guam straw poll has accurately predicted the outcome of the election. And so it was this year.

- Those who complain that parity and unpredictability have forever changed (and/or ruined) the NFL have a new arrow in their arsenal. Anytime the Redskins win a home game before a presidential election, the incumbent wins. If the Skins lose, the incumbent loses. It's like clockwork. This year, the Skins lost and so did the challenger. There are two morals of this story. First, you should never bet on football. Second, the Skins really suck.

- The pollsters had somewhat mixed results. Zogby went out on a limb and voters happened to have a chainsaw. Pew and the Tarrence were dead-on. Newsweek was decent, but over-estimated the spread. While the exit polls were way off, give the regular pollsters some credit. All major pollsters were within the margin of error.

- Jacqueline Stallone (Sly's mom) and her psychic dogs got it right. India's astrologers got it wrong.

- What about the kids? Scholastic's kids got it right. Nickelodeon's got it wrong. Too much TV?

- According to the way the Dow was trending during October, Bush should've lost. I haven't heard of a stock prediction being this far off since Bud Fox was in his prime.

- My own outlandish prediction was miles off. That explains why I just sent off a check for 100 bucks to another blogger who saw things differently.

- The big winners were those who believe in the wisdom of the crowds (recently made famous by James Surowiecki). Those who put their money where their bets almost always average out at the right spread for a game or winner in an election. And so it was this time. At Tradesports.com, bettors accurately predicted the overall winner and the electoral winner in every state. Turns out the smart money can't be spun.

The Battle of the Bulge, Ended

And so it was. The final mystery (other than the result) of election 2004 has been solved. Sources in the Secret Service have let it be known that the bulge in W's jacket during the first debate was a strap that holds his bullet-proof vest in place.

Now totally debunked are Georges de Paris' conclusion that the bulge was caused by a pucker along the seam of the jacket and the guarantee from George of America that it was nothing more than his shirt bunching up. In the spirit of full disclosure, this also puts to rest my own theory that W simply forgot to remove the coat hanger from his jacket before putting in on.

Now, the only question that remains is how Rove sent scrambled radio signals to W through a bullet-proof vest...

And You Thought They'd Rest on the 7th Day?

Moderate Republicans who thought they could play to supporters from the religious right to win their elections and then go back to (relatively sane) business as usual could be in for a rude awakening.

During a press conference, the recently re-elected Arlen Spector (who is on tap to become the Chaiman of the Senate Judiciary Committee) was asked how he would react if President Bush wants to put anti-abortion judges on the bench.

Spector responded to the question by saying: "When you talk about judges who would change the right of a woman to choose, overturn Roe v. Wade, I think that is unlikely."

From the right, the Family Research Council quickly ripped into Spector, demanded that he not be allowed to head the committee and explained that his comments were "the height of arrogance and ingratitude," adding that "Our pro-life president and his colleagues in the Senate must not allow Sen. Specter to determine the makeup of our courts. Sen. Specter should not become the next Judiciary Committee chairman."

Keep in mind that this is a guy who voted to confirm Clarence Thomas, Rehnquist, and O'Connor. There was a time, oh, about four days ago, when that was considered conservative enough.

Barney for President

Take look at this color-coded, county, by county, electoral map put together by Princeton professor Robert J. Vanderbei:



Here's a bigger version.

It turns out that we're really sort of more purple than anything else.

Bush without the Bushisms?

Papa Bush was veep for 8 years and pres for 4. W is on his way to eight years in the top spot. By the time the next election rolls around, a Bush will have been in one of the top spots for 20 out of the last 28 years.

Jeb insists that he's not planning an '08 run. And that may be true. It would probably be more strategic to wait four additional years (although moving quickly could mean saving money on placards). If Jeb does run and win and hold two terms (and if W can do it, Jeb might not even have to campaign at all), the Bush family would head into 2016 having held the top superpower spots for 28 out of 36 years. And keep in mind, Jenna seems to be getting into the whole public speaking thing. Planet Bush, the story continues.

Of course, if Hillary runs and somehow wins (I'm certainly not predicting the latter) and pulls off two terms herself, then the Clintons would have held the top two spots for 16 of 24 years.

Just to keep this all in perspective, Johnny Carson hosted The Tonight Show for more than 29 years. And look what happened when he ceded power.

News of His Death Has Been Greatly Exaggerated (or Not)

It somehow seems to make perfect sense that, even in his last days (if these are his last days), we can't get anything close to a straight answer about the state of Yasser Arafat's health.

And those wondering if Arafat's death would help or hurt the chances for peace, it is interesting to note that there is already a heated dialogue between Palestinians and Israeilis over Arafat's long stated desire to be buried in Jerusalem.

On Wednesday, President Bush got a question about Arafat's demise even though he wasn't dead yet.

Talk about your early exit polls...

Spectator Sport

Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi ruffled the feathers of some European leaders when he brushed off those that opposed the U.S. invasion as "spectators."

With major military operations being launched in Falluja and elsewhere, and Iraq's increasingly dire need for foreign aid both in dollars and in personnel, this probably isn't the way to go. Employing the use of public criticism and belittling those from whom you hope to gain support is a strategy that just won't sell. (Well, not anywhere but here, anyway...)

. . . November 4, 2004

Unwelcome Perspective

After a heated election, it pays to step back and put the whole thing into its proper perspective. There was likely no one in all of America that was able to do that more quickly than the Edwards family.

Immediately following John Edward's Faneuil Hall concession speech, Elizabeth Edwards went the Mass General where she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Must Be the Munitions

This now seems like a story from a lifetime ago. But the LA Times has interviews with U.S. soliders who witnessed the looting of munitions at Al Qaqaa.

Anyone do a check of the exit poll numbers regarding the impact of the munitions story?

A Rudy Awakening

Take a look at the final paragraphs of this article on Ashcroft's possible exit. The possibility of an Attorney General named Rudy is raised and dropped:

"Giuliani, a former prosecutor, is considered a possible presidential contender in 2008. Those political aspirations could be hampered by the controversies inherent in the top Justice Department job."

I've heard a few other radio personalities mention the former mayor's possible designs on the White House.

Forget it.

If you think that the new evangelically-powered GOP is going to be led by a pro-choice, New Yorker named Rudy, you're really, really missing the point.

The Morality of the Story

Andrew Sullivan provides some details about the role that anti-gay trends played in this election:

I've been trying to think of what to say about what appears to be the enormous success the Republicans had in using gay couples' rights to gain critical votes in key states. In eight more states now, gay couples have no relationship rights at all. Their legal ability to visit a spouse in hospital, to pass on property, to have legal protections for their children has been gutted. If you are a gay couple living in Alabama, you know one thing: your family has no standing under the law; and it can and will be violated by strangers. I'm not surprised by this. When you put a tiny and despised minority up for a popular vote, the minority usually loses. But it is deeply, deeply dispiriting nonetheless. A lot of gay people are devastated this morning, and terrified. We have seen, and not for the first time, how using fear of a minority can be so effective a tool in building a political movement. The single most important issue for Republican voters, according to exit polls, was not the war on terror or Iraq or the economy. It was "moral values." Karl Rove understood the American psyche better than I did. By demonizing gay couples, the Republicans were able to bring in whole swathes of new anti-gay believers into their party. With new senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn, two of the most anti-gay politicians in America, we can only brace ourselves for what is now coming.

You might think that Sullivan is overstating things a bit here. If you do, you probably live in a blue state. Ask a politician from the South how many votes he'd get if he came out in favor of equal rights for gays. Forget raising taxes. The new third rails of American politics are guns, god and gays. Don't limit rights for first two and don't give any for the last one.

As I wrote back in October:

You may think this election is about Iraq, terrorism and taxes. But there are plenty of people who think this and all elections are really about guns, gays and god. And if you live on a coast, you probably have no idea just how fervently some folks feel about these other election issues. You may not even notice that they are slowly making progress.

Now you've noticed.

Remember the Mary Cheney moment? The right and their backers in the press pretended to be angry that John Kerry dared to speak the name of the Veep's daughter. In reality, it gave them one more opportunity to express their disdain for Mary's lifestyle.

This brings us back to the desperate need to re-frame the very notion of moral values.

See, when I think of moral values, I almost never find myself concerned with what happens when someone's pants are down around their ankles. To me, morality has more to do with giving people equal rights. Anti-gay politicians and those who merely preach hate for political gain are immoral in my book. Terribly immoral. And yet they get the moral vote.

Dems need to decide whether they want to pander to this version of moral hate (if so, I want out) or fight for what morality really means. Here's a start.

Hate is not moral. Call limiting the rights of certain Americans what you want to call it. But don't call it moral.

Getting His Ash Out of There

As the dust clears, we are getting the initial leaks about who might be the first cabinet member to go. It looks like John Ashcroft is likely to leave his post before the end of the year. Reports site exhaustion and health matters. Maybe the administration just moved too far to the right for his tastes ...

There is much talk of a well-deserved Rummy exit and everyone, of course, has been predicting Colin Powell's departure. These predictions go all the way back to the weeks before September 11. If Powell leaves, I hope he starts typing the memoirs on a Blackberry as he's walking out the door. I eagerly await his story.

But, wouldn't it be weird if, after all the reports of discord and in-fighting, Colin Powell stayed?

Press Benched?

On Thursday morning, the newly "mandated" President Bush did something relatively rare in this first term. He held a press conference. After asking people to please be seated, he made his first comments:

"Yesterday I pledged to reach out to the whole nation, and today I'm proving that I'm willing to reach out to everybody by including the White House press corps."

Now would you say that comment was funny ha ha, funny weird, or funny I just kicked the living crap out of you?

As progressives across the country meet in smoke-free back rooms, coffee shops, 527 offices and the blogosphere to try to figure out their next moves, they should spend a significant amount of time figuring out how to re-frame the role of the press.

W would not be laying out his plans for a second term right now had it not been for one key factor. The systematic discrediting and manipulation of the media. It has been a longterm effort by the GOP. To win and win big, they needed to discredit mainstream media and go after academia and the other pillars of the so-called liberal elite. It's important to remember, that these strategies were pieced together by guys from Harvard and Yale. But this not about reality, it's about the message. The GOP figured out what they wanted their message to be (and I give them a lot of credit for that) and then figured out who and what stood in the way of that message getting out, unfiltered, to enough voters.

When this framework to frame the media was being hammered out in a conservative think tank somewhere a decade or two (or more) ago, I doubt those who developed the strategy would've imagined that their victories in this area would be so sweeping.

Fox News often dominates the ratings. The mainstream press was ineffective in their coverage of Iraq and frankly the same can be said of their ability to get the facts out when it came to the war's aftermath.

Remember, millions of those who went to the polls to vote for W did so believing that we did find WMDs in Iraq and that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks.

Those folks (the ones who were paying attention) are either getting their news from somewhere else, or they just don't believe the news that they're getting.

If the press serves a role as check on political power, then the systematic discrediting of that press is a really big deal. And if the press responds to that discrediting by being weaker in their challenges to those in power, then it's an even bigger deal.

So where does the press go from here?

Jay Rosen has an excellent piece on the future of political journalism over at PressThink.

I believe Big Journalism cannot respond as it would in previous years: with bland vows to cover the Adminstration fairly and a firm intention to make no changes whatsoever in its basic approach to politics and news. The situation is too unstable, the world is changing too rapidly, and political journalism has been pretending for too long that an old operating system will last forever. It won't. It can't. Particularly in the face of an innovative Bush team and its bold thesis about the fading powers of the press.

During this election, there was a massive education gap. People who were not college-educated were far more likely to vote against what they saw as the representative of the liberal elite. Instead of voting for a wealthy Bonesman from Yale, they voted for a wealthy Bonesman from Yale. The rich, privileged, Ivy League son of a president managed to make himself look like an everyman while making his similarly backgrounded opponent seem like he was straight outa Kennebunkport. They guy who stayed home from Vietnam made the guy who went look like a weakling who didn't have the courage to fight. Remarkable.

Smart people think your policies are wrong. Well they're just the academic elite. They look down on Americans. Journalists want to tell the story of our foreign policy. They're just pessimists and naysayers out to get the president because he's so darn middle America. Get the picture? That's not enough, you need to get the frame.

If you haven't seen George Lakoff's video How Progressives and Democrats Can Win (which provides an overview of how the GOP got to this point), it's definitely worth a watch (and an electablog web exclusive). Progressives need to remember that this one-sided messaging war didn't start during this campain (I'll let that Freudian typo stand) or even the last one. It has been going on for decades. So you shouldn't have expected that a couple of 527s could reframe America during the course of a single national election.

Again, it's not about reality, folks. It's about the message. I don't know if a 51%-49% spread qualifies as a mandate. But the GOP win in the messaging war was a flat-out landslide. Look at it this way. Their leader could run against Hollywood five minutes after being introduced by the Terminator.

. . . November 3, 2004

The Alan Keyes Experience

During a week when almost everything went wrong for the Dems, you'd have to be sick, desperate or a self-hating sociopath to start complaining about something that went right.

That said, here I go.

All Dems are taking solace in the easy victory earned by the up and coming Barack Obama. Obama may very well have won the most lopsided senate race in Illinois history. He crushed.

And yet, the final vote tally in Illinois is terribly depressing.

What could I possibly be talking about?

I'm talking about the absurd number of votes that Alan Keyes got on Tuesday. Keyes, most famous for being able to turn an idiotic phrase so delightfully that it often takes a listener unfamiliar with him a full two or three words before they realize he's off the charts nuts, ran a campaign that was even beneath his own heel-high reputation. I'll give him that.

How many votes should a crazy man be able to get? Let's review his traits and performace. No one could have voted for him on the basis of race. His famous speaking ability was dwarfed by his opponent. He is a complete scumbag who humiliated his own party (not to mention Mary Cheney, Obama, and anyone with a frontal lobe) thoughout the race. He is hateful and evil and came off worse. And he ran in what was supposed to be one of the few remaining sane states.

But let's be fair. I imagine that we have to give him a few votes from those who pushed the wrong button, poked the wrong chad, or suffered a slip of the pen. Then there are the nuts. And of course, if this election taught us anything it was that we need to take into account those Illinois residents who just really connected with Keyes' message and vision for the future. Oh, and I'm sure there were a handful of folks who just voted for Keyes because they thought it would be funny.

Taking all that into account, and rounding up, I would have predicted that Keyes would have brought home, say, twelve to fifteen votes. Twelve would've been fine. Fifteen would've been a bit upsetting.

This just in...

1,371,882 people cast their ballots for Alan Keyes.

Come on. Can you really look me in the blog and tell me that's not just plain horrifying?

American Perspectives

We All Should Have Screamed

So the Dems need a clear message, a more defined set of positions, a rejuvination of their base, a move back to progressive values, a steely toughness, plenty of experience with the media and opposition attacks, and a willingness to tell it like it is. Oh, and a serious burst of energy wouldn't hurt.

Anyone have any ideas who could help?

The Crusade

No doubt we're divided. The splits among different social groups based on ethnicity, education, guns, and religiosity was even more dramatic than predicted. And, sure. It was close. But not that close. Bush got a majority and more than 3 million more votes than Kerry. After a four year term that many on the left found unthinkably bad and after a solid year of terrible news, the President managed to extend his popularity. He got about 8 million more votes than he did in 2000 and four million more than Reagan during his landslide. And again, he did this in an incredibly divided country.

Let me point to a single moment in the campaign to try to explain one important element of the national divide, and to try to shed some light on why half of this country is not only in a state of depression, but utter disbelief.

A couple of weeks before the election, Ron Suskind wrote a much-read piece in the New York Times Magazine in which he described W's faith-based presidency. For many of those in the blue states, the article read as a scary confirmation of the President's refusal to allow reason or facts to deter him from carrying out his doubt-free version of god's will. Many Dems (especially those with college educations and a healthy appetite for Sunday nights on HBO) thought to themselves, "There! Now people will finally understand how awful this guy really is!"

For the other half (well, slightly more than half) of Americans this article, if it registered at all, read like a multipage Bush campaign ad. Karl Rove couldn't have said it better himself.

Forget terrorism and the Iraq war for a second. This election was largely about the cultural war (or maybe we should call it a cultureless war or a reality war). More than a fifth of all voters said that moral values was the most important issue in the campaign. Think about that number. Imagine how high it would have been if we were not currently in tough economic times and a couple of wars. Those moral values voters went for Bush in a landslide.

And the religification of the American electorate is not simple a red state, blue state trend. Voters in eleven states were confronted with the opportunity to proactively limit the rights of their fellow citizens by supporting a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. In eight of those states, the proposed amendments would also ban civil unions for same sex partners.

In every state, those amendments were passed by a large margin.

One half of this country woke up this morning worrying about the inevitable shift towards the right in this country which will first be felt as a slew of new, conservative federal judges are appointed. The other half is thrilled by the notion and would love to see Roy Moore back in his black robe, maybe in D.C.

Take a drive across this country. Monica Lewinsky (if you don't think the "sex with that woman" still matters, you are totally missing the lesson of this election), the threat to guns, and gay marriage are what you'll hear people talking about in coffee shops.

So where do the Dems stand on the issue of moral values? Well, neither Kerry nor Edwards supported gay marriage. Nearly every politician is fully supportive of the word god in the pledge. Few have spoken out about the shift of public money to religious groups. Which Democratic candidate even positioned things like free speech, minority rights and thousands of deaths in a pre-emptive war as moral issues? Only one side is really fighting these culture wars. When it comes to the morals debate, the pandering Dems are like the GOP-light. Why would any of the moralists choose diet god?

And what of the massive number of those voters who think that the version of morals being pedaled by the GOP and millions of evangelicals is way off the mark and ultimately bad for America? Well, at least through this election, they have no strong voice in American government. And until this election, I'm not sure they realized that they really needed one. They didn't even know that this was that big of an issue.

Check the scoreboard. It is.

The Closer Closes the Book

I went back to Ohio,
But my city was gone.
The Pretenders

Senator Kerry has called Bush to congratulate him on the win. Calls for more unity in the country. Concession speech coming soon. Bush victory speech to follow.

Electoralysis

Even though he just closed the deal in Wisconsin, the numbers probably will not add up for Kerry in Ohio. But it's possible. And that strikes me as ridiculous. Here's why. John Kerry (at worst, he was only about 100,000 Ohio voters changing their minds away from the White House) could easily have taken Ohio and won the electoral vote while losing the popular vote by a cool 4 million or so.

Doesn't that seem a little stupid?

Look at it this way. Who deserved to be more depressed. Al Gore in 2000 or John Kerry in 2004?

Anyway, Bush has decided not to give a speech (it's 5:00am in D.C. right now) so I'm going to get a few provisional hours of sleep.

The M Word

Back to back wins. Plus, breaking 51%. Plus a multimillion voter spread in the popular vote.

Get ready to hear the word mandate over and over. And remember, this is a president who led as if he had a mandate when he lost the popular vote.

The Propositionator

I don't want to be the first to start thinking about constitutional amendments and 2008 just yet, but it is worth pointing out that just about every CA ballot item that Arnold backed, passed.



In other CA news, the stem cell ballot measure passed easily. This now becomes critical. Before today, many oponents of the stem cell bill were worried that CA would get stuck footing the bill for a program a President Kerry would've restarted anyway.

So much for that theory.

We are left with CA and a few other places going one way and America going another. Metaphor, no?

. . . November 2, 2004

Just for Fun...

Let's say, just for fun, that Kerry wins all of the states he is currently leading and W does the same. And then it turns out that most of those provisional ballots in Ohio were given to minorities and others likely to have leaned towards Kerry. And somehow, Kerry takes Ohio. Then Kerry would win. That's how close this is. That's why Edwards made an appearance to say:

"We've waited four years for this victory. We can wait one more night."

I still stand by the post below, though.

Last question for tonight: Will W make a speech?

It's Rebuilding Time for the Dems

All that's left is the speeches (Well, OK, the lawyers in Ohio, and then the speeches). You've got to hand it to the GOP political machine. No WMDs. Poor economy. Bad news out of Iraq. International contempt. Horrible debate performances. And still, these guys won the election. Make no mistake. To still win it, even given the performance of this president and some of his top team members over the last couple of years, is nothing less than a complete political ass kicking. Oh, and they'll keep the House and the Senate too.

That means the GOP is just better at the game and more sure about what they believe in.

Dems know tonight they lost the race. And they know that they're stuck with W. But the inability to close this deal suggests that they may not know enough beyond that. They need to start figuring it out tomorrow morning.

All the provisional ballots in the world won't change that, folks. Even if Ohio flipped (and it still might and I hope it does and I think the story of who got provisional ballots and why has legs), the Dems would have much work to do.

Assuming Kerry doesn't have a miracle in him, the Bush family just passed the Adams family (that father and son had only one term each). W is now a massive historical figure. Get ready for a hard move right and maybe a new S.C. justice or two. Damn.

The Dems did make some strides. More toughness. More ground work. Good internet. Improved messaging. But a long way to go.

Look on the bright side. Two or three hundred years from now, all anyone will remember about 2004 is the Red Sox. Between now and then, in the words of my urologist, this will be incredibly uncomfortable.

Where'd Everybody Go?

Just about every person on the GOP team is out doing interviews on all the nets. From the Dems, the only person I've seen in awhile is PDiddy.

No one has called it yet, but it sure looks over.

And check these poll numbers out:

Most Important Issue:
21% moral values
20% economy
18% terrorism

Like I've been saying for months, there is a cultural battle being waged in this country but only one side is fighting.

Lessons Learned

When it comes to the presidential battle, we already have more than enough data to zero in on two of the key lessons we've learned:

1. The breakdown is incredibly similar to 2000. Iraq, terrorism, the economy, culture wars. Whatever. Nothing can change our minds.

2. Negativity gets us to the polls in huge numbers.

Want to Rent a Movie?

Looks like most of the close-call predictions were right. And that surprises me a bit. Exit polls are pretty bad. And that doesn't surprise me much.

Penn went for Kerry. Florida has gone to Bush although many networks are delaying the call.

This thing is going to go down to the wire again. It looked more positive for Kerry earlier, but things are still a toss-up. Either way, we are likely headed into the wee hours of the night.

There is just absolutely no way I can take Aaron Brown right now.

To Be Young Again

A good number. Twice as many voters between 18-29 voted this year than in 2000. 13% of voters in Florida were first time voters. Some of this could be due to the general trends in terms of turnout. The young voter numbers will be interesting to watch.

Update: Looks like the youth didn't show up in the numbers many had expected -

From Kos: MSNBC exit poll indicates that the youth did not vote. The 18-29 bracket voted the same this year as in 2000, while 30-44 group was down. That's what's killing us.

These numbers make Eminem look like Vanilla Ice.

Ohio and Penn Pull a Florida

Court cases abound in Ohio. In the main case, a judge has ordered that people still waiting in hours-long lines (after the scheduled closing of the polls) must be given provisional ballots and be allowed to vote.

There are also reports of at least one poll staying open later (to 9:30) in Pennsylvania. GOP is trying to stop that one.

In both cases, voters who were already in line get to stay there until they cast their votes. It could be hours.

And the Florida announcement that absentee ballots will not be counted for days could suggest more madness there.

While the legal news out of the battleground states could be worse, any election officials who couldn't get the job done this year should be out of work by morning. We knew this would be terribly close. We knew the the polling places would be pushed to the limit.

In other news, Colorado will not split their electoral votes.

Man, this thing looks close.

How Iraq is Playing at the Exits

Interesting exit poll numbers from MSNBC on the Iraq issue:

Decision to go to Iraq
48% approve
48% disapprove

Situation in Iraq
12% going well
32% going somewhat well
55% going badly

Iraq war
52% part of war on terror
45% separate

Iraq imporved U.S. security
43% yes
54% no

Given what we know now, those approve and disapprove numbers are a tribute to the Bush message machine. They also say something about the anything but liberal the job media has done telling the story of Iraq.

It is Alive...

Reminder: Electablog's review of the election year to date is available and being updated throughout the night.

Kerry Takes Jersey Off the Table

Kerry:
N.J. (Springsteen's mojo intact)*
Illinois (+ Obama makes it official)
Conn.
D.C.
Maryland
Mass
Del.
Maine (3 of 4 electoral votes, 1 up for grabs)

*Big news out of Jersey: Voters who said terrorism was the number one issue leaned overwhelmingly towards Kerry.

Bush:
Tenn
Alabama
Oklahoma
South Car.
North Car. (big spread for Bush, but Kerry won 60% of the young vote)

Nothing yet on Florida, Ohio, Penn.

Did Someone Just Say Thursday?

According to CNN, election officials in Miami-Dade County are warning that it's quite unlikely that they'll be able to count many of the absentee ballots until Thursday.

That could be bad news for any of you who have short term plans to get on with your life.

Making the Calls

The networks are calling the first few states. Nothing surprising yet. Bush wins Georgia, Indiana and Kentucky. Kerry wins Vermont.

But seriously. After this long of a haul, is anyone else out there amazed that we are finally calling states?

Meanwhile, Wonkette keeps you knee-deep in mysterious exit polls.

A Tale of Two Elections

It was the best of elections, it was the worst of elections.

The last few months have been marked by two key trends:

First, people from the blue side and the red side began to hate each other more than ever. And both sides sort of hated Nader and Ashlee Simpson.

Second, it became more and more clear that a lot of voters around the country were basing their contempt on bad information. They had no idea of the facts behind the stories of the day.

That's one tale. Here's the other.

People are fired up about politics. This election day is big. This is bigger than Clay Aiken. This is bigger than Trump's boardroom. This is bigger than Beyonce (unless she's touring with the other members of Destiny's Child).

People are waiting in line for hours to cast their votes. Millions of volunteers are participating in the get out the vote ground war. The web has been overwhelmed by traffic. Blog sites are slowing or going down under the stress. Consider the vote officially rocked.

As Ron Reagan pointed out: Apathy is no longer cool.

Whichever way this baby turns tonight, every American should be pretty psyched about the way it went today.

Zogby Makes Their Call

The folks at Zogby offer up their final prediction on the electoral vote.

Kerry: 311
Bush: 213

Too Close To Call
Nevada (5), Colorado (9)

+

Not into the experts? Let's see what the crowd thinks. Over at Tradepsorts, Bush is being sold off faster than Netflix when Amazon decided to rent DVDs. (link via Kottke.org)

+

Yes, it's early. Way, early. But I have a weird feeling that we may be stuck listening to John O'Neill for at least the next four years.

The Exitous?

Here are some exit poll numbers compiled by Slate:

Florida
Kerry 50
Bush 49

Ohio
Kerry 50
Bush 49

Pennsylvania
Kerry 54
Bush 45

Wisconsin
Kerry 51
Bush 46

Michigan
Kerry 51
Bush 47

Minnesota
Kerry 58
Bush 40

Nevada
Kerry 48
Bush 50

New Mexico
Kerry 50
Bush 48

North Carolina
Kerry 49
Bush 51

Colorado
Kerry 46
Bush 53

It's important to note that these are early numbers. And plenty of folks are questioning their accuracy and/or importance.

Here is a non-scientific poll (based only on a bit of random clicking). The left leaning blogs have been sluggish or even down several times during the day. The right leaning blogs seem to be operating well. Now either the left has really bad webmasters, or they own the surge of voter enthusiasm so far today.

Of Bulls and Blogs

Shortly before U.S. markets closed on Tuesday, there was a stong jolt to the blue chips. Why?

Blame the bloggers. It looks like early exit polls making their way around the blogosphere (most of which had caveats and warnings attached) made their way to the trading floor.

According to one trader: "Apparently the blogs are saying that Kerry is ahead in one or two of the swing states and that's why the market dipped." (Funny, that news cause every stock in my portfolio to rise.)

Wait a second. Now we can move markets? Then why the frick are we wasting our time on politics?

Coming soon: Junkbondablog.com*

One Man, One Voting Experience

All day, we've been hearing reports about what looks and feels like an incredible turnout. In Ohio, some people waited in line for as long as 3 hours just to get into a voting booth.

In my neighborhood, things are bit less frantic.



Here then it is an unprecendented look at the inner workings of a first world, non-battleground polling place and much, much more.

Check out One Man, One Voting Experience.

Bush Takes Guam

OK, so Guam has no electoral votes and even their popular vote doesn't actually count outside of, well, Guam. You still get the results here.

In a straw poll, W took Guam by a fairly convincing margin.

It turns out that Guam's straw poll matches the U.S. election outcome almost every time. On the other hand, they took Cater over Reagan in '80, so John Kerry shouldn't start cursing that lucky Red Sox hat just yet.

Are We Entering an Age of Reason?

A lot of bloggers are already pointing to some Kerry, Kerry favorable exit polls (although the early ones are rarely accurate and no one is quite saying where these came from).

K/B

AZ 45-55
CO 48-51
LA 42-57
MI 51-48
WI 52-48
PA 60-40
OH 52-48
FL 51-48
MICH 51-47
NM 50-48
MINN 58-40
WISC 52-43
IOWA 49-49
NH 57-41

And the Kerry blog folks are loving the early turnout numbers:

- In Florida 33,000 more Democrats have voted than Republicans.

- In Iowa, 45,000 more Democrats have voted than Republicans. According to a Des Moines Register poll we have an 11 point advantage with these voters. 22% are new or sporadic voters.

- In New Mexico 20% more Democrats have voted than Republicans – a 26,000 person advantage. And in Nevada an equal number of Democrats and Republicans have voted in 2004.

While I share the confidence expressed in these real or fake, important or meaningless numbers, there is another story that is suggests that this might be a done deal.

Americans are finally getting over the low carb craze. And it's just in time. I don't think I could have taken four more years.

I'm off to get several bagels and place my vote.

Are They Watching in Iraq?

While many pundits have tried and failed to explain the undecideds in this country (and one imagines there are still a handful of them scratching their heads as they search for their polling places), the ones in Iraq might be a bit easier to understand.

Month after month without basic services or security, and with increasing violence and desperate unemployment, have left Iraq's soon-to-be voting public ambivalent about the U.S. election.

Between Bush and Kerry, it's pretty much a dead heat. On the other hand, its a landslide when it comes to another question. Do you care who wins the U.S. election? More than 60% of Iraqis say no.

Pre-emptive in Philly

If you look hard enough, you can likely see what you want to see. The first voting controversy took place in Philly (surprise) where GOP operatives were reporting that many of voting machines had votes on them before the polls even opened (some, frankly, would call that efficiency).

It turned out the the observers were looking at the wrong set of numbers on the machines.

If they thought those wrong numbers were upsetting, wait until they see the real ones.

Meanwhile, that white powder in Jersey turned out to be salt. As if our blood pressure wasn't high enough already...

But Will He Call Me in the Morning?

Once all is said and done, the amount of dough spent by the various parties and groups will likely surpass the $5 billion mark.

All that money and there were no gift bags, no pie eating contests, no big prize raffles, no sentences that weren't either run-ons or unintelligible, and Nader still refused to iron his suit.

I haven't heard about that much cash being spent with no one getting laid since Anna Nicole Smith's inheritance case.

A lot of the dough went towards airing commercials in the battleground states (we may be down to six of them). The folks who live in one of those unfortunate places were treated to a cool 675,000 commercials. In the last week alone, the two campaigns and their supporters spent $60 million on cable and local TV ads.

The various groups spent about three times as much on TV time as they did in the year 2000. Think about that. We last met four years ago when the country was split down the middle so narrowly that it took weeks to declare a winner. Now, four years and billions of dollars later, we enter this voting day split down the middle once again.

Maybe there's a lesson here. The American people were underestimated once again. Our hate for the other side cannot be bought off! We don't need no stinking wolves.

$5 billion just to convince us of what we already thought ... Suddenly I don't quite as bad about my therapy bills.

Your Election Day Cheatsheet

Here is a month by month review of the highlights, important quotes and odd moments that marked this seemingly endless campaign. From gay marriage to Janet's knocker, from Joementum to Nomentum, from Sharpton to Arnold, from cheer factor to fear factor, from O'Franken to O'Reilly. We begin with:

January:

Dean screams.



The rest of this post is continued here . . . . .

More Midnight to Come

Voters in a hamlet called Hart's Location, New Hampshire continued their tradition of voting just after midnight. Those results are already in:

Bush: 15
Kerry: 15
Nader: 1

Mathew Gross has the early Hart's Location analysis.

Get the Voter Out?

Apparently, the nays have it when it comes to letting people place their votes in peace. An Ohio appeals court reversed and earlier ruling and cleared the way for GOP operatives to challenge the eligibility of folks who show up to vote on Tuesday.

. . . November 1, 2004

The Early Bird Catches the Term

At the risk of being over-confident on couple of counts, I have taken the liberty of changing my tagline. See how the new one strikes you:

Dave Pell, U.S. Ambassador to Cyberspace

While the campaigns are turning up the volume for the final push, the fact remains that a significant percentage of swingers have already cast their votes. And in states like Florida and Iowa, those early voters are leaning heavily towards Kerry. These numbers should be viewed through the lens I created earlier today when I explained, quite dramatically, why this race cannot be close.

I'm sticking with my original prediction made a few weeks ago:

Percentage of Popular Vote:

Kerry: 55%
Bush: 44%
Nader: 1%

Electoral Votes:

Kerry: 306
Bush: 232

When I first made this prediction, I felt it was only fair to mention that I was, at the time, ranked 53 out of 60 in my NFL betting pool.

This week, I was among the top five.

When 1-900 Numbers Call You

According to the A.P., voters in several Michigan cities have been receiving recorded phone calls that suggest Kerry and Edwards will legalize gay marriage:

When you vote this Tuesday remember to legalize gay marriage by supporting John Kerry. We need John Kerry in order to make gay marriage legal for our city. Gay marriage is a right we all want. It's a basic Democrat principle. It's time to move forward and be progressive. Without John Kerry, George Bush will stop gay marriage. That's why we need Kerry. So Tuesday, stand up for gay marriage by supporting John Kerry.

That's the best they've got? How boring. Didn't they get the memo from the GOP operatives in Florida? To move the last handful of voters, at the very least, you've got to play the dirty bomb card or suggest that Osama was wearing a John Kerry pin.

Meanwhile, GOP officials suggest that they've heard reports of phone calls by supposed Bush supporters who either tell those who answer the phone that they've been drafted to fight in Iraq or simply unleash a litany of swear words.

Good to know they're still using Cheney right up to the end.

The Other Half

Jason Kottke pulled this quote out of Malcolm Gladwell's latest New Yorker piece:

"The vast majority of people get over traumatic events, and get over them remarkably well. Only a small subset - five to fifteen per cent - struggle in a way that says they need help."

Whatever happens tomorrow, about half of all Americans will likely find themselves in the position of being exceptions to that rule.

Maybe it all comes down to which group will see the biggest surge of new business:

The priests or the shrinks.

+

There is some good news for bloggers. I hear that the Betty Ford Clinic is opening up a new practice to serve those who are severely addicted to their own opinions related to this election. The unit is already oversubscribed, so significant traffic numbers will be a prerequisite.

Ohio's Velvet Rope

If the GOP had won today's election court cases, getting past the hubbub to place your vote at some precincts in Ohio would've been tougher than getting into The Viper Room without some serious box office mojo or a reasonably aggressive breast job.

Concerned that the Dems were committing fraud in their registering of thousands of new voters, the GOP moved to man polling places with an army of volunteers who would be around to challenge anyone who didn't seem like they had their papers in order.

In one case, an African American couple brought the issue of the challengers to a judge and argued that these bouncers just happened to be planning to target mostly minority precincts. In that case and one other, the judges ruled that the challengers would not be allowed to set up shop at polling places.

This Just Cannot Be Close

In an era largely marked by nearly everyone being wrong about everything, what are the chances that everyone is right about this election? And what are the odds that after the thrilla of 2000, we'd have another race that goes down to (and well beyond) the wire? I think the smart money bets against the predictions on this one.

Take the blow-out and the points.

I guarantee there are already plenty of journalists working on their "how we got it so wrong" post-election packages.

In the age of wrong, it is reasonable to bet against conventional wisdom. The crowd will tell a different story tomorrow. Not a landslide, but a big win with a decent spread. Just to prove how far out on a limb I am willing to go, here are a couple more predictions.

Nevada, clean
Florida, no major problems
Ohio, 5 point spread
Illinois, lower than 8% turnout among the dead
The Incredibles, top grossing animated movie ever
Pennsylvania, 6 point spread
Ohio, attention won't make up for Buckeyes' season
Mary Cheney, Bisexual

Aside from the fact that I've already seen The Incredibles, I have no facts to back up these theories which just makes them all the more appropriate for the season.

In the meantime, here are the pre-game poll numbers (and swing state weather reports) courtesy of Taegan over at Politicalwire.com

Popular Vote Polls:

- CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll has Bush leading 49% to 47%

- Fox News has Kerry ahead 47% to 45%.

- Pew Research Center has Bush ahead 48% to 45%.

- NBC News/Wall Street Journal has Bush ahead 48% to 47%.

- CBS News/New York Times has Bush ahead 49% to 46%.

- Marist College has Kerry ahead 49% to 48%.

- Democracy Corps has Kerry ahead 48% to 47%.

- George Washington University has Bush ahead 49% to 45%.

- American Research Group has Kerry leading 49% to 48%.

Tracking Polls::

- Zogby/Retuers: Tied at 48%.

- Fox News: Kerry leads 47% to 46%.

- ABC News/Washington Post: Tied at 48%

- Rasmussen: Bush leads 48% to 47%.

Electoral Vote Predictions:

- Electoral Vote Predictor: Kerry 298, Bush 231

- National Journal: Bush 217, Kerry 184 with 137 tied.

- Election Projection: Bush 286, Kerry 252

- Ed Fitzgerald: Bush 255-263, Kerry 246-258

- Slate: Kerry 299-239

+

Swing State Weather Forecasts:

- Florida: Showers in the panhandle region, cloudy elsewhere.

- Ohio: Thunderstorms and rain across the state.

- Pennsylvania: Showers across most of the state.

- Wisconsin: Partly to mostly cloudy, possible showers in the morning.

- Minnesota: Sunny to partly cloudy.

- Iowa: Mostly clear.

- New Mexico: Partly cloudy.

- Nevada: Sunny.

Although turnout is critical, I tend to think that the worse the weather, the better it is for Dems. According to polls, they want it more. What's a little rain (or snow, or sleet, or mudslides, or earthquakes, or city-wide sinkholes) if you consider this to be the most important election of your lifetime?