2008 Presidential Election

Brad Blog:

Okay, I've now been able to get independent information from multiple sources that all of this precedes what are said to be possible federal indictments against Palin, concerning an embezzlement scandal related to the building of Palin's house and the Wasilla Sports Complex built during her tenure as Mayor. Both structures, it is said, feature the "same windows, same wood, same products." Federal investigators have been looking into this for some time, and indictments could be imminent, according to the Alaska sources.

The BRAD BLOG has not been able to receive confirm from any federal sources on this. Our information comes from local Alaskans who follow Palin, and who have been keeping an eye on this for some time, while keeping it quiet at the request of federal investigators.

Logo Design Love reveals some of the logos that weren't chosen by Obama's campaign:

Some clever ideas, but the "rising sun" logo was clearly the best of the bunch.

NYTimes:

The dishonesty of the narrative about Mr. Obama during the campaign went a step further with its assumption that if you can place two people in the same room at the same time, or if you can show that they held a conversation, shared a cup of coffee, took the bus downtown together or had any of a thousand other associations, then you have demonstrated that they share ideas, policies, outlook, influences and, especially, responsibility for each other's behavior. [...]

President-elect Obama and I sat on a board together; we lived in the same diverse and yet close-knit community; we sometimes passed in the bookstore. We didn't pal around, and I had nothing to do with his positions. I knew him as well as thousands of others did, and like millions of others, I wish I knew him better.

Demonization, guilt by association, and the politics of fear did not triumph, not this time. Let's hope they never will again.

Not bad for a guy who got 53% of the popular vote (USA Today):

President-elect Barack Obama gets soaring marks for his handling of the transition and his choices for the Cabinet, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, even at a time the public is downbeat over the economy.

More than three of four Americans, including a majority of Republicans, approve of the job Obama has done so far — broad-based support he'll need as he faces tough decisions ahead. [...]

Americans are "projecting their hopes" for the new president, says Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who studies polling, though they will expect concrete results to follow.

Salt Lake Tribune:

Updated election results released Tuesday show that Salt Lake County voters favored Barack Obama over John McCain — but just barely — marking the first time in decades that a Democratic presidential hopeful won the state's most populous county.

Read the rest of this entry...

Gary Kamiya at Salon:

Surveying the wreckage after American voters gave their party the bum's rush, Republican thinkers have pondered what went wrong, searched their souls — and decided that the way to regain power is to move further to the right. [...]

Predictably taking the hardest line were the braying tribunes of the right-wing plebs, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. The McCain-detesting Coulter wrote, "The only good thing about McCain is that he gave us a genuine conservative, Sarah Palin. He's like one of those insects that lives just long enough to reproduce so that the species can survive. That's why a lot of us are referring to Sarah as 'The One' these days. Like Sarah Connor in 'The Terminator,' Sarah Palin is destined to give birth to a new movement."

It was just a mere four months ago that the McCain campaign was using "The One" as a term of ridicule for Obama (NYTimes). But then, as Digby says, Republicans have retired the concept of hypocrisy.

With the outcome of the presidential race in Missouri still undecided, Obama's EV lead currently stands at 364 to 163. I was fooling around with the numbers today and realized — even if you removed Missouri, Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina from the Obama column, he would still win with 309 EVs. That's a comfortable win without a single Southern state.

That should finish off, once and for all, the idea that Democrats have a "Southern problem."

Frank Rich in the NYTimes:

For eight years, we’ve been told by those in power that we are small, bigoted and stupid — easily divided and easily frightened. This was the toxic catechism of Bush-Rove politics. It was the soiled banner picked up by the sad McCain campaign, and it was often abetted by an amen corner in the dominant news media. We heard this slander of America so often that we all started to believe it, liberals most certainly included. [...]

The actual real America is everywhere. It is the America that has been in shell shock since the aftermath of 9/11, when our government wielded a brutal attack by terrorists as a club to ratchet up our fears, betray our deepest constitutional values and turn Americans against one another in the name of "patriotism." What we started to remember the morning after Election Day was what we had forgotten over the past eight years, as our abusive relationship with the Bush administration and its press enablers dragged on: That's not who we are.

So even as we celebrated our first black president, we looked around and rediscovered the nation that had elected him. "We are the ones we've been waiting for," Obama said in February, and indeed millions of such Americans were here all along, waiting for a leader. This was the week that they reclaimed their country.