I am pretty sure Jon is too busy buying plane tickets to watch the speech.

Anyone getting a southern preacher vibe from this speach, an uplifting post? With Yes We Can replacing Amen?

I missed my electoral vote projection, but I nailed the popular vote, which is settling in at 51-48.

This country has the worst economy in 80 years, is involved in an unpopular war, and the incumbent president has an approval rating in the low 20's. In spite of that, the republican nominee, who should have lost by double digits, made this a respectable race.

:D

The crowd is creeping out me a litte. It's like the end of a movie with the crowd, music, and Obama's victory moves/statue.

I have a lot of respect for McCain, and I really think he did just about as well as anyone could really expect with a R- President in office with an approval rating in the 20's.

I think if McCain would have tried to hit Obama harder he would have just sent more of the middle running left.

The gap is about twice what it was in the 2004 Presidential race, 50.7-48.3. Many prominent Republicans were stating that since the Democrats couldn't make it closer, they were on their way to a permanent majority.

Biden has a pretty hot 57-year-old wife.

I guess I should have the TV on. Obama doing the robot or something?

She's no Campbell Brown though. Mmmmm....luscious!

Only 10% of California has reported in. That will move the dial a point or two.

The Bush "lead-in" was the difference. McCain had no business being that close. Though with all the mistakes (i.e. Palin), I don't think he possibly could have won here. He really maxed out the his own appeal and what appeal is left of his party. I think he had a great showing.

See, I would've voted for him if I expected him to do that.

Joe Biden's mom is the "Where's the beef?" lady!

Do you think the GOP is rather happy considering they were expecting a knockout punch tonight? I mean, the popular vote is pretty close. And red states flipped to blue, and he it was pretty much neck-to-neck in the battleground state. Is a vote against Bush and GOP more than votes making a permanent move to left?

South Dakota's ballot measure to limit abortions is projected to fail.

Arkansas's measure to deny adoptions to unmarried "sexual partners" is projected to pass. (For both heterosexual and homosexual "sexual partners")

I'm waiting for Oprah to rise.

This is making me want to play the Doonesbury Election '96 game, but I lost my disc somewhere at home. :(

Anything is possible!!!!!!!

Ugh. :banghead:

Him and McCain should have just thrown down on a Dance Dance Revolution contest and ended this 6 months ago.

The Man Who Defeated The Odds.

Never played the Doonesbury one, but played the absolute shit out of Power Politics. A game made by the same guy.

I like that old guy in a suit dancing and signing.

Yeah, some pretty horrible crap is still going down tonight.

Edit: At least the Colorado and South Dakota abortion ones are being defeated.

Winner

I think I dislike Dubya now more than even before. At least up until tonight, I knew the crap he brought to the office would end when he left. Now I know he has doomed us to four more years of crap.

Very disappointing, but not altogether surprising.

Hopefully.

I wouldn't recommend that ... he'd draw back a bloody stump if he got too close.

If I believed there was any degree of sincerity in that appeal (not watching, just taking your word on the content) for even a split second I'd at least decline in a reasonably more respectful fashion. But I don't, and therefore I couldn't.

I'm just so glad this three-year election campaign is over.

as long as soledad didn't say a word she could lick my balls while campbell and i had a good time

I've always gotten that feel from his speeches. Not a bad thing, just always noticed it.

Other notes:

Congrats to President Obama.
Great concession speech from McCain.

And while I'm not shocked that Obama won, I am surprised. Hopefully, the expectations on him will be reasonable from the majority of people. There will always be those that expect him to cure all of our ills and those that expect the country to implode within his term, but I believe he will be able to work towards turning things around and bring the country together. And, at least initially, his election will be seen as a good thing to other nations and may help our relations there.

We shall see.

OK, I don't have time to read everything, but apparently I was wrong. (I also don't ahve time to watch the Obama video linked). I have personally not seen the booing at Obama rallies. In particular, the two biggest stages: The conventions and the conession/v ictory speeches only had booing on the Republican side. When The Dems/Libs/Greens/etc do it, I still think it is disgusting.

Incidentally (I think the subject was in this thread, sorry if it was in one of the others), looks like Chambliss is going to end up beating Martin in the Georgia Senate race somewhere in the 51.5% to 52.5% margin, maybe dipping toward 51%. Currently 52.2% but my best guesstimate is that the outstanding votes will drop that a little further.

Some more projections

Nebraska's measure to "end affirmative action" is projected to pass.

Washington's measure to allow doctor-assisted suicide is projected to pass

Mass.'s measure to repeal to the state income tax is projected to fail (think I said this earlier)

Maryland's measure to allow slot machines is projected to pass.

Arizona's measure with regards to the laws about hiring illegal immigrants (not sure what this really means, but for those who care) is projected to fail.

Hurray, no more political ads!

I think we should ban the asshole that starts a "2012 presidential campaign" thread later this week.

So, follow conservatives, or republicans, or whatever......

Is this as bad as we can do? Can we manage to lose even more seats in 2010? The party totally deserved the ass-whooping it's taking, hopefully some can disregard or downplay their social agendas enough to bring back the party of smaller government. At least the one I've supported in the past anyways.

It's probably been discussed, but MA has some interesting stuff going on:

-Income tax not repealed
-Marijuana decriminalized (is this the lightest marijuana law in the country?)
-Dog racing abolished.

I like the first two results, I have mixed feelings on the third. The dog industry will just pack up and go to a less-regulated state (Rhode Island, I think). MA at least kept tabs on this industry.

oh really?

#1 great
#2 passed? that's cool (and no i don't smoke pot - never even have tried it. just think it makes sense from the perspective of jail space and $$ spent prosecuting)
#3 I'm all for NIMBY in this case. And if they do pack up and go somewhere else nearby, the opponents of it will hopefully just follow them there and get them booted from there

We should all be thankful that this was not too tight of a race because North Carolina is ridiculously close right now. With 99% and nearly 4.2 million of the vote in, Obama is leading by just 13,000 votes.

I'm with ya, as much as I hate Obama, the Republicans DESERVED an ass-whooping and from that side of it, I'm happy to see them get it.

I think we'll see a repeat of '92-'96. Obama won't part the seas and turn water to wine and 2010 will be a good election year for the Republicans. But the economy certainly will be much better by 2012 (whoever was president), and Obama will get the credit for that and win another 4 years easily.

The GOP has to evolve. And they will whether they want to or not. We're too fickle a country to have a one-party system. They just need to give us SOME alternative to stay competitive. They need to emphasize small government/strong military and downplay religion/morality.

I'll share your optimism and hope that that's how it goes down.

But if anyone lives in New England and is in position to own a dog - take a look at greyhounds, there's going to be a greyhound genocide shortly.

Greyhound racing gets an unfair rap. I think it's bullshit that MA banned it. If you're going to ban greyhound racing, you might as well ban horseracing along with it.

Wow. On my local Fox affiliate, Ralph Nader just asked if Obama was going to be "Uncle Tom" to corporate America (in reference to keeping 100 million Americans in poverty).

Even the Fox interviewer just about fell out of his chair.

I don't think conservatives need to completely throw away the playbook. There will be a number of democratic house seats that will roll back to the GOP next election. A lot of times one of these "waves" washes in a lot of oddball candidates are elected and then their electorate will have some buyer's remorse 2 years later. I would expect the House will be close to 50-50 by 2012.

I think the Dems are poised to hold a pretty fair lead in the Senate for at least 4 more years, as the GOP will have to defend more seats again in '10.

Unless JiMG is literally correct, I think Obama will be in good shape to have a successful presidency.

Absolutely no guarantee this is bottom, could easily miscalculate in a number of ways and lose more seats.

Since the next round is pretty much "local", it'll be about tailoring the message to fit. That means running fiscal focused candidates in the areas where that plays best, social focused candidates in areas where that plays best. But throw a fiscal focused (R) against a Bluedog (D) that remembers how to work the social element in the wrong place & you're looking at a loss. It's not too early to remind the national (R) that they flipped the nation when they took the South away from the D's, and failure to maintain attention to the social aspects of the campaign could hand those voters back to a D that played to them pretty easily.

okay - i'm all for that too

Looks like Indiana is going to be a close win for Obama.

He is up by about 17K with 99% in and most of the unreported areas are strong Obama counties.