Recently in Election 2008 Category

BEST. ELECTION. EVER.

(I'm not sure what's funnier today, that story or John Bolton and John Yoo demanding that Obama respect the Constitution of the United States as President. It's a bit late for them to develop a sense of humour)

The War On Christmas: Over?

Oh, Sarah, so much to answer for...

Four years ago, Chapel Hill seemed like a morgue; people wandered around the city and campus with their heads down, wondering just how the country could have chosen four more years of Bush. Today, like almost everywhere in the country, there's a feeling of elation in the air.

I've never seen anything quite like it - spontaneous outbreaks of joy spilling out in the towns and cities across the nation. It's like the Americans were greeting themselves as liberators, hugging random strangers and going to the White House to celebrate the result.

When the West Coast closed last night, when it was finally called, it really did feel like a new beginning. That for all the country's faults, this is the only Western nation on the planet that would elect a black man from a single parent family. A man that took on the two great political machines of the past two decades and beat them both.

Obama will disappoint us, almost certainly. There's so muchhope invested in him right now, but there's a limited amount a President can do, and the success of things like Prop 8 in California show that there's still some ways to go. In addition, despite what Melanie Philips and her ilk would have you believe, Obama is a pragmatic centre-left politician. I'm bit expecting him to revive The Fairness Doctrine any time soon, for example (and in addition, I hope he doesn't even think about it, as it's a pretty bad idea).

Bit that's all in the future. For now, I'm wandering the streets of Durham and Chapel Hill hearing people talking about President-Elect Obama with a pride I haven't seen for years. As we said last night, "Yes We Did".

Except now it's Democratic Blue as well as Carolina Blue...

Community organizers FTW.

I have not seen quite so much flesh in quite a while.

Crying everywhere.

In the end, when I'm up against the wall, I'm with America.

President-elect Obama. Oh yes.

Obama's grandmother has died on the eve of the election.

Today is traditionally the final day of electioneering, but the McCain appears to be holding at least one rally in New Mexico tomorrow (hopefully, it'll go better than the 1,000 strong crowd in Tampa today). The Obama camp isn't resting on their laurels either, knocking on a million doors in Ohio today, where reports suggest that he may be substantially ahead in early voting. The lesson learned: mock community organisers at your peril.

And we have the polls. They're here, there, and everywhere, but they all say pretty much the same thing - there's been a touch of tightening, but Obama still leads the battleground states, and is crushing McCain in early voting.

Your guide for tomorrow: Virginia closes at 7pm EST (midnight GMT). If Obama wins there, then McCain has to take Pennsylvania in order to have a chance of holding on. Georgia closes at the same time - if takes this, then the election is going to be a landslide victory. Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and North Carolina will close between 7:30 and 8:30. Colorado, and New Mexico follow an hour later, with Nevada coming in at 10pm. I'm guessing that it'll all be over by then, hopefully in Obama's favour, but I'm keeping fingers and toes crossed for the next 36 hours...

Summing up.

I think The Corner are going to be disappointed if they're not thrown in gulags by the end of 2012...

I'm not sure if it's the credit crunch or American Airlines just taking advantage, but flight AA173 doesn't seem to have taken the transfer from Gatwick to Heathrow all that well. Gone is the ultra-modern 777 with extra leg space and fancy game-playing TV sets mounted in the back of the seats, and in is a rather rickety 767-300 with three LCD panels for the entire cabin and a bit more room than your standard Ryanair trip. And the flight is an hour longer than it used to be. Still, considering the route doesn't really have a reason to exist I can't complain too much, I guess. Plus I still the new terminal at RDU to look forward to! And that airport won't have the smug face of George Osbourne glaring at me from all the screens like in Heathrow this morning.

I miss my polls. I've lost an entire day of watching - I boarded the plane at 10 am GMT, so it was before the R2K poll was announced - I have no idea if it's still 50/45, or anything...it disturbs me that the first thing that I want to do after clearing Customs is to go to openleft.com and check everything that's been released. I can't be cut off from the information four days out! It's not right!

Although, as it turned out, the plane landed an hour early. The new RDU (open for about a week or so now) is pretty good - the long queue for customs officials has disappeared (it took me two minutes this time, and most of that was winding through the empty queue barriers), plus no more having to redo the security controls afterwards! Wonderful stuff!

My first night in the Triangle? Going out in Durham, knocking on people's doors and making sure that they know where their polling place is and that North Carolina has early voting that extends until Saturday at 5. In a non-partisan manner, I swear!

Off again. Check back soon for shenanigans!

Perhaps you've seen it. You're at somebody's house, a party, a bar, whatever, when somebody disappears for a moment or two. Maybe it's a smoking break, you ponder. Five to ten minutes later, they come back, muttering under their breath; you can only catch certain words and phrases: "Rasmussen down by two", "call those internal crosstabs fairly weighted?" and "Zogby couldn't even place a may pole properly."

Sad to say, my friends, this person has come down with a severe case of Poll Fever (closely related to the disease "When-Oh-God-When-Will-This-Election-Enditis"). Luckily, the stricken case will probably recover after November 4th, but until then, you need to be prepared for the major symptoms:

• A need to be around a computer at certain times of the day.
• Knowing exactly when R2K, Rasmussen, SurveyUSA, announce their polls, and refreshing Drudge at six every evening to see if the Zogby has leaked a good McCain result.
• Sarcastic asides that if Pennsylvania is still considered a battleground state, then so is Kansas.
• A need to cry out "Why can't they hold this thing today and be done with it?" during days of fluctuation.
• A rash that mirrors the Gallup tracking poll, complete with roll-off and roll-on of new dates (in major cases).

If you are suffering, then please, think of your loved ones. And try and not make too much of a big deal of a point decrease in Ohio.

The ritual is almost comedic at this point. The polls come out at roughly the same time every day (this is altered for us here in the UK right now as we've moved our clocks back); if the poll is good for the Democrats, Republican sites rip the internals apart claiming that there's no way there's that many pinko-communists in America, whereas a good McCain day in a tracker poll makes half of DailyKos take to their office ledges.

But it's almost here now. Less than a week to go, and the Democrats still have a decent lead in the national tracking polls plus a commanding lead in the state polls. Early voting in Southern states appears to be going through the roof (as does the African-American vote), and Senator Ted Stevens can't vote for himself, being a convicted felon and all. Mind you, as we've seen so many times, never underestimate the ability of the Democrats to shoot themselves in the foot.

Meanwhile, Obama has just admitted what we knew all along. He is indeed a Communist sleeper agent:

In other news: what we learn from all this is that Andrew Sachs doesn't check his answerphone regularly. And that I don't understand how my country works half the time.

The most amusing part of this election so far has been the increase of hysteria within the ranks of Fox News, which marches in time with the rise of Obama's polling numbers. If you know a little about the channel's leanings, you'd expect Fox to be quite biased towards McCain, but in the last couple of months all remaining semblance of impartiality has been thrown out the window. As seen by their almost 24/7 recital of Republican talking points about ACORN, they're no longer carrying water, but trying to divert oceans. You can't watch for more then ten minutes without a mention of ACORN, Bill Ayers, or this current weekend's favourite: 'Obama's socialism'.

Watching a news channel in a brazen panic over the possibility of a liberal majority in both elected branches of the US Government is both disturbing and yet incredibly funny. You have to laugh, because otherwise you start yelling at the television asking where they were in 2002 when the GOP got their majority. Or that a non-retouched photo of Sarah Palin is perhaps not a 'slap in the face to all women'. Or just staring open-mouthed as people make a serious suggestion that ACORN is responsible for the current financial meltdown.

Still, it remains compelling viewing - if only because it seems bizarre that a news network can act like this. Or for days like this morning, straight after the breaking news of the Powell endorsement was announced. The look of horror on the Fox & Friends presenters was priceless. For a minute, they just looked completely stunned. Eventually, they pulled themselves together and started laying out the attack lines on the man they lionised for many years. Just another morning on Fox & Friends.

Also, at this point, I'm starting to think that Obama has enough money to carve his logo into the moon...

I mean, seriously.

Obama: Coming To An Xbox Near You.

ANDY MARTIN, AUTHOR AND JOURNALIST: I think a community organizer in Barack Obama's case was somebody that was in training for a radical overthrow of the government. You have to really stretch to believe his story that he was living in New York City. He was earning 50,000 to 60,000 a year. And he left this to come to Chicago, to a city where he knew no one, to suddenly start, quote, "organizing," unquote, people.

In my opinion, Barack Obama had already been influenced by his radical ideology and philosophy, probably had met William Ayers in New York and was coming here to lay the foundations for what he thought would be some sort of a political movement that he would be a part of.

My view is that the community organizing was actually kind of sham event that really Bill Ayers was testing him. Because the way these radicals work, they don't give you a big project until you pass muster with a small project. And so they sent him out to Chicago to see what he would do. He passed the test.

Black helicopters not included. I said a month ago that I didn't think Ayers would come up much. Looks like I was wrong...but it doesn't seem to be hurting Obama in the polls too much...

You know, maybe a new VP gold-standard is being set here...

Still, if we need a new energy source in a hurry, we can always hook a generator up to Milton Friedman's spinning grave...

[Cindy] McCain, who stopped to visit a half-dozen children at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt today, said the presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama has "waged the dirtiest campaign in American history,”

Umm. You know, I think there's only one campaign that has been calling out 'traitor', that has its supporters crying out 'kill him!' and indulging in character assassinations because even they admit that they don't want to talk about the economy. But believe what you want to, Mrs. McCain.

Paint your face....paint the walls.

So, debate number three. Obama is currently riding high in national and state polls; if the election was held tomorrow, the Southern Strategy would almost be defeated; the coasts would turn blue, and the Republicans would be facing total defeat, the Democrats in the Senate dangerously edging closer to the filibuster-proof 60 level, the House firmly blue, and the White House back in Obama's hands, poised to take over as Great Depression II: Electric Boogaloo strikes.

Huh. Maybe the GOP wants to lose this thing after all. But nobody's filled John McCain in on that just yet, so the man is up tonight for another try and getting what he feels is owed to him. He tried being the neo-con's neo-con back in 2000, but was sent back to Arizona by dirty tricks in South Carolina. Although he was furious at the time, McCain seems to have got over the 'black baby' affair, seeing as how he's hired the man behind it to work on his campaign. A brief spell followed where he tried to drive a knife into Bush in preparation for a 2004 challenge, but 9/11 changed everything, remember. McCain established a few 'maverick' positions on tax, torture and immigration which gained him a lot of favourable press, so favourable, in fact, that the press didn't seem to notice too much when he abandoned all of them along his road to the GOP nomination.

And so here he is, looking at an electoral map where even North Carolina is looking shaky. He's played almost every rule out of the classic Rove instruction manual, and nothing seems to be working. While the economy crashes all around the country, all he has left is murky charges of 'association with terrorists' and 'against the troops'.

I said I'd be Tony Cascarino, circa 1995

But this is his element! The town hall debate, the series of debates he pleaded for back after Obama finally clinched the Democratic nomination. McCain needs this to go over well tonight; the previous debate didn't really have winner, but voters appear to have judged that Obama was indeed ready to be President based on his performance; a deadly conclusion considering that McCain had been basing a considerable amount of his campaign around the idea that he wasn't experienced enough for the position. Choosing Sarah Palin has energised his base, yet at the same time, she doesn't appear to be helping him in the swing states where he desperately needs to hold on to the Bush 2000/2004 map. They're in trouble.

I expect McCain will do well tonight. He has to.

I salute you. But get yourself to a hospital now.

It's a bit like going to a Cat Power concert, isn't it? There's a chance for a decent performance, but also the chance of the greatest on-stage trainwreck you'll see in years. Will it be Biden, who has FDR on TV during the Great Crash, or Palin, who seemingly can't name a newspaper?

(this is all distracting me from having to admit that Boris managed to get something right today)

But this sounds pretty scary. Especially for some of my friends who work at universities across America...

So, I guess the idea is now to wait a month and write a bill that'll pass in a Democratic Congress?

And it was a good thing that McCain suspended his campaign to get this through, wasn't it?

...is never to hear "those of you on Main Street" ever again...

Really, D-Day can never be topped? Huh...

Yes, my live-blogging tapered off a bit. Seemed to be a draw as far as I could see, but apparently independents preferred Obama, which is good news!

Financial News backed by a music bed that completely rips off Godspeed You Black Emperor's Moya. When they go for the Dead Flag Blues remix, we're really in trouble...

You know, the Democrats should simply rush Dodd's bill through Congress tomorrow and smile...

WASHINGTON, DC–Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that "our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over."

"My fellow Americans," Bush said, "at long last, we have reached the end of the dark period in American history that will come to be known as the Clinton Era, eight long years characterized by unprecedented economic expansion, a sharp decrease in crime, and sustained peace overseas. The time has come to put all of that behind us."

The Onion As Prophet.

Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

So if Henry Paulson decides that he'd rather spend the $700bn on going to Disneyland instead, there's nothing that anybody can do about it?

An anonymous Democratic congressman writes:

Paulsen and congressional Republicans, or the few that will actually vote for this (most will be unwilling to take responsibility for the consequences of their policies), have said that there can't be any "add ons," or addition provisions. Fuck that. I don't really want to trigger a world wide depression (that's not hyperbole, that's a distinct possibility), but I'm not voting for a blank check for $700 billion for those mother fuckers.

[...]

I'm open to other ideas, and I am looking for volunteers who want to hold the sons of bitches so I can beat the crap out of them.

Tina Fey is awesome.

Whatever happened to the honourable campaign, I wonder?

...should I be worried that I have money in Wachovia?

I'm trying to keep this in mind.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani says if Sarah Palin had been president when the U.S. came under attack on Sept. 11, 2001, he's confident she would have been able to handle the crisis.

I've missed him, haven't you?

(She's going to give the best speech of the convention tonight, I assure you)

One Republican strategist with close ties to the campaign described the candidate's closest supporters as "keeping their fingers crossed" in hopes that additional information does not force McCain to revisit the decision. According to this Republican, who would discuss internal campaign strategizing only on condition of anonymity, the McCain team used little more than a Google Internet search as part of a rushed effort to review Palin's potential pitfalls. Just over a week ago, Palin was not on McCain's short list of potential running mates, the Republican said.

Ten years on, I think it's a horrible indictment of Google that it's still not good enough for VP vetting...

UPDATE: Oh, bless. Where have we heard this one before?

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - E-mails from the Palin administration are being withheld from the public and the governor is citing executive privilege.

I didn't actually mention the rumour in the previous post, but seeing as how even Andrew Sullivan is going at the story with gusto, here's why I think that the baby really is Palin's:

• The McCain team is not that stupid. Really.
• More importantly, Sarah Palin doesn't strike me as that stupid. Given what happened to John Edwards just a few weeks ago, she'd have to be crazy to think that she could get away with such a wild story. In addition to ruining her career, by accepting the VP nomination she'd also expose her daughter to ridicule, oh, and as an aside, completely sink the McCain campaign and the GOP's prospects for November. There's no way she's that insane.
• How many people would need to be in on this? Doctors and nurses at the hospital for sure. Too many for it to stay a secret.
• Finally, yes, it is a little odd that she flew from Texas back to Alaska after her waters broke. Or that she went to Texas at all. But it's on the side of odd that seems to strengthen the case against the rumour -- because if her daughter was the pregnant one, then they'd do everything they could to make it not seem suspicious. So Palin wouldn't have gone to Texas at all.

Can we please get back to the issues and leave the rest to Desperate Housewives?

UPDATE: See! Her daughter wasn't pregnant...she just is now.

Aside from Dick Cheney's drastic break with the past, the Office of The Vice-President traditionally doesn't amount to much more than somebody sitting around waiting for the end of their term or for the President to suddenly drop dead. Sure, they get dragged out every now and then to give a speech, to go on the attack when the President either will not or cannot, but in general, they have very little power except for their tie-breaking vote in the Senate. The classic example is LBJ, who went from being the House Leader of the Senate in 1960 to VP in 1961. Initially thought that he would be about to continue his hold over the Democratic Party from his new office, but the Senate essentially laughed in his face, sending him back to sit on his hands until an assassin brought him the Presidency.

(incidentally: LBJ - the greatest liberal President of the 20th century? Perhaps...)

In addition, the slot means extremely little on the election ticket itself either. George Bush got elected with Dan Quayle by his side, after all. In recent memory, the only time that the choice has been a big impact was in 1972. George McGovern had just won the primary campaign for the Democratic nomination. This culminated in a vicious floor-fight at the convention itself (for those of you thinking that this current primary was cut-throat, the 1972 campaign would shock you. Clinton vs. Obama is tiddlywinks in comparison) where the McGovernites carried the day with a brilliant series of carefully-chosen floor votes that guaranteed that their delegates would be enough to give them victory (see Fear & Loathing On The Campaign Trail 1972 for a full explanation). Unfortunately, whilst they had the prize, some of the party was so disgusted with the idea of the anti-war McGovern being their pick that they openly talked about supporting Nixon instead. McGovern badly needed to pick a Vice-President that would unite the party together.

So he called Ed Muskie and Hubert Humphrey, the two heavyweight candidates that he had just beaten. They turned him down. He begged Ted Kennedy to join the ticket, but no Kennedy was going to accept anything less than top billing. The decision had to be made quickly. Running out of time, McGovern offered the slot to Thomas Eagleton, a senator from Missouri. A safe choice; a disappointment perhaps to the New Left, but his links with unions would help shore up the Democrats' faltering support amongst blue-collar workers.

He didn't last a month. By the end of July (he was selected on July 14th), the papers were full of reports of hospitalisations for physical and nervous exhaustion during the 1960s that he had neglected to tell the McGovern team about. To make matters worse, he had also received electo-shock treatment during these periods, leading many to think that he was too unstable to be second-in-command. McGovern initially stood firm in his support for Eagleton, but by the second week in August, after continual press mockery, he dropped him from the ticket, fatally injuring his support amongst his base, and went down to Nixon in one of the worst electoral defeats in American history.

This may mean nothing, of course. But Sarah Palin appears to have been selected in a similar manner of haste; a desperate attempt to steal the news cycle away from the greatest speech American politics has seen in a generation. And that worked, but at what cost? The experience angle of attack against Obama has been taken off the table, McCain's age is now brought into sharp focus, and the idea that she may peel off disgruntled Hillary voters is deeply condescending considering that they only thing her and Palin seem to have in common is that they both have ovaries. In addition, whilst she's not as mired in corruption as most of the Alaskan GOP, she appears to have a few troubles of her own (there's also rumours of Eagleton-level scandal floating around the Internet, but I refuse to believe that the McCain team would be that stupid to not have debunked those even in the limited vetting time they had available). This after a Democratic Convention that fell in lockstep with Obama, delivered a consistent message, and even made John Kerry look like an interesting and funny person.

I could be wrong, of course. This could be the game-changing event that turns things in favour of McCain; Palin may be able to make Biden come across as a bully in the VP debate. But even the media, the biggest McCain-apologists around, seem mystified and even a little annoyed at this choice. If he loses them, the Republicans may be in for a rout come November...

“The Republicans can’t seem to get a break when it comes to August and when it comes to the weather,” said Rove, a FOX News analyst.

I'm sure NOLA shares your pain.

He's turning into Rudy, isn't he?

The usual caveats apply: Zogby's record isn't great, and it's only one poll. But last month ago, it looked as if all Obama had to do was show up in November, and now he's on the wrong end of a five-point lead. Even worse is that people trust McCain more on the economy, despite him admitting that he knows little about the subject, and that his platform consists of continuing the last eight years of Bush's policies. Ask Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac how that's going. I'm just hoping that Obama's vacation in Hawaii has more to do with this than any deeper problems in the Democrats' campaign. It's looking a bit too much like Kerry 2004 at the moment.

Meanwhile, next week is the beginning of convention season! Hurrah! (really, I have problems) Four years ago, I sat and watched both conventions from start to finish. Many, many problems. Today, I find myself gainfully employed, so I probably won't be able to do that this time around, but I am planning on watching the final night of the Democratic Convention. Monday at the RNC seems like a fun line-up: Bush, Cheney, and Lieberman! Together as you demanded! But perhaps not in a courtroom like you also demanded!

(seriously, guys, I think it's time you threw Lieberman out of your party. It's getting embarrassing now)

I guess it's now safe to admit that I have a bit of a soft spot for Paris Hilton (note, I've never actually seen any of her TV shows, so this comes entirely from news reports and entertainment items). She's always struck me as curiously being both more naïve than she appears to be and yet more clever than she lets on. So, after the racially-slightly-dubious McCain ad from last week, this is a wonderful response:

(while I don't think that the juxtaposition of Britney and Paris with Obama was chosen deliberately for the racial overtones, it is odd how the GOP picked them, instead of, say, famous-and-completely-crazy Tom Cruise. Unless they're afraid of Xenu. He does have a fleet of DC-8s that can fly in space, you know)

Now we're exactly like the Major Government, down to the Unionists holding sway. Oh, happy days. New Labour: why don't you just die?

It has been a long time coming, but finally, the Senate Intelligence Committee speaks:

• Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.
• Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.
• Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.
• Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq's chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community's uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.
• The Secretary of Defense's statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.
• The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.

This would never have happened if Strom Thurmond was President.

Just under six months ago, I was saying how the Democratic primary would be wrapped up quickly and the Republicans would be dragged into St. Paul tearing themselves apart trying to find a candidate that wouldn't cause half of the party to stay at home in November. Clinton would obviously wrap up the nomination fairly quickly.

Then Obama won Iowa. Since then, the Democratic campaign seems to have stolen Gallifreyan technology and sent the start of the electoral cycle back into prehistory; a primary stretching out to infinity. Or so it felt at times.

But after the settling of the Michigan and Florida delegates at the weekend, the end has been in sight. Strictly speaking, the end has been in sight ever since Super Tuesday, but it's taken this long for the Clinton camp to notice. Today is the last day of voting. South Dakota and Montana. Every state got a say. The superdelegates are beginning to make their final move to push Obama over the top, Clinton's disingenuous talk of winning the popular vote notwithstanding. At long last, the three-way race is whittled down to two.

There is talk of a GOP implosion this November. Having lost three safe seats this year already, Elizabeth Dole is looking shaky in North Carolina, Ted Stevens in Alaska may be rueing the day that he described the Internet as 'a series of tubes', and Al Franken may replace Norm Coleman as Senator for Minnesota.

This all bodes well. But never underestimate the ability of the Democrats to screw it all up…

The US Department of Defence would like to hear from you.

In an interview with the editorial board of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader in South Dakota, she dismissed calls to drop out, adding, "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it."

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP TALKING.

This week brought news that archaeologists in the battleground state of Oregon had discovered the remains of cave-dwellers thought to be 14,300 years old - which would mean they died just in time to miss the start of the battle for the 2008 Democratic nomination.

It's Kentucky and Oregon! YEAAAAHHHH!!!

(Seriously, it's been over for a month now. Hopefully, the Edwards and Byrd endorsements, plus the rolling addition of superdelegates to Obama's total, means that we might get an ending this week. I know, I'm asking for too much. As usual.)

I think the news that Obama won Guam by seven votes probably says it all. He and Clinton are utterly deadlocked, splitting the Democratic Party down the middle. Or, looking at it another way, Obama won at the end of March, but Hillary just won't admit it. And will not even up to November. As I write this, Obama has taken NC (hurrah to all my friends to voted in a primary that mattered for once!), and will probably lose Indiana. Which will probably make the delegate wins for either side tonight about even, maybe a couple more for Obama depending on the size of the win in Carolina.

(As I write, Orange County results (includes Chapel Hill & Carrboro: 77% O, 22% C. Go Tar Heels!)

After tonight, Hillary cannot beat Obama in pledged delegates. From the dailykos headline (it's not permalinked, sadly, so I can only link to the main page), Obama needs 280 delegates to win a majority. Clinton needs 415.5 (don't ask about the .5. I think it's a Democrats Abroad super-delegate). There are 404 pledged delegates left. But 270 superdelegates are still undecided. Surely it must be time. Bring the nightmare to an end! Please!

UPDATE: Clinton is currently up around 10 points in Indiana, but a lot of the urban areas still haven't reported. This could end up being rather close.

UPDATE 2: For those of you in Durham County, you can be proud to, as it looks like you'll end up with a similar result to Orange County. Duke and UNC united at last!

Indiana has slipped to six points, Obama strongholds still remain unaccounted...

Update 3: Obama now down by 4...

UPDATE 4: Off to bed. Predicting a Clinton win of 2-3% in IN. 12-15% win in NC for Obama. It should now be over. laughs.

The final words, from who else but Saint Etienne.

Ken

Are We Gonna Be Alright?

I don't want to hear anybody in this country complain about how America elected George W. Bush ever again...

No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party.

But this week is turning out bad politically on both sides of the Atlantic so far...

Preliminary exits are 52%-48% Clinton-Obama. With the usual proviso that exit polls have been pretty much junk this primary season...

(although really, what's the point? If Clinton gets a 10-15% win, she'll claim momentum. If she wins from 5-10%, she'll do the same. If it's very close, then things might get a little tricky. But he can't win here.)

(having said that, with polls now closed, even MyDD is feeling pessimistic about the chances of a big Hillary win..)

See you tomorrow for THE VOTE THAT MAY END IT ALL.

(but probably won't)

(Yes, I'm going to keep doing this with titles for a while yet. I'm sorry.)

Let's all cry a tear for Alberto Gonzales.

We do things differently here.

Do you remember how we used to live?

We're going to have a convention floor fight. But if the Democrats choose Clinton over the man who wrote and gave this speech today, they're throwing away their best ever chance to finally stake the Southern Strategy at its very heart.

Plus, he loves The Wire. What else needs to be said?

Meanwhile, ex-members of Long-Term Capital Management are popping open champagne bottles. It almost makes Northern Rock cheap in comparison...

Sold for $2 a share! With another $30bn of Federal security!

(How does it feel to treat me like you do?)

I know, it's beginning to feel like the Democrats will be still fighting among themselves by Election Day in November. And today's primary isn't going to help. The real event is six weeks (SIX! WEEKS!) in the future, where both candidates will battle over the delgates in Pennsylvania (and even then, it probably won't be finished - unless somebody steps in after April 22nd, North Carolina will become an important primary state. Goodness!), but today, well, today is Mississippi's day. It's seen as another chance for Obama to take the energy out of Clinton's wins in Ohio and Texas last Tuesday (technically, she actually lost Texas, but it's partly a media battle as much as a delegate battle). He can at most pick up about five delegates over Clinton tonight, but it'll extend his lead even further, and wipe out all of Hillary's gains during March.

Meanwhile - surely Spitzer should have been intelligent enough to draw on his time as New York Attorney General and realise that all those bank transfers would raise eyebrows at his bank? How monumentally stupid. Although it's amusing that the GOP is calling for his head, yet Senator Vitter is allowed to stay despite his regular use of a DC Madam. Funny, that.

Oh, and Dr. Laura is still trash. But then you knew that.

For those of you wondering just what damage the Bush Administration can do in ten months, Admiral Fallon, military commander for the Middle East and coincidentally against attacking Iran, has resigned from his post today. He's been called "the one man standing between Dick Cheney and Iran". Hurrah!

Surprise! Not very well!

In Columbus,MS & wondering how somebody who's in second place is offering the vice presidency to the person who's in first place. Vote Tues!

Barack Obama's twitter feed.

CARLSON: Right. But I mean, since journalistic standards in Great Britain are so much dramatically lower than they are here, it's a little much being lectured on journalistic ethics by a reporter from the "Scotsman," but I wonder if you could just explain what you think the effect is on the relationship between the press and the powerful. People don't talk to you when you go out of your way to hurt them as you did in this piece.

Ah, the American Fourth Estate.

You broke my heart, Texas You broke my heart.

Vermont passes resolution calling for the arrest of George Bush and Dick Cheney (Vermont is the only state in the union that the President hasn't visited while in office)...Ohio continues its winning streak in electoral shame by running out of ballots in some counties...leaked results from Texas have Obama up by over ten points in early voting...Obama up 130,000 in Texas with 750,000 early ballots counted...surely that can't be right...to compare...McCain is currently leading with 170,000 early votes...did Texas decide to shove a stake through the heart of the Southern Strategy? If Obama wins the Texan primary outright, holds her close in Ohio, surely that's got to be very damaging for Clinton...one Texas caucus has 200 Democrats turn up and one singular Republican...McCain finally wins the nomination...Rhode Island dead heat...Huge Obama caucus turnout in Texas....threats of lawsuits from the Clinton camp...Rhode Island pulling to Clinton and called, margin around six points...Obama wins exit poll for under-65s in all four states...

The side-effect of compressing all the primaries into a shorter space is that we expected it to be over by now. Thirty years ago, the electoral cycle would just be gearing up for New Hampshire; it seems like a geological period has passed since 2008's contest.

Which is to say: if nobody comes out stronger tonight, the next big primary is on April 22nd (Mississippi and Wyoming are next week, but they don't have a huge amount of delegates on offer). That's almost two months of campaigning and Democratic self-immolation while the Republicans look and laugh. I can't wait.

Obama seems to have had a tough weekend. Firstly, there's all this business with somebody in his team telling the Canadian embassy that his tough talk on NAFTA was all for show, though it's unclear just how much Canadian politics is playing a part in all that, and then the Rezko trial starting in Chicago. All this has blunted his polling in both Texas and Ohio. Having said that, he was twenty points down in both states just a scant few weeks back.

Meanwhile, Clinton seems to be back on the momentum, looking likely to take Ohio, Rhode Island, and tying (or edging a slight win) in Texas. But will it be enough? Amusingly, Obama's win tonight in Vermont may itself be enough to balance her delegate wins in the remaining states, depending on how big her victory is. She can no longer catch Obama in a pledged delegate race; all she can do is try to cut into his lead and persuade the superdelegates to vote for her en masse.

But the latest rumour is that Obama has 50 superdelegates ready to declare at a drop of a hat; a secret weapon to take the sting out of a tight night, and incidentally making the Michigan and Florida be able to stand without changing anything. Would that be enough to end it? Or are we going all the way to North Carolina and Puerto Rico?

Let's get this Presidential campaign underway!

Vote Obama And There'll Be REDS IN YOUR BED!

Prepare yourself: Ari Fleicher's quarter-billion dollar hate machine is spinning up. And yet McCain wants to portray himself as the honest candidate, calling on Barack Obama to join him in the public funding programme (or: McCain is broke, Obama isn't). Of course, seeing as how the Straight-Talking-Maverick managed to somehow bend public finances to underwrite his primary campaign, let's just say this offer is less benign that it seems. Anyway, it looks like Obama isn't taking the bait unless 527 groups are included, which will probably be enough to scuttle further talks.

Poor Hillary. She looked like the inevitable winner just over two months ago. Heck, even one month ago, it seemed unlikely it would be anybody but her. Last night she was beat like a whipped cur by Obama in Wisconsin, a state that she she was winning comfortably in November. A seven point lead turned into a twenty-point crushing blow. At this point, it's almost impossible for her to catch up to Obama in pledged delegates, and even her firewall states of Texas and Ohio are looking susceptible to the powers of Obamarama. After ten straight defeats, the Clinton team must really begin to think about conceding.

Because if she doesn't, there's going to be trouble. In one of "look back in a month and laugh at Ian!" predictions, I'm going to suggest that if she doesn't pull out after Ohio/Texas, and she loses or ties Texas, Gore will announce that he's supporting Obama; giving a clear sign to the superdelegates that it's time to bring this contest to a close.

And then we have eight months of mud-slinging to look forward to! Hurrah!

Have the Democrats in the House finally found their spines?

Virginia was called for Obama two minutes after polls closed...GOP race is 'too close to call'...pause for laughter

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Black Kids are seriously awesome. More tomorrow...