And also a little drunk.

It's like New Years. I didn't realize this many people lived here, and all I can hear are their voices, but that's enough.

I can't believe it's happened.

Yeah, Patrick, I'm gobsmacked too.

"Mother Rosa sat down so Martin could march. Martin marched, and that meant Barack could run. Barack ran so our children will be able to fly."

Yes, we can!

I live in what is a 'border state'. where Confederate and Northern ties are still recognized in horrible ways. (mostly Confederates are the ones that pick at the wounds.)

I'm so proud. And I'm so happy. And it sounds like McCain is being a gentleman (I'm listing to his concession speech). And such a kind comment about Obama's grandmother.

AND, I never thought I'd vote for a Nixon, but Jay Nixon as been voted in as the Missouri Governor. He's a way better choice.

I'm pretty much verklempt.

However, tonight I'm just going to celebrate, and resign myself to keeping up the good fight tomorrow, with a little more hope that said fight will go more on the side of justice and decency, in this country and abroad.

This is a wonderful result.

Deep breath: now the real work begins.

--jm

It's like the nation is Frosty the Snowman and the nation is saying, "Happy Birthday!"

B

Well, the dog chewed off the top of one layer. Shit. I guess I'm keeping that one.

Ran out for a burger and fries. By the time I got back, it was OVER. Fifteen minutes from "looking good for Obama" to "hmmm, landslide."

I rushed outside to light off a big firework when I heard that McCain called Obama to concede.

I wasn't the only one. Bangs from the neighborhood next door.

McCain's concession speech was underway when I got back in. So far it seems classy.

Once More, With Feeling.

Singing with happiness!

My birthday is on Saturday. I choose to believe this is a gift from the nation. Thank you, America.

I'm listening to Congressman John Lewis on MSNBC right now. He seems overwhelmed by the outcome tonight. Almost as overwhelmed as Jesse Jackson.

It's been eight long, hard years since that faithful day in november 2000 that gave Bush the chance to steal the election for the first time. Remember how angry and disappointed we were back then, and how much more anger, grief and disappointment have followed since then?

Finally there will now be somebody who, if not a leftist, is at least competent and not driven by spite.

Martin Luther King said forty years ago, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

I'm so happy I got a chance to judge Obama by the content of his character ... to find that he was the best man for the job ... and cast a vote for him for president. And that the majority of America also voted for him.

Now comes the hard work.

(from Casablanca)

I suppose I should be more sober. I couldn't help it; I kept dancing in circles, chanting "Down in flames! DOWN IN FLAMES!" as the returns came in for the Democrats.

Now time to eat a bit and listen to the new President-Elect.

I am so happy.

Wooo!!

Now comes the calm unifying work to put to rest the fears of those worrying about riots and other foolishness.

No, wait. I still have a piece of baked chicken in the fridge. I'll be right back.

I'm quite proud of the students I work with-- shirt and TIE to go cast their votes today.

I admit I did take a perverse pleasure at seeing Palins pained looks when they cut to her.

"I want my country back" has been right behind it. Today, tonight, I feel like I not only got my country back, I got a better America than I had reason or cause to hope for in my lifetime.

There's still plenty to be concerned about, plenty that might well lead me to say again, "I want my country back." But right now, right now I am so very, very proud of my country, so very, very proud of my fellow Americans.

For the first time in my life, I also have the pleasure of having voted for the president-elect.

You can't fool all of the people all of the time.

Good Night to you.

Such creebing aside, I'm thankful to have lived long enough to see this day.

The next Presidential milestone will, if all goes well, be in eight years, though I rather hope the Democratic Party will find a candidate more liberal than Hillary Clinton, and now my eyes (& hopes) are set on that.

According to the results the NC Board of Elections links to, Obama and McCain are less than a percentage point apart with 95 counties out of 100 reporting. McCain is listed as being 5433 votes ahead.

ohpleaseohpleaseohplease let the last five counties go for Obama...

I was also impressed with McCain's speech, and the way CNN's analysts went into appreciation mode as soon as the race was called. I'm so optimistic that the hope this election has inspired spreads like a virus across the nation and we can really be as good as we know we can be. All of us.

(Sorry, I'd say something more original if I could think of anything)

Still waiting for the final totals, but...

How about that.

Yeah.

Any word on Proposition 8?

Yes.

I've had a good shot of Scotch and I'm looking for more; I think I've got so much adrenaline running that I burned through the alcohol in seconds.

He just now, very quietly, with one adjectival phrase, gave his campaign's slogan back to the nation as a whole.

I love this man.

I hope never to hear "Democrat" as an adjective ever again.

The famous last paragraph of Chekhov's "Lady with the Dog" comes to mind:

"And it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be found, and then a new and splendid life would begin; and it was clear to both of them that they had still a long, long road before them, and that the most complicated and difficult part of it was only just beginning."

It ain't over, it's just starting.

Barack - Don't. Screw. This. Up.

Yes we can. Where we breathe, we hope. I'm going to cry now, just a little.

Stefan (17), you too? Wamt to swap? We can never eat this much apple strudel. I've never been six cakes nervous, though I once found it necessary to roast three chickens in completely different styles. Good thing we had guests.

Kathryn (63), it's a pleasure to see those kids.

Irene Gallo lives in the Flatiron District, and she reports that people are doing exactly what you'd expect: gathering in Union Square.

If this guy doesn't quit quoting Lincoln, I'm going to dissolve entirely.

Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. He won.

What is to come will be hard, so hard, like shoveling water out of a deep hole in a downpour. It will be demoralizing. It will drain away our hope.

When that comes, remember tonight.

*naked*naked*naked*naked*naked*naked*

Myrtle and Washington Streets in Brooklyn are in happy chaos.

I'm so so happy. I've been offline for a lot of tonight, but I loved knowing y'all were here.

Yes we did.

Weeping. Sobbing. Like a baby. Jesus. President Obama. For real. Really Really Really.

November 4, 2008. I'm glad I was here to see it.

This feels like the first election of the 21st century.

Breaking the race barrier is the big story here; but there was a moment when I looked at all the Obamas and Bidens up there on the stage, and realized that if there were any remaining Know-Nothings out there, they were expiring of apoplexy.

Neener-neener-neeeeeeeeeeeener!

Obama's speech hit just the right tone.

I'm completely buzzed.

Obama's speech hit just the right tone.

I'm completely buzzed.

http://www.co.wayne.in.us/voter/election2008/general/final.htm

(McCain was down 15K statewide, so the slight win in Wayne County isn't enough.)

What you said. It could be bad down the road. Really bad. But I finally feel like we're looking ahead.

Thank you! Bookmarked!

I didn't wear waterproof mascara today, I just realized.

I think I'm finally letting myself feel hopeful. Heh.

Did anyone else think he seemed really somber? I am very sad for his loss of Toot.

Oh California, for justice and decency, do not approve Prop 8.

Even so, I've never felt more pride to be a voting American.

Amen.

"Horror show?" "Disgrace?"

Wow. What an unbelievable night.

God, I think I might actually sleep tonight.

It feels like we're finally living in the future.

Just a thought - MLK day in 2009 is January 19. Inauguration Day is January 20.

(I'd be happier if proposition 8 crashed and burned.)

Thanks to you as well.

Talking Points Memo haz mad typing skillz.

Agreed sir!

Great crowds in our office have been following the numbers all day, and we just caught Obama's speech on TV... great jubilation here, so I can only image what it's like over there!

If the enthusiasm you all have now carries into the challenges ahead, then the whole world is about to become a better place. Thank you.

Although I regret that I'll have a much harder time recruiting talent from the US to move to Canada now ;-)

Indiana is blue. I want to hear North Carolina called for Obama.

Bachmann in Minnesota appears to be holding on to her seat. Feh.

Prop 8 is passing BUT none of the Bay Area counties have been counted. It may yet go down.

Obama wins NC.

Obama. 238:155. And the blessed words, "McCain conceded."

I wanted to go up and tell my daughter right away, but my son wouldn't let me -- he wanted the honor.

I'm glad that I have lived to see this.

I just made lots and lots of mix cakes:

Two Funfetti layer cakes (one with a big hunk cut out of one layer, where Kira bit off a piece as it cooled on a too-low table), which will get white frosting.

One Spice layer cake, to get cream cheese frosting.

One Dark Chocolate layer cake. Dark chocolate frosting.

Two Devil's Food sheet cakes, some kind of chocolate frosting.

I have enough Red, White, and Blue sprinkles for at least some of them.

I found enough boxes to get them to work. I'm going to call them Celebration / Consolation cakes.

My customary veneer of cynicism about the American experiment looks worn though in places. But spare a moment's thought for the boy George as he spends the next couple of months watching his legacy lazily spiral in towards the centre of the bowl.

OK, that's enough.

Please, please, please, don't let Michelle Bachmann win.

pleasepleaseplease don't let Prop 8 win....

Please, please, please, don't let Michelle Bachmann win.

pleasepleaseplease don't let Prop 8 win....

I am so happy. And so happy that my daughter, who cast her first vote ever today, got to see the man she voted for win.

Now if we can just squeeze Prop. 8 out...

The race-baiting, the mud-slinging, the gutter tactics -- they didn't just fail, they backfired! Let future campaigns take note.

Elise, Michelle Bachmann may still win, but she'll be quacking lame from day one.

Nation Finally Shitty Enough To Make Social Progress

I'm glad I could share this moment with my children and husband. My daughter quoted Maya Angelou's poem "I too am America".

Nearly cried out, I am grateful beyond words.

Thanks for hosting the election night gathering place, Nielsen Haydens. I could not wish for finer company.

I never thought Aslan's last speech in the Narnia books would feel so appropriate to real life: "The dream is ended: this is the morning."

My first two major votes were for the California Governor following the recall of Gray Davis, and then the Presidential election in 2004. Both times, I believed in the power of my vote and both times I faced the bitterness of my vote counting among the minority.

That is an extremely unpleasant, discouraging experience for a first-time voter. I think it's wonderful that your daughter gets to feel the pride of her first vote being a powerful thing, particularly in a troubled time.

Like I said, it's a wonderful thing.

This ain't the end. It ain't even the beginning of the end.

But maybe this is the end of the beginning...

(looks at whisky bottle. It's nearly empty. Looks at clock - it's nearly 1:30.)

Oh boy...

(Thanks for the link, and the analysis, Bruce. Good to see you again, if only electronically).

Now I don't have to move back to the US.

(If McCain had won, our nation would have needed more patriots, not fewer. Thank everything that the tree of liberty is not yet thirsty.)

It's a whole lot more than just a little bit. We here in South Africa suddenly love America again! And we are crying our eyeballs out, and being all marshmallowy. It feels good and right, even though we know that once the party's over it's going to be hard. That's OK though, just as long as it goes steady. Wish us luck for our own elections next year... we are going to need oodles of it.

Here's a link, for anyone who has not been quite thoroughly cried out tonight. http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-too/

I'll just say there is a reason I'm thanking a deity I think is less responsive than Crom....

I have never seen so many voters. I have never seen so many young voters, I have never seen so many first-time voters. I have never seen so many excited voters.

I have the beginnings of an idea about what the last two elections did in preparing the framework for the outside-the-party organization for this one, but I'm just not smart enough to work it out.

They are about what you'd expect if you're familiar with the Magnolia State--blue in the Delta counties and Jackson, and red in most of the rest of the state, with some odd blue spots. Among these is Jefferson Davis County, where, with all precincts reporting, the totals are 61% Obama 39% McCain.

Oh, the irony.

Now I just need Prop.8 here in California to lose.

I honestly never thought I'd see this. I feel like this is really the first step to fixing the mess of the last 8 years.

Looks like NC went blue (barely). I can go to bed now.

We drank all the champagne. I don't know what to do if NC goes blue.

Now, to catch up on all the blogs!!

Perhaps you might want to avoid them while you're in that happy mood- some of them report pretty ugly reactions from online wingnuts.

Gonna be a bright, bright, sunshiny day...

I left the house to walk the dogs with reports just starting to come in from the West Coast, and when I got back we had a new President. But I was prepared: I'd stopped off on the way home from work to buy a bottle of wine, because I was determined there was going to be something to celebrate, and I found a bottle of cheap California pinot named "Irony". Couldn't resist that, and I'm toasting the removal of the old guard with it right now.

I'm so glad this happened. Aside from the fact that we needed it desperately, I feel like we owe it to the rest of the world to clean up some of the mess our country has made over the last 8 years. Now we have a chance to do that.

One thing left to do here in Oregon: bite my nails until we know for sure if we've rendered Sen. Gordon Smith unemployed. That may take the rest of the night.

We Can Has!

This just occurred to me today, what country do disgruntled Republicans/NeoCons threaten to move to?

Among the many brilliant wins, another small one: oratory as an art is not dead. (Has anyone read anything of Obama's speechwriter(s)? I'm impressed.)

Soak the feet in epsom salts. It couldn't hurt.

Hope.

What a strange feeling.

My favorite call was one to Iowa where Grandma had picked up, but grand son (3 or 4, very vocal and insistent that *he* wanted to get it) picked up the other phone and said, "Hello. Who's calling, please?" quite properly; when I said "Hi. I'm from the Barack Obama campaign ..." and that was all I got out for two minutes plus. I think he thought that Barack Obama had called his gramdmother and it was like Santa had showed up with a pony and the keys to Disney World. He was *so* excited.

Shynala is beside herself with joy; eight years of wondering if she was going to wake up and find out that naturalized citizens from Malaysia were now on the "enemy combatants" list are now over.

The Fat Lady is Singing.

And that's a good point at which to say

GOOD night.

My first vote was cast for McGovern (oh, I am old, I am old). And more than that: the party politicians in the town where i went to college challenged all the college voter registrations that year, with the result that my vote for the lost cause didn't even count for anything. Since then, I've taken the franchise very seriously. Today my kid, unchallenged and untroubled, went in and voted and was then high as a kite with the pleasure of civic virtue--and then saw Obama win. It's so cool. I'm a little jealous, but only a little.

Since your party was in charge of purging Lawd knows how many voters because the GOP felt like it, I guess you failed to *steal* all the votes you needed, huh?

Punk.

Don't get me wrong. I generally detest "The Star Spangled Banner" unless it's sung two syllables off, ending in "Play Ball", and I sang it tonight at an election party with tears running down my face.

But, as has been said here before, this can only be the start. Everything that's been done in the last eight years to show when we've been lied to, when someone is corrupt, wrong, misleading, or outright evil? Don't stop that, and don't fail to hold the Democrats to the same standards. Expose them all when they need exposing.

Slam them, and slam them hard if they try that rhetorical crap that many Republicans tried to use to brand them traitors. Slam them if they try to disenfranchise, ignore, and demonize those who dare to disagree with them.

On a silly side note: I'm a bit lightheaded, and I don't know if the Dems have a filibuster-proof majority. There's really only one thing I have against the idea of a Republican filibuster is that, as I understand it, one doesn't actually have to do the work of standing up there and talking. If that weren't the case, if one had to do a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington style filibuster, then it seems to me that if the opposition feels that strongly about something, one had better consider that there might, perhaps, be the merest possibility that one is wrong.

CONCEDED. No long-drawn-out, farcical struggle, no endless pettifogging challenges, NO STOLEN ELECTION. There goes one of my greatest fears regarding this campaign.

Everybody else is snoring, but I'm still too wired. Jesse Jackson weeping in a Chicago park. A town-wide street party in Kogelo. People hanging out of car windows and cheering in Fort Lauderdale(!). I just hope--please God, nobody shoots him. Please God, people listen when he explains that he was not handed the cheat codes for reality when he was elected. Please God, people remember that he was not elected king.

A bishop someplace pronounced him "Our Moses, our Martin Luther King," and of course commentators jumped all over that, but think about what His Grace was really saying there. For our sake I hope the man is right, but for Obama's sake, I hope he's wrong.

And part of me won't really believe this until he is sworn in.

Off to pray, off to bed, off to remind myself to hope.

My brother lives in Chicago and my UK brother-in-law in Florida, so it's good news for my family too. For the world ... that goes without saying.

The earth exhales.

Best headline of the night is the Stranger. [NSFW, if your workplace has an issue with profanity in 60-pt type].

Thank you.

Thank you, America, for saving the world -- and my little son -- from the prospect of President Palin.

Can...can we all be Americans now, too?

Thank you, America. If you can get through to the inauguration without anything untoward happening, I might just begin to believe it.

And in congratulating McCain on his "class and honor" during the campaign, Obama showed that you now have a president-elect who fully understands sarcasm. Which can only be a good thing.

*Really obscure film reference.

For once I agree with Bush: this was an awesome night.

The rest of the world is celebrating with you.

I'm going to sound a note now that -- I hope -- won't come over as too negative:

I'm not so much elated as I feel that the world has just dodged a bullet.

This isn't to deny the historical significance of a black president, or of a swing back towards the mainsteam after eight years of misrule; or to carp at the huge outpouring of emotion released by President-elect Obama's victory. But I expect that over the coming years Barack Obama will disappoint me. He is, after all, president of the United States, and that office imposes its own constraints on its occupant: at the end of the day, he's just another king-emperor at the helm of the biggest imperial power on the planet.

But I think the true significance of last night is that America didn't elect a ticket which would have led in short order to a dominionist theocrat occupying that throne.

We dodged a bullet.

And however awry things go over the next four years, I can take some comfort from that.

Thanks America. Welcome back. We're proud of you.

And you can still move to Canada if you want, of course. But we'd rather you did it for the right reasons.

P.S. I loved Halting State and Singularity Sky.

As for myself, I am quite elated that the world has just dodged a bullet.

Thank you.

The world is a better and safer place today than it was yesterday.

Teresa @133 - From my own small corner of England: I cannot give words to the joy, the hope, the jubilation I feel. America has turned from the darkness and into the light.

Charlie @187 - But the world dodged this bullet because the people the gunman claimed to represent calmly said "No" and took his gun away. That's cause to celebrate, I think. (And yes, I hope they use that gun wisely.)

America lost its way. It was the beacon of hope, it turned into the something grey and ugly. Let's hope Obama can turn that around.

I fear he's a politician though - will any polly give themselves less power? Will he find that Patriot acts and wiretapping and detention are useful tools? Will he find he faces a choice between selling his soul and not being able to pursue his agenda?

Double WOW; Obama wins by only 12,000 votes? Bob Barr gets 24,000 votes? I had earlier thought that McCain would narrowly win the state if the voters showed up yesterday, but the rain and the huge early vote return, plus Barr's independent campaign, made Obama's victory possible here.

For the first time in a long while, I can hope that the country is on the correct path again.

I really didn't get some of the so-called libertarians on samizdata.net praising Sarah Palin as an ideal small government conservative and claiming her personal religious views were not relevant.

Are they really prepared to sleepwalk into a theocratic dictatorship just so the very rich can pay slightly lower taxes, or are we guilty of exaggerating the thread the Dominionists pose?

Not that I'm agreeing with them - I agree that we dodged a bullet last night.

Let's hope Bush and Cheney don't do some crazy Gotterdamurung-style stuff before the inauguration.

NC now going into recounts, I think. The margin is so slim, but it's there.

I just drank the jus of one lind, queasen into on pinte of water, to effect of grete vertu. Ooog. Too much chamapagne.

I took a moment this morning to give my mother (an expat New Yorker) the good news about our state senate by IM before she went off to see a friend (she's on GMT, so it's already lunchtime for her).

I went to bed after hearing that McCain had conceded, and just read Obama's speech. Nice references to Lincoln: he's reaching out to decent Republicans and simultaneously pointing out to them that theocracy and bigotry are not what their, or any, American party is supposed to stand for.

I recall Dubai and Paraguay mentioned.

I'd like to be more positive, but I've had my hopes dashed too many times to be more than cautiously hopeful at this stage. (Get back to me on May 1st 2009, after the first hundred days, and I might sing a different song. I hope.)

Tim @198: I am holding my breath to see what vile parting gifts Cheney and Bush leave on the White House carpet. I wouldn't rule out a midi-scale bombing campaign against Iran, although right now a round of pardons to their cronies followed by a multi-tens-of-billions-of-dollar hand-out seems like the reasonable minimum to expect of them. (Plus a bunch of executive orders stripping endangered species of their protected status, authorizing uranium mining in downtown Berkeley, and generally thumbing their noses at the adults who have to clean up the resulting mess. Oh, and levering the "D", "m", "o", and "t" key caps off all the keyboards in the White House ...)

I'm under no illusions that Obama is going to do every last thing I want him to do, or even most of them. But God, what a relief, after eight years of Bush, to have a president who might actually give a damn about the opinions of me and mine. To be able to yell at the president for his lukewarm, inferior healthcare plan, not because he's trying to privatize Social Security. To groan about policies that don't go far enough, rather than gnash my teeth about ones marching off in the wrong direction. To have someone who disagrees about how we'll get there, but not about where we want to go.

Maybe it's pitiful and sad, but I'm going to be ecstatically happy just to have someone who disappoints me less. And even that I'll leave for tomorrow; today, celebration.

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes we can

Link

Basically, the Bush administration is running through the regulations and loosening restrictions as fast as they can. Ok, you say, President Obama will just sign new regulations returning them to the old rules. No, he won't, and here's why.

Relaxing restrictions is easy; it takes the stroke of a President's pen. Making them MORE restrictive, though, requires an environmental study, a comment period, a review period, an appeal process, a review of the appeal, another comment period, and finally, a finding of the various benefits/impacts before it can be enacted into law.

--Even if it just goes back to the original rules--

He's president of the most powerful democratic federation on earth, and his election gives the world hope for democracy. He is a multicultural brown-skinned man. Any reservations I will save for other threads; he has so far surpassed my expectations.

In a perfect world, the choice would have been Good vs Evil*. In the real world America's choices were Fairly Decent vs Malicious. And any good-leaning man can only do so much while still respecting your built-in constitutional protections.

(*Not really. A perfect world would have Good on both sides.)

So might as well make them more restrictive than before, right? Sounds like a great excuse to tighten up regulations across the board.

The excitement is over. Now, we can get down to slogging work.

[And no, I'm not exactly delighted by that prospect, or confident that I'll do as much work as is needed.]

Congratulations to all that worked toward this end, and to those that didn't. May every further step down the dark road ahead be as light and decisive as this one.

The world feels like a better place today.

Thank you for the cakes.

Yeah, except it's not like we just barely dodged it. McCain was massively, visibly less popular than Obama, and that showed up in the votes, the polls, the sizes of the rallies, etc. And it seems to me that we mostly dodged it for the right reasons--people seemed to be turned off by the smarmy guilt-by-association crap McCain tried at the end of the campaign, by the horrible choice of Palin as VP, and most of all, by the abysmal record of McCain's party over the last eight years.

From the exit polls at the (currently very slow) cnn, and their 2004 exit poll summary:

McCain got 43% of the white vote, and a majority only of white voters 18-29. This was only a small shift from 2004, where Kerry got 41% of the white vote. In 2004, Bush did much better among black voters (11%) than McCain did in 2008 (4%). The obvious guess is that a black candidate had an effect there, both directly and in the backlash from the smears directed at him. The Latino vote shifted heavily toward Obama, presumably because of the whole anti-immigrant popular movement among Republicans; in 2004, Kerry won 53% of those voters, but Obama just won 66%.

The 2004 election breakdown across income lines was really straightforward--the more you made, the more likely you were to vote for Bush. In 2004, it was both more complicated and closer at the high incomes--presumably, plenty of folks in the higher income brackets have lost faith in Republicans' ability to do anything sensible with the economy. It's striking to me that it was almost even in most of the higher income brackets, and that the top income bracket went to Obama.

It's really strange to me to see how this is:

a. A complete, overwheming ass-kicking in terms of electoral votes.

b. A pretty good drubbing in terms of seats in Congress.

c. Quite close in terms of popular vote.

I wonder how healthy it is to have the electoral vote totals so disconnected from the popular vote totals. I'm not sure either way.

I also wonder what this will do to the coalition that held the Republican party together for the last 20 years or so. After four or eight years with a black president and first family, I wonder how well the Southern Strategy will continue to work. The demographics for that strategy look pretty bad--Obama got the majority of white voters under 30, which implies that the future doesn't belong to the party that bases a lot of its appeal on being the party of white guys who don't much like blacks. More broadly, the survey results on all kinds of racial and social issues look very bad for the current Republican coalitions. Younger people are way less interested in banning gay marriage, and way less invested in voting on the basis of race.

It's going to be a very interesting next four years in politics. I wonder what the odds are that the Republicans will re-form into a sensible and decent conservative party. That would make the victory of the good guys in this election really complete.

But for now, the good guys have won, the bad guys are off licking their wounds and scratching their heads about what happened to them, and things look brighter for the world than they have in a little while.

Here's why.

I am still saying "President Barack Obama" to myself, in joy and wonder. "President". Not "King". And not -- never, ever, ever -- "God-King".

http://www.palinaspresident.us/

Looking at that, I must have gotten something in my eyes...

Congratulations, President-elect Barack Obama!!!

But while history has patterns it doesn't really repeat exactly and nothing is inevitable. Obama isn't Blair, the US isn't Britain, 2008 isn't 1997.

Obama doesn't walk on water. But I think it's more than dodging a bullet. The US system worked the way it's supposed to. The election wasn't stolen. They elected somebody who sounds like an intelligent person. I don't mean we should therefore switch our brains off, but I think it's all right to be happy.

WASHINGTON—President-elect Barack Obama did very well among women and young voters, who were most sensitive to the current climate of everything being fucked.

We're also thinking about taking her to the inauguration, but that might also be insane. Haven't decided yet.

I'm very excited about my vote having mattered for once! But now I'm feeling like it's like being pregnant - you spend all your time preparing for the Big Event, and then you do the whole birth thing, and you realize - oh crap, that wasn't the finish line, it was the starting line. Now what?

(We brought our daughter home and set her on the coffee table, but I don't think you handle the president-elect in quite the same way.)

Obama is no saint. He'll disappoint, but he'll still do the best he can for this country, and that because, unlike the current bum, he gives a g*dd*mn*d f*ck about it.

That would be grounds for demotion.

I grew up in South Africa under the apartheid regime. This is the second time I've voted for a black president, and I liked it even better this time ;-) hooray for everybody, and a puppy.

Now the hard work starts..

Charlie, #187: Seconded. No matter what Obama does or fails to do, he's not going to be sitting in the Oval Office thinking that he was put there to usher in the End Times. And that's a HUGE victory for America.

a. A complete, overwheming ass-kicking in terms of electoral votes.

b. A pretty good drubbing in terms of seats in Congress.

c. Quite close in terms of popular vote.

Welcome to the evils of first-past-the-post voting, aka winner takes all.

We've got that system in the UK; if the Liberal Democrats (my preferred party) were allocated seats proportional to their share of the vote they'd have more than 160 MPs, rather than 50-odd.

(See also: the difficulty of launching a third party in the USA.)

I agree, the southern strategy appears to be comprehensively broken. And I can only see that as a very good thing indeed.

Lisa @215: snarky comments aside, the US president does seem to have powers modelled rather closely on those of a late 18th century British monarch, with added term limits. And the attitude of the general public to positions of power in your country never ceases to give me the creeps. We fought a series of civil wars, back in the day, to put limits on monarchy -- put the king on trial for his crimes and chopped his head off when he was found guilty as charged. Now our monarchy is a lot better domesticated, looking at overseas reimplementations is a bit weird ...

My daughter's five and three-quarters, and she is thoroughly delighted that Sen. Obama won. She has taken an passionate interest in this election (mostly because her parents have been passionately interested...) and proudly accompanied us to the polls to cast her vote in a "Kids Vote!" poll. Her kindergarten class even held a mock election -- Obama swept, 12 to 5 to 1 lonely Ron Paul holdout. So I think she'll definitely remember this.

We are so joyful here. Although many local races did not go our way, and the anti-gay marriage amendment (I'm in FL) passed (GRRRRR), I at least feel like the country will have someone responsible at its helm.

But all this is triviality, people. Because for the first time in my life, I AM FROM A BLUE STATE! WOOOOOOOOOO!

Day One: Stop Torture, Close Guantanamo, End Extraordinary Renditions

I have to agree with the ACLU on this one. Let's turn America into the good guys again. Could there possibly be a higher priority?

Now, jokes aside, what will happen in these 76 days?

Myself, I never felt entirely comfortable with Obama's stated positions because he seems to be too centrist.

I suppose I shouldn't wonder WHY they feel this way. It's just GOP blowback.

And end limitations on gays serving in the military -- asked, told, stated, or observed. He can do it; the nation is clearly not *unanimously* opposed to it; and the military is still in enough real-world actually-being-shot-at combat to remember what *really* makes a serviceman fit or unfit for duty.

"I don't know what they have to say / It makes no difference anyway / Whatever it is, I'm against it. / No matter what it is or who commenced it, I'm against it! / Your proposition may be good / But let's have one thing understood: / Whatever it is, I'm against it. / And even when you've changed it or condensed it, I'm against it! / For months before my son was born / I used to yell from night till morn: / Whatever it is, I'm against it! / And I've kept yelling since I've first commenced it, I'm against it."

(From Horse Feathers)

Although... I'm also surprised that someone would say such a thing on actual camera. Either they're moral and know it sucks, or they're cynical politicians and know it doesn't play well. Is Shaffer indicating a retirement from political hopes, here?

Seems like there were a million other Scha[e]ffers running this time around. One of them was a Dem. I know I get confused!

I woke up and yesterday wasn't a dream. Time to get to work!

Up 'n' at 'em, out of the Slough of Despond, and hallelujah, we have elected a man who will NOT respond to some murderous wingnut calling for jihad by making a speech that includes the word "crusade." And he can pronounce "nuclear!"

I hope he takes a hard look at the shaky roots of No Child Left Alone--I mean, Behind--and urges the Congresscritters to dismantle the damn thing. Children are not educated by means of multiple-choice tests.

(I *think* torture and extraordinary rendition fall into the same category.)

First laugh in the past 24 hours.

I've forgotten the term for the psychological effect - anchor theory, maybe? - but people develop implicit beliefs about what's middle-of-the-road based on what they see most often. So if you get all your news from far-right sources, then Obama looks remarkably far left by comparison.

In other news, I was just out for lunch here in Washington DC. All of the newspapers in the vending bank that sells about 10 different papers were gone. People are going to keep that front page.

And the street vendors are selling "President Obama" t-shirts. Makes me wonder if someone couldn't estimate election probabilities pretty accurately the good old capitalist way, by seeing how many "President Obama" t-shirts were printed pre-election vs. how many "President McCain."

Totally. This is why I've been going on (and on) about how it's important to watch and to be as good about being critical about the new playing field as folks have been about the old.

At the June filking convention, Contata, Harold Feld led us in Leslie Fish's arrangement of Kipling's "The Old Issue", where eight years of rage and pain and fear and frustration just came pouring out. I do not wish to forget, ever, that the trigger for this performance was not something from the Republican side, but a disappointment in Obama.

I still voted for him, as I believe Harold did, and the reason I say "believe" is that I was not actually in the booth with him. But I do not wish to forget, and I want to make sure that, even as I cry with joy at Obama's acceptance speech, my brain has not been turned off.

Also, now whenever people say, "That's too radical, you have to compromise, people aren't ready" (as some say about gay marriage, etc.), I get to retort that the United States just elected a freakin' black guy named Barack Hussein Obama for President. Don't tell me what people aren't ready for!

(Mind you, most of the book of Joshua in the Bible is a loving, stage-by-stage description of a genocide, but I don't think that invalidates the image).

Might Bush the Lesser pardon Senator Stevens?

It has long been clear that Bush (and Stevens!) is utterly shameless.

I expect a long list of pardons that will read like "Who's Who in Right-wing Politics" over the next 76 days.

But I'm not holding my breath.

I've been following 538 intermittently, in an I-really-hope-it's-true-but-I'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it kind of way. I do social science for a living, and I believe in science AND believe that there are innumerable ways for statistics to be badly misleading for the most unintentional of reasons. (We won't even consider intentional.) Therefore, I'm amused in some theoretical way by the idea of a totally independent way of measuring "who do you think will win," without yet another freaking survey, just a pure case of putting your money where your mouth is.

If "we'd known for about a month that there's no way in hell for McCain to win this anymore," IMHO there wouldn't be such a strong current of relief in this thread.

In the meantime, a little cross-cultural poetry, courtesy of my partner and me getting silly while out running errands:

Remember, remember the 4th of November
Republican meltdown and flop.
The principal reason they faltered this season:
The real-estate bubble went pop!

Their cronies weren't troubled when gas prices doubled
And people were shouting for change;
But to tilt the election back to their direction
Was something they couldn't arrange.

(Additions welcomed...)

As such, isn't it a form of hate crime?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4bZw9FmXZ4

definitely should check it out:)

I think if it's not hate crime it's in the same neighborhood.

It will take until next month to count all those votes so they can't certify the result until then, but you can put NC into the pile for Obama!

It'll be good to have a president again instead of a wannabe king.

As far as I can tell, the first event I remember - rather than colors and shapes and such - is Reagan's first inauguration. It's pretty fragmentary, though, and doesn't include the part that's passed into family legend, when I apparently burst into tears and ran and hid behind the couch.

This makes a much better memory.

I tend to reserve "no way in hell" for things that are a few orders of magnitude less likely than rolling a D20 and coming up 20. If all it would take is McCain to roll a critical success on a single-die unmodified roll, then it's sure enough possible.

That comparison might be a little off, given how weak the presidency was as originally conceived. If it was a monarchy they were modelling off of, (and to some extent they no doubt were--it was typical executive position of the time) it was a substantially weaker monarch that they were creating. Today's powerful presidency* is as much a product of two centuries of evolution as it is of the Founder's intent. If there are substantial similarities between the monarch's of the late 18th century and the heads of state today, those similarities might be the result of convergent evolution, rather than intentional reproduction.

*Not even bringing into the conversation the blatantly unconstitutional power grabs of the Bush regime, which bear resemblance to nothing so much as mid-20th century third-world (American-backed) coups.

Earl Cooley III @ 267: "Can Bush legally pardon himself?"

Doesn't one have to be accused before one can be pardoned? If we all wait until he's out of office to file charges against him and his cronies, I don't think he can make preemptive pardons.

Lisa Padol, #175, even if the Dems had gotten 60 seats, they wouldn't necessarily be filibuster-proof. Not all Dems will vote the same way (you live near DC, you get to hear about all the votes).

Dan S, #269, my first event wasn't political. In fact, between mostly living on base, not having a TV or not much access to one, and not going to school, I really wasn't aware of politics until I was 13 and canvassed for Hubert Humphrey. I volunteered for George McGovern's Norfolk office in the next Presidential election, but my first Presidential vote went to Jimmy Carter. (I knew about how presidents were elected, etc., but I'd never really understood what the big deal was until we got stationed at the Pentagon and I went to school for the first time.)

People were lined up early this morning to buy WashPosts for the front page and more had been printed, but they ran out of those soon. The WashPost printed 250K front pages and gave those out to the rest of the people in line.

Get me started on Coleman's divide-and-conquer strategy against the GLBT community sometime, and I'll tell you a tale. (Short form: our bigoted officials are apparently more knowledgeable about the bi and trans communities than similar bigots elsewhere... but it still didn't help him much.)

But I suppose I've seen too many elections and too many false dawns. In England they thought Tony Blair would be a new beginning after the failures and 'sleaze' of the Conservative party; how quickly that went sour. Obama looks like a new beginning too - I just hope and pray that he can hold his nerve, and avoid giving the favours he owes too quickly and too carelessly, and remember his principles, and remember where he came from and what he saw as he grew up in Java and Hawaii.

Too much of the media comment is emphasizing his blackness. Yes, he's the first mixed-race president, and that's for celebration, but he mustn't allow it to define him, or let others do so. (Besides, I'm sure there are people out there saying he's 'not black enough', as they did of Halle Berry after she became the first non-white Bond Girl.)

An early trap will be how he handles his Kenyan relations. It'll be hard to tread the line between risking accusations of favoritism or nepotism on the one side, and headlines saying 'Obama spurns his cousins' on the other.

OK, enough of the grumpy. I liked the speech where he went over the historical landmarks in the life of the 106-year-old lady, ending with her voting for the first time: Yes We Can.

I could not agree more, or express it better.

(Yeah, I know it's late and doesn't really matter, but it's the first time I've voted in a state that went blue, and NC hasn't voted for a Democrat since 1976.)

To the best of my knowledge:

In order to be eligible to be pardoned, one must be convicted of a crime before a court of law.

Accepting a pardon is acknowledgement of guilt for the crime to which the pardon pertains.

The President of the USA may not pardon anyone who has been impeached.

Michelle Yeoh doesn't count for some reason?

Made of awesome! May I LJ iconize that?

Grace Jones in "A View To A Kill" doesn't count?

(from To Live and Let Die)

Wasn't the general consensus that Asians (at least the lighter-skinned ones) are currently in the process of being reclassified?

My perceptions of relative whiteness are kinda weird.

Presidential pardons can be given before conviction (e.g. George H.W. Bush's pardons of Caspar Weinberger and five other former Reagan officials in December 1992) and even before a formal indictment (e.g. Ford's pardon of Nixon in September 1974).

(I've been away from the Internets for a couple of days, my scientifictional futurological insightometer not being well-calibrated enough to register that the 5th of November is the day after the 4th ...)

This is a great, great day for the human race.

Actually, that was his reaction to the new battery acid enemas they're trying out this week on his level of hell.

They're saving the news about Obama until his birthday.

Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon for anything he may or may not have done while in office. Isn't that a counterexample?

Bush v1.0's controversial pardon of Caspar Weinberger is another. The scenario where Dubya resigns long enough for President Cheney (tosses a pinch of salt over the left shoulder and whispers "bread and butter") to pardon him is workable.

Yup, not all bad a day at'all.

Stefan #296 Please. Don't remind me of my first cancer and its treatment. More than half a decade later the memories still … erk, ugh, erk.

The Russian chick in "Goldeneye" didn't become incompetent either, I don't think, but she was a Bond girl.

I also have a vague thought that it might be interesting to find out, a few years from now, how many people met their husbands or wives on the campaign, given both the intense energy and the large participation of young people.

-- Trainspotting

Hey, that's X-men's Famke Jansen as the assassin with the killer thighs! Hey, that's X-men 2's Alan Cumming as the hacker!

No, not her, the other one. The not-evil one.

Obama victory sticker

I donated $20 and got fifty of them.

I am reminded when I get emails because of things I've said here (that and things like about.com taking a post I made her and using it as the entry on interrogation... whoa).

So your comments here count, at some level as working for the change.

No, in a campaign like this we can't count is as serving who only stand and wait, but taking part in online discussion is doing something.

My constributions were small (if you ask me) but I do feel I share in the victory, and I think so to do you.

Yes, I'd love to see that. No, it's not the thing to start with. I was enlisting when Clinton tried it (really, my first trip to MEPS was the day he announced it; from when I started the process [a few days before that] to the time it ended, they stopped asking if I liked to sleep with boys), and it's a third rail sort of thing; the blowback would derail other things which need to be done.

There's also the problem of Art. 128 (which needs to be repealed, regardless) saying that only handjobs and penile-vaginal sex are legal (and the handjobs have to be mixed gender). You may contort yourselves in any way you like, so long as you stick to those two things.

Anything else, and you can end up with a long prison term and a Dishonorable Discharge.

(I can also think of ways it can be abused, or turned against him. This will have to be managed carefully.)

I didn't know he had that kind of eloquence in him!

Coming from a similar background, I guess my perceptions are sorta skewed too*. Maybe it's my anti-white bigotry showing, but a couple of years of living in Boston (the city, not the suburbs) in the early '70s left me with the distinct impression that Southie is always unpleasant.

* Or did I leave out an "r"?

Stefan @ #296 and Lee @ #297, yes. Mr. Helms was one of my least favorite people. Other than Bush and Cheney, he might have been the politician whose name got mentioned most on my blog between 2001-2006, and not in a complimentary way.

But I meant the school desegregation "busing" riots, c. 1974. I couldn't parse them at the time -- what was so awful about riding a bus to school? I lived outside my elementary school's 1-mile radius that separated walkers from riders, and I was very much looking forward to riding the school bus when I started kindergarten the next year.

Me too, especially during winter.

Begich has now closed the gap to 971 votes (down from 3257). One more batch is going to be counted today, and the rest Friday or later.

(According to Nate Silver over at fivethirtyeight.com, the districts that will be reporting on Friday or later generally supported Begich.)

And apparently there will be some ballots counted today, after all. The remaining ballots will be counted over the next few days.

(There's also the possibility of a recount.)