Tuesday, November 2, 2004

Election Day Bulletin - Good Night, America 8:30 PT    I'm not doing this all night.  After 2000, I'm not convinced I'll know anything before midnight.  Watch the skies - lock your doors - pray for justice.  I'm going to curl up with my wife in bed, and listen to the liberal talkfest known as NPR for the results.  I'll see you on the flipside. Read TPM if you want by-the-minute updates.  I'm  not sure I like his take on the youth vote, but I'm just a goofball, and he's a New York Times-sanctioned blogger god.  So what do I know? 8:32:40 PM     comment []

Election Day Update - Karen Hughes Skittish 8:15 PT "I think we're going to do very well tonight." But then she said something about Bush thanking all of his supporters, and you don't thank your supporters unless it's over. She says repeatedly "we're feeling very optimistic about Florida," but doesn't say they'll win Florida. There is a difference. Jennings stings Karen a little by asking why the country's so polarized when Bush went to D.C. to be the great uniter. She's snippy, and works in a Kerry cheap shot while describing how "difficult" the climate is in D.C. By the way, Pennsylvania has gone for Kerry.  8:18:42 PM     comment []

Election Day Update - Joe Lockhart's Swinging for the Fences 8:05 PT   Joe Lockhart's predicting a clean sweep through the midwest:  Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin.  He says a local affiliate in Iowa is calling the race for Kerry.  Jennings gets very nervous - looks to a producer for guidance briefly, then turns away and back to Lockhart.  Florida?  Too close to call, but Lockhart says "we're overperforming in South Florida.  I think by the end of the night, we'll have Florida."  He's being pretty brazen on national tv.  He's got even more precise breakdowns on War Room, in case you're reading me and not Salon.  (Silly reader.)  You hope it's the exit polls talking and not the whiskey.  Every time ABC shows a Democrat, they seem loose and carefree.  Every time they show a Republican, they look nervous and ready to fly off the handle on a moment's notice.   This includes Bush, who everybody says looked relaxed during that bizarre video in the White House.  He didn't looked very relaxed to me - he looked spooked. 8:12:49 PM     comment []

Battlefield Reports - Election Day I'm not monitoring multiple media sources. I'm not Kos, I'm not Josh Marshall, and I'm certainly not Wonkette. (My mind doesn't get that dirty on a bad day.) I'm sittin' on my couch, watching ABC, and scanning various blogs with pronounced laziness. But here's what I'm seeing. This morning, at the gym, I was watching Fox News through the miracle of closed-captioning. At 7:30, they started ripping and romping that a voting machine had been pre-loaded with thousands of votes. The D.A. hadn't seen the evidence, state and federal voting officials hadn't seen it, but they had the goods. Voter fraud! Da da DUM!! Then a voting official explained that they weren't looking at the number of votes, but the number of times people had voted on that machine in its history. Like an odometer for voting machines. Dumb Fox people. As of 4:30, they were still reporting this as a scoop. 7:00 PT Terry Moran at the White House reports that Bush is leaning on reporters to keep from calling the election, and to remind people that there were a lot of events that hadn't happened yet. They sound scared. Terry Moran gets coy when Peter Jennings asks him why the President is making such a strong statement on election night. Hmm. A few minutes later, ABC runs a videotape taken from the White House, of Bush Jr. and One-Term Bush Sr. and all the little Bushistas. There's no audio. Bwa ha ha ha ha!!! According to reports, he says, "I believe this election is going to be over tonight, and I believe I'm going to win." Hmm again. Kerry's camp is saying things like, "we're going to win, and we're going to win comfortably." Stephanie Cutter's dancing in the streets. Bush is saying "I think I'm going to win." So much for confidence. Peter Jennings is very carefully announcing that he can't announce a prediction in a number of states. He's using interesting language, as if he has enough info to call the election, but just doesn't want to do it on tv yet. 7:30 PT John McCain is interviewed. "I apologize, but I can't say right now where Senator McCain is right now." He's in Phoenix. Peter Jennings is just great. He forgets to start out saying that Bush is going to win. Instead, it's "when we see the final results..." Oops. He tries to save the conversation near the end, but it sounds forced. His final words are that he enjoyed campaigning with Bush, but he's also good friends with John Kerry. He didn't say that he was a good friend with Bush, and Jennings notices that and mentions it. 7:45 PT They're reporting on the Senate and House races that are too lopsided not to call. Chuck Grassley still has a job. Harry Reid still has a job. Chuck Schumer still has a job. Why do they even report this stuff? This just in: Mel Carnahan is still dead, but Ashcroft still couldn't beat him. Barack Obama just went on air for just a moment. Go read his book, by the way. It's a surprisingly stark and honest book about politics - worth its weight in gold compared to the crap that Daschle and Bush have written. 7:41:35 PM     comment []

Election Security Blankets I'm on the same side as the Nickolodeon kids, the Green Bay Packers, the pigeons in Harvard Square, and whatever other voodoo predictors have been trotted out.  I'm clutching my magic beans of hope desperately, but I'm just worried.  I'm going to leave work early today.  I know I'm not going to get much work done once the exit polls start coming in, so I'm just going to come home and start gorging on pundits.  I want Kerry to win by a shockingly strong mandate.  I truly believe that's going to happen.  But we'll see once the voters - and the challengers in Ohio, the protestors in Florida, and the lawyers everywhere else - have their say.  6:35:56 AM     comment []