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This thread will be updated throughout the night as the results come in.
6:54 PM: Earliest of early results has Obama with a narrow lead in Indiana.
7:04 PM: Polls close in Virginia, Georgia, and Florida, inter alia. The election could be decided within the hour.
7:31 PM: Polls close in Ohio, West Virginia, and North Carolina. It's still close in IN, and close in VA and NC. Good sign thus far.
7:58 PM: Polls about to close in Maryland and a whole bunch of other places.
8:00 PM: Networks calling Pennsylvania for Obama. McCain just got a B carved in his face.
Maryland also called for Obama, to the surprise of no one.
8:57 PM: Still no results from Maryland Board of Elections or the Baltimore Sun or the Washington Post. What's the holdup?
9:07 PM: OK, early results from apparently the 4th and 5th congressional districts from WaPo: Obama 63%, McCain 36%, with 1% of precincts reporting.
9:30 PM: Networks are calling Ohio for Obama. If you combine the states already called for Obama with California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii, all safe blue states, Obama has 272 electoral votes. He's won the election.
11:02 PM: CNN calls Virginia for Obama, and MSNBC the whole shebang for Obama. It's definitely over, only the size of the victory is in dispute.
Here at Free State Politics we're going to be following the following races/ballot initiatives:
President: Barack Obama v. John McCain
MD-01: Frank Kratovil v. Andy Harris
MD-06: Jennifer Dougherty v. Roscoe Bartlett
Question 1: Early Voting
Question 2: Slot Machines
In the interest of proving myself to be terrible at making predictions, I offer my take on tomorrow night's results:
In a rare moment of agreement with Karl Rove, I believe Barack Obama will win the election with 338 electoral votes:
As far as the popular vote goes, I say Obama will beat McCain 53%-46%, with Bob Barr and other third-party candidiates pulling in the remaining 1%. In Maryland, Obama will win handily as expected, 59%-41%.
The First District will either be a narrow win for either candidate; at this moment, I say turnout for Obama will give Frank Kratovil the coattails he needs to beat Harris. 51%-49% for Kratovil.
Jennifer Dougherty has been an aggressive campaigner, but ultimately I think the Republican tilt of the Sixth District will be too much for her to oveccome. 56%-44% for Roscoe Bartlett.
The debate over early voting has taken on a partisan character in Maryland, which all but assures that the early voting referendum will pass. 59%-41% for the Yes vote on Question 1.
Support for legalizing slot machines has had the momentum for most of this year, intensifying lately due to the economic crisis and concern over continued funding for education and other state programs. I and many others disagree that slots is the solution to that problem, but nevertheless it's a belief that anti-slots activists, despite their best efforts, have been unable to dislodge. 55%-45% for the Yes vote on Question 2.
Please use this thread to make your own predictions, thoughts about the election in general, etc.
John McCain gets perhaps the most coveted endorsement in American politics:
While stumping for GOP candidates in Laramie, Wyoming, the vice president pushes for voters to pick McCain Tuesday.
Says McCain "understands the danger" the U.S. faces with national security and is well-prepared to lead.
"He is a man who has looked in the face of evil and not flinched...he's earned our support and confidence and the time is now for him to be our next president."
"I'd like to congratulate Senator McCain on this endorsement because he really earned it. That endorsement didn't come easy. Senator McCain had to vote 90 percent of the time with George Bush and Dick Cheney to get it. He served as Washington's biggest cheerleader for going to war in Iraq, and supports economic policies that are no different from the last eight years. So Senator McCain worked hard to get Dick Cheney's support.
"But here's my question for you, Colorado: do you think Dick Cheney is delighted to support John McCain because he thinks John McCain's going to bring change? Do you think John McCain and Dick Cheney have been talking about how to shake things up, and get rid of the lobbyists and the old boys club in Washington?
The Obama campaign even has an ad up on this already:
I, for one, hope McCain milks this endorsement for all it's worth.
I have to say, I'm really enjoying the internecine warfare that has taken over the McCain-Palin camp. McCain staffers have called Sarah Palin a "diva" and a "whackjob," who is going increasingly off-message on the campaign trail and, according to these staffers, is dragging down the ticket. For their part, Palin and her supporters blame the McCain campaign for "a botched rollout and a tarnished public image," and seem to be setting Palin up to be the 2012 Republican nominee should John McCain lose next Tuesday. The public, meanwhile, is increasingly turning on Palin, with 59% of Americans in a recent poll saying she is unqualified to be Vice President, and that her selection reflects badly on McCain's judgment when it comes to selecting competent people to serve in his administration.
It's amazing to think that only a few months ago conservatives like Brian Griffiths were telling us that Palin would be a game-changer:
Sarah Palin is the future of the Republican Party. She's both conservative's conservative, and a reformer. She took on the corrupt Stevens/Young/Murkowski wing of the Alaska State GOP and has succeeded in changing her state and her party for the better. THIS is the type of change that Barack Obama wishes he could bring; Sarah Palin has been there, and she's done that already
What's best is the fact that it seems like the Palin Pick left Team HopeChangeHope in complete disarray...
The left blogosphere is reacting poorly too. America's biggest hatesite, DailyKos, is laying into Governor Palin, with posters there calling her selection unserious, a distraction, the worst VP pick ever, and asserting that her husband is the "Shadow Governor." So much for supporting the equality of the sexes fellas.
Obviously, Senator McCain did something right in order to get the Obama folks in a panic and the leftroots in a lather.
I'd say McCain did the right thing too, just not for the purpose of gaining traction against Barack Obama. One thing that's noteworthy about the endorsements that Obama has gotten lately, especially from Republicans, is that they have frequently cited McCain's selection of Palin as a blight on the case for his candidacy. Even people still in the McCain camp, like former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, don't think Palin could step in as President at a moment's notice -- at best, she would be "adequate," in his words. Turns out selecting a scandal-plagued governor who can't answer even basic questions of policy without notes or a teleprompter doesn't give people much reassurance about your ability to lead the country through troubled times.
There used to be a lot of Republicans I respected. Seriously. This may shock some of my friends in Democratic politics, but the first campaign I ever volunteered for wasn't for a Democrat. It was for Connie Morella, the moderate Republican who represented Montgomery County until her defeat by Chris Van Hollen in 2002. I was in high school, and the only issue I cared about was the environment, and at the time there were still some Republicans in congress, like Connie Morella and Wayne Gilchrest, who demonstrated a level of sanity on environmental issues that has long since been buried under chants of 'drill, baby, drill'. It took a few years, and a better understanding of the fact that the most important vote a congressman makes is for the congressional leadership, but I eventually came around.
There used to be a lot of Republicans I respected, but I find it hard now to think of any at all. The Democratic successes of the last couple years seem to have brought out the worst in the Republican Party. Chants of 'terrorist' and 'kill him' at political rallies, effigies of Barack Obama hung on college campuses, rampant political corruption among elected Republicans, manipulation of the fundamental processes of democracy and undermining of the electoral system, and the use of smears and name-calling have become the modus operandi of the party. The Republican Party now seems to be the province of a radical fringe, a fringe that, thankfully, is dropping deeper and deeper into a spiral of self-destruction. And, as John McCain has demonstrated in his campaign's abandonment of most of the principles he used to claim to hold dear, the ideas of honor or of public service or of the greater good seem long since to have been abandoned in an insatiable desire to win.
I really can't tell you what's worse, the childish insults and gross distortions of their most partisan base, especially those active online, or the fact that Republican elected leaders have started to copy them. There isn't much difference, after all, between Elizabeth Dole lying about her opponent being an atheist or Saxby Chambliss calling a war hero a traitor, and the incessant vitriol of some of the right wing bloggers and commenters, such as one on this site, too cowardly to comment under a real name, whose idea of political discourse is to tell Isaac he's got his 'pink panties in a bunch' when he takes issue with what the other side says. Whatever that means.
I guess in some ways it's a good thing this has happened to the GOP. Much of the American public, at least, seems to see it for what it is. The polls certainly suggest that there will be a drubbing on Election Day, partially as a result of that. But I can't help wishing that there were people on the other side who were willing to engage in an honest debate of the issues, a real discussion of what we face as a nation. But instead, instead of real debate, there are claims of socialism, and of a lack of patriotism, and all sorts of ad hominem attacks.
If you want to see a classic case of projection, do check out Mark's little screed. Seldom have I seen someone write with such anger, and then tell his opponents to calm down.
But as Brian helpfully points out, this election is about the issues -- though given the obsession the McCain campaign and their supporters have had with talking about Bill Ayers, Khalid Rashidi Rashid Khalidi, etc., you'd be forgiven for thinking that they had given up on addressing the things that matter most to the American people. Indeed, one of McCain's own advisors has said that "If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we're going to lose."
Meanwhile, the US economy shrunk by an annual rate of 0.3% in the last quarter, consumer spending is down, and 479,000 people were just added to the unemployment rolls, on top of everything else this country is dealing with. And John McCain's response to this crisis is to, essentially, adhere to the policies as George W. Bush, who's presided over this whole mess -- that is, where's he not proposing even worse policies, like his plan to push more people into the vagaries of the individual health care market while taxing employer-provided health care and cutting Medicare and Medicaid.
Similarly, McCain's fixation on balancing the budget is precisely the wrong thing to do during a recession, as I've already mentioned; even Republicans stalwarts like Martin Feldstein are arguing for increased government spending to help prop up the economy. Of course, it's a little rich (no pun intended) to hear McCain, like Bush, go on about balanced budgets while supporting tax cuts for the wealthy and pouring billions of dollars into in Iraq, with no plan to ever leave.
So in case you missed it, Streiff over at Red Maryland was hyping up the Ashley-Todd-was-assaulted-by-a-black-Obama-supporter story that even Michelle Malkin thought was fishy. Now that it turns out Todd fabricated the whole thing, right down to the backwards B carved on her face, Streiff's response thus far been rather petulant:
I pulled the story when it was proven false but I'm not offering any apology for a lot of reasons but mostly because it was a reporting on a news article on the wire services.
I have to admit I was pulled in by a lack of credulity because the story dovetails very nicely with what we've already seen as characteristics of this particular candidate's campaign.
If this is what Streiff believes, I think it says more about him than about the Obama campaign (Referring to Obama as a "race pimp" makes me think he's a little quick to believe stories of scary black men preying on white women). Now, of course during any big election you hear scattered reports of violence between supporters of different candidates, but the degree to which the McCain campaign and its supporters have been desperate to prove that the Obama campaign is some kind of ravenous mob, to the point of the Pennsylvania GOP pushing the Todd story before all the facts came in, has been rather startling -- especially given the cries of "terrorist" and "kill him" at McCain-Palin rallies.
The editors make a good case. They note, first of all, Obama's extraordinary campaign organization:
Senator Obama's campaign has been extraordinarily open - inclusive across generational, ethnic and class lines. His top advisers include Democrats and Republicans, giving substance to his promise of bipartisan leadership. He created a disciplined organization that raised record sums yet stayed within budget. Senator Obama's campaign testifies to his managerial skill and talent for surrounding himself with smart, hard-working people.
Like many others who have endorsed Obama, including Colin Powell and Christopher Buckley, the editors regard John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as a running mate as a severe laspe in judgment:
In his first term in Congress, Senator Obama cannot claim decades of Washington experience. But his steadiness and thoughtful approach to issues show he has the judgment and depth of knowledge to lead the country. His first major decision after winning the nomination was to name Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, a proven foreign policy hand, as his running mate. By contrast, Senator McCain's choice of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska called his judgment into question and has proved to be an unsettling distraction as she is woefully unprepared for the presidency.
After noting Obama's advantages in both economic and foreign policy, they also highlight the importance of making judicial appointments in the next four years:
We believe that unlike Senator McCain, who has said he would name justices sympathetic to the views of the court's most conservative members, Senator Obama would avoid ideologically driven appointments that further polarize the country on contentious social issues.
In conclusion:
Senator Obama is a relative newcomer on the national stage. But he has proved to be that rarest of public servants, an inspirational leader who would transcend any enduring racial barriers and call upon the best in the American character, a public servant who also possesses the finely honed political skills necessary to turn the nation's highest ideals into practical policies that benefit citizens.
Add this to the overwhelming number of newspaper endorsements for Obama over McCain, which at last count stands at 112-39. Compare this to 2004, when John Kerry barely edged out George W. Bush 208-189.
