A Regional Party

post from MyDD on 05 November 2008 06:16:29 PM. © MyDD

Looking at both the electoral college map and the exit polling, one of the most interesting developments from yesterday was the confirmation of the Republican Party as a regional party. Yes, the South has served as the base of the GOP's coalition for at[...]

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Mandate: Dems Need Not Apply

post from TalkLeft on 05 November 2008 06:16:00 PM. © TalkLeft

Digby found this:

Wolf Blitzer, CNN anchor: "My sense is that [the winner of the Presidential election] will see this as a mandate on his policies, because [his Party] also did very well in the House of Representatives, did very well in the U.S. Senate, picking up seats in both. He gets over 50 percent . . . And he's going to see this as a mandate in the next four years to try and move the country in the direction he wants it to move. He will try to bring the country together in the short term, but he's going to say, he's got a mandate from the American people, and by all accounts he does."

No, Wolf did NOT say that last night -- he said that after George Bush won the 2004 election by 2 points (Obama will win by 6.5 when all the counting is done), when the GOP won 5 House seats (Dems will win at least 20 this year) and 6 Senate seats (Dems will win at least 6.) You see, mandates are not something Dems win. Look at the gyrations done at Volokh Conspiracy to deny Obama a mandate:

Looking at the exit polls for a random assortment of swing states that went for Obama--Indiana, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and Nevada--is interesting and has implications, I think, for how Obama should govern.

First, it seems pretty clear that whatever this election was, it does not look like a mandate for an aggressive liberal agenda. In Indiana, for instance, voters identified themselves as follows: 44% Moderate, 36% Conservative, 20% Liberal. Virginia was 46% Moderate, 33% Conservative, and 21% Liberal. Florida was 47%M, 35%C, and 19%L. Ohio was 45M-35C-20L. Pennsylvania was 50M-27C-23L. Nevada was 44M-34C-22L. Obama won basically because he won the moderates (he even collected a few conservatives here and there).

That's funny, I do not remember anyone arguing that Bush did not have a mandate for conservatism because of the large number of moderates in the electorate. All of this is silly of course. I am a centrist moderate. Why? Because I say I am. that's what people answering an exit poll do. Hell, that is what Obama did. But I do not get to vote for the "moderate" candidate. I get to vote for the Democratic or the Republican candidate and the ideas they espouse. Voters vote for candidates who lay out their plans. They vote for the plans. And by the way, that means Congressional candidates too. Republicans in Congress have every right, I dare say a duty to fight for the principles they ran on. If they have the political power to shape the agenda. then they should. If they don't, then they don't. that's why we have elections.

Personally, I agreed that Bush won a mandate in 2004 (2000 is another matter). He lost it in 2006 (that Dems were cowards is another matter.) And Obama won a mandate, as well as the Democratic Congress. That's what happens in elections. No one voted to give David Broder a veto over what the government should do.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

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CA-04: Still thousands of uncounted ballots, with
Charlie Brown down 450 votes

post from Daily Kos on 05 November 2008 06:15:04 PM. © Daily Kos

We may not know the final results in CA-04 for quite some time. Orange to Blue candidate Charlie Brown currently trails by 451 votes there, but there are thousands of provisional and absentee ballots to be counted.

The candidates vying for the District 4 seat were within 500 votes of one another, leading some to speculate that final results may not be known for days.

With all precincts reporting, McClintock had 155,771 votes and Brown had 155,320 votes.

...

One official said the race may ultimately be decided by thousands of provisional ballots, which have yet to be counted.

According to Brown campaign manager Todd Stenhouse, the number may be as high as 40,000 provisional and absentee ballots uncounted.

It appears that the campaign of Republican Tom McClintock does not contest those numbers - and tellingly, they have refused to declare victory:

Hanging on to a thin 451-vote lead, Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock has no plans to declare victory over Democrat Charlie Brown in the race to replace the retiring Republican Rep. John Doolittle in California's Fourth Congressional District.

That's because the McClintock campaign will wait until an unknown number of provisional and absentee ballots are counted, said Bill George, McClintock's communications director.

"I've heard between 20,000 and 40,000 as a rough number, but we don't have the data right now," George said this morning.

California's venerable Field Poll - the California gold standard - estimated turnout at 13.8 million statewide. Current turnout is about 10 million. There may not be 3.8 million votes outstanding statewide, but there are probably a lot of uncounted ballots statewide...and in CA-04.

We've still got a good shot at CA-04. There's no word on where the provisionals come from, whether they're likely to favor Brown or McClintock...but no one argues that this race is anything but wide open.

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Jesse Jackson explains why he cried at Baracks
victory speech

post from Let's Talk Honestly on 05 November 2008 06:13:04 PM. © Let's Talk Honestly

Click the link below to hear Jesse Jackson expalin why he cried as he watched Barack Obama’s victory speech in Chicago:http://www.letstalkhonestly.com/blacknewsblackviews.htmlPosted in 2008 election, african american, Barack Obama, Barack Obama wins, civil rights, jesse jackson, politics Tagged: african american, Barack Obama, Barack Obama wins, black, Grant Park, jesse jackson, Jesse Jackson crying, why was Jesse Jackson [...]

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Sadrist MPs Demand Obama Withdraw from Iraq

post from IraqSlogger.com on 05 November 2008 06:09:36 PM. © IraqSlogger.com

Just one day after his election to be the next president of the United States, the Sadrist bloc in the Iraqi Parliament demanded that President-elect Barack Obama withdraw his forces from Iraq when he takes up office in the White House, according to an Iraqi news report in Arabic.

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Voter Turnout Highest Since Before
Enfranchisement of Women

post from MyDD on 05 November 2008 06:02:04 PM. © MyDD

Wow: *** Highest turnout rate since '08 -- 1908: Provided the number stands, the turnout rate for yesterday's election was the highest in 100 years, according to the estimate from turnout guru Dr. Michael McDonald at George Mason University. Almost[...]

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Scarborough: Choosing Rahm Emanuel like choosing
Tom Delay

post from Crooks and Liars on 05 November 2008 06:01:54 PM. © Crooks and Liars

Scarborough outraged at Emanuel
icon Download | Play icon Download | Play

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough is outraged because Barack Obama offered the chief of staff position to Rahm Emanuel.

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WA-08: Still Waiting and Still a Toss-Up

post from Daily Kos on 05 November 2008 05:50:04 PM. © Daily Kos

Even though the Burner campaign was setting the expectation that we would not know the outcome of this race for at least a day or two after Election Day, this is still torture. That's compounded by the fact that King Co. has some serious elections deficiencies--they spent three hours yesterday running absentee ballots through the counting machine, only to discover that they had set it up incorrectly and none of the votes had been counted.

Which means we're further behind. As to why King county is so slow to count ballots, it's anybody's guess in general. Perhaps a mixture of incompetence and stupidity on the part of the executive and county. We use optical scan machines here, where you fill in the bubble by your choice and feed the ballot into a reader. But this cycle, they added in the layer of a number of charter amendments (which could easily have held off for an off-year election) that made the ballot longer than normal. The longer ballot is harder to feed into the machine to read, so it takes more time per ballot.

For a bit more background. All but two Washington state counties vote exclusively by mail. The two other counties are King and Pierce--the two counties that the 8th Congressional district includes. So these two counties have to deal with both poll voting and mail-in voting, though in Pierce there is very little poll voting. The total mail-in vote for the district should be about 75%. The state, inexplicably, requires not that ballots be in hand on election day (like Oregon) but be post-marked on election day. So valid ballots are going to be trickling in over the rest of the week.

The results we've seen thus far from King county are about 97% from the poll vote, and Pierce's results mixed.

As it stands now, it's essentially tied. Darcy trails by just .5 percent with less than half the vote counted.

Because the majority of the district's vote is by mail, we don't know yet what turn-out is going to be for this election. But, as a benchmark, in 2006, 256,831 votes were cast in this race. As of now, 140,424 votes have been counted. Given that this year featured both a presidential and gubernatorial election, turnout should be much higher than in 2006. As of today, King Co. is reporting 380,730 uncounted ballots, but only a portion of them will be from the part of the county in the 8th district.

Tea Leaves: So far, Darcy is outperforming her own 2006 race in Pierce county. She got 42.58% in 2006, and right now is at 45%. She's matching her King county performance so far.

Goldy makes note of another trend:

What seems clear is that Darcy did very well with the early absentees, and Reichert did very well with poll voters. That shows a clear trend in Reichert’s favor that we can mostly attribute to the rank partisan work of the Seattle Times and their decision to assist Reichert in smearing Darcy’s educational record during the final weeks of the campaign. And that’s simply pathetic....

Later today, and possibly tomorrow, after more early absentees are counted, Darcy will likely regain the lead... and then over the next few days, as the late absentees are added to the tally, that lead will likely slowly ebb away.

The numbers released from King so far are almost entirely poll votes, which should be skewing for Reichert. The next batch of some 90,000 votes is supposed to come in a few hours. That should be from early absentee--they begin counting the absentees in order of arrival. If the trend holds, we should see an increase in her King county lead. Again, we don't know what percentage of the total vote cast that will be--we don't know how many absentee ballots the county is sitting on and how many are still in the mail. Or when it's finally going to be over.

But another note of encouragement: Democratic Governor Christine Gregoire won the state decisively (and Dino Rossi crawled back under his rock today), which shows a Democratic trend to the electorate in the state as a whole. That might not translate into the 8th district, but at the very least, it's good news.

I'll have an update when the next ballot batch is dropped.

Update: Another 20K+ votes just dropped, but the overall total barely budged. It's going to be a long few days while these trickle in. We should also be prepared for a recount. The Burner campaign has made plans for one, just in case.

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EXCLUSIVE: Podesta Announces He Will Not Be
Joining New Obama Administration

Today, President-elect Barack Obama announced his new transition team, which includes Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF) President and CEO John Podesta as one of three co-chairs.

The media have floated the possibility that Podesta might serve in various roles in the Obama administration, including Energy Secretary and chief of staff. But today in an internal memo to CAPAF staff, Podesta put those rumors to rest. Announcing that he is taking a temporary leave of absence to fulfill his transition duties, Podesta said that he has no plans to join the Obama administration:

I am honored to have been asked to help organize the President-elect?s transition to a new government. For this purpose, I am taking a temporary leave of absence during the transition period. As I have advised Senator Obama and the Boards of CAP and CAPAF, I will not be joining the new Administration and will return to American Progress after the transition ends.

Launched in 2003, CAP’s mission has been to provide long-term leadership and support to the progressive movement, develop thoughtful policy proposals, and engage in the war of ideas with conservatives. Podesta formerly served as President Clinton’s chief of staff and is a professor at Georgetown University. He also recently released a progressive blueprint for the next administration entitled, The Power of Progress: How America?s Progressives Can (Once Again) Save Our Economy, Our Climate, and Our Country.

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Senate race to 60 update (Updated x3)

The Democrats came into tonight sitting on 50 seats plus LIEberman for a total of 51 in the caucus. There were about a dozen or so contested races with only one being a Democratic seat. Here is what has happened so far with a running tally:

NC - Hagan (d) defeats Dole (r-inc) - Dem total 51 + LIEberman
VA - Warner (d) defeats Gilmore (r) - Dem total 52 + LIEberman
NH - Shaheen (d) defeats Sununu (r-inc) - Dem total 53 + LIEberman
GA - Chambliss (r-inc) and Martin (d) are headed to a runoff!! (UPDATED)
KY - McConnell (r-inc) defeats Lunsford (d) - Dem total 53 + LIEberman
MS - Wicker (r) defeats Musgrove (d) - Dem total 53 + LIEberman
LA - Landrieu (d-inc) defeats Kennedy (r) - Dem total 53 + LIEberman
CO - Udall (d) defeats Schaffer (r) - Dem total 54 + LIEberman
NM - Udall (d) defeats Pearce (r) - Dem total 55 + LIEberman
OR - Merkley (d) defeats Smith (r-inc) - Dem total 56+ LIEberman

Minnesota is too close to call in the Franken vs. Coleman race. We still are waiting on Oregon and Alaska. Sixty looks out of reach, but President-elect Obama will have a large Democratic majority in Congress to work with.

UPDATED: Jim Martin has knocked Saxby Chambliss under the 50% mark which requires a runoff in the state of Georgia. In Minnesota Norm Coleman is hanging on to a 600 voted lead, with almost all of the returns in. A recount could be called. In Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley trails by around 10,000 votes with 73% reporting. The Portland area still has a lot to be counted. Convicted felon Ted Stevens looks like he will retain his seat over challenger Mark Begich.

UPDATEDx2: Not so fast on the Alaska call. Apparently there are 60,000 absentee ballots yet to be counted and they are breaking by a good margin for Begich. In Minnesota there is very good chance Franken wins the recount which is done by hand. The first count is done by optical scanners looking for bubbled in marks. Many first time voters (likely Dem) might just mark an x or something. The state of MN estimates 2 per thousand missed ballots. At 3,000,000 ballots, 500 votes looks pretty likely. In Oregon Merkley has taken a 7,000 vote lead with 79% reporting. The remaining ballots are from heavy Democratic districts. We will pick up a seat in Oregon.

UPDATEDx3: Oregon has gone the way of change with Jeff Merkley defeating incumbent Gordon Smith. Minnesota is down to 250 votes and a recount is coming.

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