Prop 8 is leading right now, 58% to 42%.

What new direction? By all indications the military-industrial complex and the bogus "war on terror" are intact, with a greater commitment to the Afghanistan morass.

It would be a "new day" if Barack Obama stood before the nation today and said....

"Be advised, all you people that have lied this nation to war, spied on American citizens, politicized our Justice Department, and tortured human beings; Never again will you trample our ideals, destroy our moral standing, ignore the law and the Constitution. We are coming for you, you WILL be held accountable".

But instead, the election has put ALL the power in Pelosi's hands. Obama can't even fart if Pelosi is against it. And Pelosi does not stand for change. Pelosi is as bad as it gets.

Instead of worrying about who Obama will appoint, we should be hoping for who he will give the ax to. He should give this mewling coward Reid and the abetting and complicit Pelosi their walking papers.

Mr. Pissed, oooh Mr. Pissed,

Don't be so down, Mr. Pissed, it's a bright new sun shiny day! Yippeee ! I know you just love Barrack really and how he can, and we can too, Mr. Pissed !

Let's play our song I shared with you some time back. I just know you love it !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCnUsInBQws

Bye, Mr. Pissed !

At 7:30 on the west coast, with 95% of the vote counted it's passing at 52%. I can't believe we Californians have passed this amendment. And I'm furious, with no rational outlet, with the Mormon church's last minute infusion of $25 million dollars into the Yes on 8 campaign.

Sometimes people rear their heads, and you can't help but think....

"My God, these jackasses actually vote." Carrie easily dovetails into that category.

And I realize that Obama can't just send Reid and Pelosi packing. A shame, too. But realizing that those two still hold tremendous power pretty much negates any hope one should realistically entertain about "change" or accountability. These two have enabled Bush for eight years now, have stood in the way of pursuing accountability, and stand for the status quo with a capital S and Q.

Obama's speech was inspiring and historical, but one must remember that Pelosi has him by the balls, and his voice is gonna raise a few octaves when she starts squeezing, come January.

POA, why in God's name did you have to invoke the image of a white woman holding a black man's balls in the afterglow of one of the finest days in our country's history ?! Show some decency and quit the mewling.

Prop 8 is too close to call in CA.

BTW, so is Chambliss-Martin race in GA as Chambliss is at 49.9%--went down from 55% around 11 p.m. last night steadily. Buckley, the Libertarian, has around 3%. The goal here always was and still is to keep Chambliss under 50% + 1 and into a runoff election with Martin on 12/2.
Nobody is quite sure yet where the uncounted votes are exactly. Both % of precincts reporting and % of projected votes hovering at 96-98%. This will take several days to sort out and may rest on paper absentee ballots and provisonal ballots.

No point in holding one's breath or nail-biting up to one's elbows. Those of us who worked with few resources from DNC or Obama campaign targeted to GA are exhausted here in Atlanta. Fulton and Dekalb Counties that respectively went for Obama 69% and 79% about as blue as any place except DC.

If we have to do a runoff election in a month, we'll be ready to welcome help from DNC and Obama supporters from the entire country.

POA, you aren't going to change your way of expressing yourself, but Obama is too smart to make Clinton's mistake of going too far to the progressive side of the Democratic Party (where I and many commenters here wish the country would go--because that's not where the country is.) Pelosi and Reid didn't get the numbers and mandate they wanted.

Obama heads the Democratic Party, and soon we'll see his top appointees' names--probably Chief of Staff and Treasury within a week....a very interesting transition like none we've seen before and some audacious choices, perhaps Colin Powell for Secretary of Education.

The change we hope for will come in small incremental steps and I believe first in the tone of the Obama Administration.

This is going to be the

Obama has named his Chief of Staff. It's Rahm Emanuel.

The following post- "Change: The Possible One And The One You Might Get" - at MoA may be of interest:

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2008/11/change-the-poss.html

I do not see that change comes in small incremental steps, either in science or politics. If we get change out of the Obama administration it will more likely come from greed preventing a reasonable response to our financial infrastructure debacle. I do think Naomi Klein, Milton Friedman, T.S. Kuhn, had it right when they assert that change comes in paradigm shifts or "shocks".

That folks like Gary Becker and Richard Posner
see: http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/
can justify the failure to recognize the gravity of US debt and its implied financial meltdown, and excuse it by appeal another fallacious excuse (RAND's Roberta Wohlstetter's excuse of Peal Harbor and "noise")indicates to me that the jury is still out on any real "change".

After all, the New Deal came about after just such a shock.

Holy Cow.. the 8-Year Nightmare is Over! Okay, I finished celebrating. Now it's down to the real nitty gritty. POA, I read your comments and I couldn't agree with you more. Obama should read the riot act to Reid & Pelosi and advise the American public that all those who lied, cheated, stole, threatened or whatever-you-want-to-call-it in the past 8 years are all going to be held fully accountable for their actions. And I'm talking about all those nice little scruby-faced republicans who go around saying 'oh no, that wasn't me.. it was the other guy'. Maybe he's saving these good words for Jan 20. We shall see.

Maybe I missed it, but Wig, aren't you supposed to admit that
Obama was a pretty strong candidate after all -:)

Sweetness, Obama was behind in the polls until mid September when Lehman Brothers collapsed. The ensuing financial meltdown insured Obama's victory. Any of the leading Democrats would have fared as well against McCain as Obama did. Some would have fared better.

Democrats who think Obama was a strong candidate are learning all the wrong lessons from this campaign. To win, a weak candidate like Obama, Kerry or Dukakis need everything to go right for them. In this case, Obama had the weakest economy and the biggest financial crash in 75 years on his side. Winning under these circumstances doesn't make him a strong candidate or even a pretty strong candidate.

And by the way, despite all the hype, the data suggests that Obama's victory was pretty par for the course. Here are the numbers:

2004
62,040,606-Bush
59,028,109-Kerry
411,304 Nader

2008
63,507,800 - Obama
56,151,859 - McCain

Youth voters increased one percent over 2004 and African American voters increased by only two percent over 2004.

Obama can also thank John McCain for picking Sarah Palin and he can thank the Republican Party for pissing off Latinons big time. Obama's wins in Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico (and his good showing in Arizona which he didn't win)were entirely due to the fact that voters of Mexican decent turned with a vengence on the Republican Party.

Throw into the mix the most unpopular President since 1948 and even a weak candidate like Obama was able to win.

I'm not surprised that Democrats have completely misinterpreted Obama's victory. But they do so at their peril. Weak candidates like Obama lose 9 times out of 10.

We just go lucky this time.

But thanks for asking!

Yes, but a) you said you would and now you've reneged; b) he
won a number of states that Kerry did not; c) he won more
electoral votes and a greater percentage of the popular vote
than Bill Clinton; d) Bill Clinton (and all candidates) benefit from
poor conditions and mistakes by the other side.

Recall that HW Bush was presiding over a recession and
famously looked at his watch during one of the debates. Recall
also the pathetic old man Clinton ran against in 1996.

Recall also that no other candidate has had to face the obstacle
of his or her skin color. Hillary was able to crow (rightfully)
about the 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling--to the point
where Palin picked up the same meme.

But when Obama noted (truthfully) that he doesn't look like any
of the guys on our money, he was accused of playing the race
card. And he was tarred with the brush of his pastor who, let's
be honest, is nothing more than a garden variety black liberation
pastor a bit stuck in the 1960s when blacks had every right to
say "goddamn America."

So the historic nature of Obama's candidacy had to be
downplayed to the point of non-existence by the candidate
himself. I mean where was Obama's up from slavery speech. Or
content of his character speech. It had to be left to others.
Where was his righteous anger about the situation of blacks in
this country; it had to be left to others lest he be accused of
being an angry black man. Talk about having to tie one hand
behind one's back!

I'm not sure what you think the wrong lessons are that Dems are
learning. That if you're a black candidate, you have to run a
picture perfect campaign and have an Ozzie and Harriet family?

Given all the things working against Obama--the Clinton
machine and popularity and name recognition, race, lack of
name recognition, relative inexperience, no deep pockets
initially--he had to be a GREAT candidate to get where he got
to.

Circumstances are hard to factor into this conversation. Gore,
one your favs and mine, had a GREAT set up and yet blew it. A
weak candidate? Would have made a much better president than
candidate, IMO. Surely Bush "made the most" of 911.

Would Hillary have won in this situation? Maybe; it's hard to
know because she was such a poor candidate and ran such a
poor campaign, blowing her humongous lead and advantage to
a pisher. Obama's strong performance toughened her up
considerably. And she, too, would have been "lucky" to have had
the economy and (perhaps) Palin in her favor.

She got better in the end, and almost pulled it out. But in
politics, you pretty much have to be good on day one. Either
that, or learn fast, and I do believe Obama is a fast learner.

Anyway, I always learn something from your posts and
appreciate your hanging in here against all the head winds.

Actually, Sweetness, I think Obama was an adequate enough candidate to win at a time of national crisis when the other party was despised by the vast majority of Americans; no more and no less.

Obama's race seems to have been a non-factor. If exit polls are to be believed, Obama's share of the white vote was reminiscent of Kerry's. He won 5 percent more of the African American vote than Kerry did but the African American turn-out increased by only two percent. Obama's share of the Jewish vote was almost exactly the same share as Gore's and Kerry's (78 percent). So, it appears that on balance Obama's race helped him slightly more than it hurt him; but it was clearly not decisive. Parenthetically, the one ethnic group that broke decisively in Obama's favor was Latinos. They voted for Obama in far greater numbers than they voted for Kerry. Thank Lou Dobbs and his fellow travelers for this. Democrats will benefit from a Latino backlash against Republicans for years to come.

Obama is growing on me. I'm glad he won (Palin scared me to death) and I like the fact that he seems to be channeling Bill Clinton (I know lots of other folks don't like this). It's Obama's supporters who puzzle me. Their willingness to fall for the hype astounds me.

The media is conveying the message that Obama ran a brilliant campaign. It's not true. Obama ran an adequate campaign that resulted in an average sized electoral vote victory.

Here is the number of electoral votes won by the winning Presidential candidate since 1960 (the first year that the winning threshold was 270 after Alaska and Hawaii became states).

Kennedy-1960 (303); Johnson-1964 (486); Nixon-1968 (294); Nixon-1972 (520); Carter-1976 (297); Reagan-1980 (489); Reagan-1984 (525); Bush-1988 (426); Clinton-1992 (370); Clinton-1996 (379); Bush-2000 (271); Bush-2004 (286); Obama-2008 (364-pending).

Of the 13 elections held since 1960 Obama's electoral vote total was better than that received by 5 presidential winners and it was worse than that received by 7 presidential winners.

This doesn't take anything away from Obama's victory. He won and that is what matters. But his Campaign, as a campaign accomplished nothing extraordinary. It was an average effort that produced a mediocre electoral vote victory and an average popular vote victory.

Obama supporters who feel that their candidate's 364 electoral votes indicates that he ran an extraordinary campaign that was highly focused and brilliantly managed, must also think that both Reagan and Clinton ran even better campaigns than Obama did. After all, they both received more electoral votes than Obama did twice. They must also feel that Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush ran better campaigns than Obama because they both exceeded Obama's electoral vote total once.

I don't think it's unreasonable to argue that given how bad times are today, Obama should have won in excess of 400 electoral votes. If he had, that would have made his campaign special. When Johnson and Reagan did it, times were bad but not appreciably worse than they are today. And when Clinton scored in the high 300s the economy was in a minor recession and had just emerged from what was considered at the time, a highly successful war.

I think Obama has a chance to be a decent President. He's smart and well spoken. He's far better than McCain would have been.

But as a candidate, he was just about good enough to get the job done, when what he should have scored was a knock-out.

All the hype in the world doesn't change the facts.

"Obama's race seems to have been a non-factor."

The point is, think of what it took to make it a non factor. Plus,
he started WAY back in the pack in the all the ways I mentioned.

Reagan certainly didn't have any of those obstacles.

HW didn't have any of those obstacles.

Clinton didn't have all of those obstacles, though he was
somewhat of an unknown in 1992. And you're leaving out his
under 50% popular vote totals, BOTH times.

Hillary, Biden, and Dodd didn't have those obstacles.

Carter didn't have any of those obstacles and had the wind at his
back and a southern pedigree and didn't break 300.

So, if you look at where the candidates STARTED when they
announced, it's pretty hard not to conclude that Obama ran an
extraordinary race.

Sure, when you put his stats next to Reagan's stats, Obama
comes up short. But if you look at the help Reagan had--his
fame, his governorship, the hostage crisis, 20% interest rates,
his race--he also had a lot of "help." In fact, some have argued
that, minus the hostage crisis, Carter would have won.

I don't gainsay Reagan's victory; it was impressive just in terms
of its totality. In fact, I don't take away anything from the other
winners, nor do I say that Obama's victory was the greatest in
the universe, or anything like that. I merely say that it was
extraordinary and extraordinarily well done.

Of course, what makes this argument difficult to define is that
it's hard to impossible to measure Obama's racial handicap or
the "improbability" of his campaign.

But it isn't hard to imagine that it was substantial, given where
this country has been and, in some ways, continues to be. How
many black senators have we had? Blacks are still way under-
represented. If I'm not mistaken, we've only just elected our
second black governor in the history of this country.

Given all this, I think it's silly to put up the numbers and say,
"Well, he got less than Reagan or HW (his VP) and is therefore
somewhere in the middle of the pack." Sure, numerically. But
this sort of judgement ain't just about the numbers. If there
were tons of black senators and tons of black governors and
we'd had one or two black presidents and VPs in our history, you
might be able to make that argument--but you can't--yet.

My wife and I worked the polls in a poor black neighborhood in
Richmond this year, doing voter protection. When we got there
at 5am for a 6pm opening, there was a line that wrapped twice
around the block in the cold rain. The first people were there at
3am. Old folks, invalids, young people...everyone. It was an
extraordinarily moving sight to behold.

"My wife and I worked the polls in a poor black neighborhood in Richmond this year, doing voter protection. When we got there at 5am for a 6am opening, there was a line that wrapped twice around the block in the cold rain. The first people were there at 3am. Old folks, invalids, young people...everyone. It was an extraordinarily moving sight to behold."

I couldn't agree with this comment more. I live in Florida and I voted early so on election day I was in Norfolk, VA visiting my brother-in-law who is ill. He lives near Old Dominion University which is in a predominantly African American neighborhood of Norfolk. It poured on election day. But by 6:00 am the lines at the local polling place stretched around the block twice. There must have been 500 people waiting on line in the rain. But they were all in great spirits and they were overjoyed at the prospect of voting for Senator Obama.

It was a something to behold and it was very inspiring.