Today marks the first presidential election since I started the blog, and I just returned from doing my civic duty. This post will be my diary of Election Day 2008, and I'll add to it throughout the day until the networks call it for Barry or Speedbump later tonight.
This morning I was up about 6:20 am, early by my standards, and we were at the polling location about twenty minutes after it opened. As usual, people on their way to work were already voting but there were no lines and I was finished casting my ballot by 7:36 am. I voted for Barry, which was a purely symbolic gesture since Speedbump will get about 60 percent of the Texas popular vote and 100 percent of its Electoral College votes. I voted for any Repubs running unopposed and when the choice was between a Repub and a Libertarian. In that regard I'm technically bipartisan; in reality I'm rabidly anti-Republican. In most instances, my votes for Democrats occur because they're running against Republicans, rather than out of a particular desire to see a Dem in office. Even the best Republicans can't be relied upon to do the right thing, a case in point being Speedbump's selection of Spiro Igloo as his running mate - an act that permanently disqualified him as a presidential possibility as far as I'm concerned.
Added 12:24 pm: It's still too soon to start watching election coverage on MSNBC or CNN. Unlike rival Fox News, both of those channels try to adhere to antiquated standards of fairness and objectivity, meaning they'll be talking for hours about how the polls tightened at the end and how Speedbump has a pathway to victory. While both points may be correct, I don't want to waste time hearing them repeated all day.
Life could have been simple. Nine months ago, I hoped Ace would win the GOP nomination then make at least a lame attempt to regain some maverick status by running his general election campaign as a centrist. He'd win the White House, but the increased Dem majorities in congress would keep him on a tight leash until 2010, maybe longer.
The reality was that Ace got a strong challenge in the GOP primary and slipped into panic mode. He joined himself at the hip to W and the leaders of the conservative evangelunicals. When it came down to the nut-cuttin' Ace was too chickenshit to stand tall, and behaved like a whipped dog doing rollover tricks for his masters.
The Ace I'd hoped for would've picked Lieberman or Ridge as his running mate and told the evangelunicals to stuff it if they didn't like it. That Ace, the one standing tall for what he thought was right, would've been a guy I could live with for four years.
Added 3:58 pm: I've been reading about exit polls on some of the political blogs I check daily. In 2008, the word is that exit polls are unreliable and should be ignored. I wonder why they bother conducting exit polls at all if that's true.
Here's what I think - the exit polls in 2000 that showed Gore winning Florida were fine. The exit polls in 2004 that showed Kerry winning Ohio were fine. I believe that in both cases, the votes weren't counted the way they were cast. Because the media are lazy, it was easier to write that the polls were flawed instead of digging deeply to discover other possibilities. I'm no expert in the science of opinion polling, but that's what I choose to believe.
Added 6:09 pm: MSNBC is where I'll probably be spending most of my tube-watching hours tonight, thanks to Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, who provide enough leftward tilt to the proceedings to keep my frustration levels under control. They've just called Kentucky for the Speedbump, who racked up a 70-30 lead with less than 10 percent counted. The tube is now off, and I'm at the laptop for an hour or so. We've reached the part of the show where we'll see a long, long line of states turning red and the Bumpster pulling into the EC lead. He should have enough strength in the deep south shitholes that none are too close to call.
Added 8:15 pm: MSNBC has announced that Barry will win Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, two of the building blocks in Speedbump's EC strategy. The pivotal states of Virginia, Ohio and Florida are all too close to call, and the polls are still open out west, where the Dems are counting on wins in New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada. Shit, I was afraid this motherfucker was gonna be too close for comfort.
Added 11:46 pm: Shortly after I added the preceding note, the message board at DU was updated with the latest news: Ohio had fallen into place. This was the piece of the puzzle I was anxious about, since Ohio is one of those states that always goes with the winner of the election. Missouri is another. I've been asking myself how Speedbump could lose if he won Ohio and Missouri, although most scenarios I'd seen depicted just that reality. Anyway, I hightailed it back to the living room and turned on Fox News to see if I could confirm the report. FNC had the usual suspects on its panel: Brit Hume, Fred Barnes, and Greasy Bill Kristol, along with token moderate Juan Williams. A longer bunch of faces you'll never see. They were already talking about whether Obama would turn the country into a leftist dicatatorship, or maybe do something the current dickwad had not done, namely govern from the center.
With Pennsylvania and Ohio in the Blue column it looked like Ace was running out of choices and sure enough, MSNBC called it for Barry at 10:00 pm sharp. As things turned out, it looks like he picked up Florida, Virginia, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, meaning he accomplished something I couldn't imagine in my wildest fantasies - he broke the 300 EC vote barrier. I had him pegged at about 286 max if everything broke exactly right for him.
After a long wait, Ace came out and gave a moving and eloquent concession speech. I was reminded again of the 2000 version of John McCain, the guy I respected so much. If that guy had been running against Obama, I'm not sure how I'd have voted today. Unfortunately, he disappeared somewhere along the way, and some other creepy old guy stole his identity.
Obama followed up with his equally eloquent and moving victory speech. At some point tomorrow, after I've had a chance to look over all the final vote tallies and results of the congressional races, I'll probably write a few paragraphs about my expectations for the next four years. I was wrong about Obama - until a few hours ago, I was convinced he could never win a presidential election in this country in a million years. Maybe I was wrong about the country, too. At any rate, history was made after all.
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