Ohio Goes for Obama

Fox News is calling Ohio for Obama, which means it's really all over for McCain.

Let the post-game analysis begin.

Comments

[SIV]

Game over

[Bingo]

I am totally shocked and surprised because I thought McCain could win this!!!!

[Doug]

Everybody look surprised.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

How can they call it this early?

[joe]

All righty then.

Funny we still haven't heard about Virginia, but Ohio flips.

[Ironic]

Remember 2000? Anyone?

[Bingo]

Keep in mind its in the networks best interest to keep beating the "OMG it's still undecided" drum for as long as possible. Ad revenue, ya know?

[BDB]

Joe--

VA will be like the 2006 Senate race. In the end, Obama will win it by a hair. All the Republican areas come in early, and Democrat areas last.

But yeah. Congratulations to President-Elect Obama.

[Ironic]

"Keep in mind its in the networks best interest to keep beating the "OMG it's still undecided" drum for as long as possible. Ad revenue, ya know?"

I thought that in 2000 as well.

[Lester Hunt]

Well, at least we might not end up bombing the crap out of Iran after all.

[Kaiser]

Mr. Nice Guy

How can they call it this early?

Technically they can't. It is still early, but McCain needs a miracle without Ohio, I'm talking like a McCain wins California kind of miracle.

[BDB]

FL will be called next. Before VA.

[Bingo]

Remember 1948? Anyone?

No because it's a completely different scenario. People comparing this to past elections are retarded.

[anarch, no space barr issues]

Speaking of I ran, what's McC gonna do now?

[Brian Courts]

That really does absolutely seal it because the west coast and Hawaii represent 77 EV's that will, without a shred of doubt, go to Obama. Adding those to the states MSNBC has called so far gives him 272.

[BDB]

The fat lady sings in Virginia.

NLS calls it for BHO.

http://notlarrysabato.typepad.com/doh/2008/11/barack-obama-wi.html

Hes been right about every statewide race since 2001. He's also a borderline PUMA.

[Dewey]

McCain Beats Truman!

[Brian Courts]

It is still early, but McCain needs a miracle without Ohio

Only a miracle involving one of the west coast states would work now -- see above -- and that simply is not going to happen

[damon]

Gentlemen, I hope you're all ready to wage an ideological war of philosophies... because the next four years are going to be very difficult for libertarian minded individuals.

Will the GOP come to its senses and return to more libertarian roots, or is the three legged stool truly fractured forever?

[Mr. Blather]

Lester Hunt | November 4, 2008, 9:31pm | #
"Well, at least we might not end up bombing the crap out of Iran after all."

Ummm, guess again:

"The threats to Israel security begin in Sderot, but they don't end there. They include outrageous acts of terror like the attack we just saw yesterday in Jerusalem. Rearming Hezbollah in Lebanon and an Iranian regime that sponsors terrorism, pursues nuclear weapons and threatens Israel's existence. A nuclear Iran would pose a grave threat and the world must prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon."
--Barak Obama, speech in Sderot, Israel, July 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/us/politics/23text-obama.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&ref=politics&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

[Mr. Nice Guy]

I just mean how can they call Ohio.

[Barack Obama]

I would like to thank the Dalas Cowboys and the cast of "Who Framed Roger Rabit" for their support.

[Bingo]

Damon: we're fucked because the GOP beat the free market drum while creating policies that benefited their big-business donors without freeing up the market. Public opinion is against "capitalism" as the GOP has defined it. We're AT LEAST 12 years out from any sort of libertarian turnaround, if there ever is one within our lifetime.

[Derrick]

Will the GOP come to its senses and return to more libertarian roots, or is the three legged stool truly fractured forever?

When can we forget about the GOP and move on?

[BDB]

We can all "thank" GWB for that, Bingo.

[Republican with elephant-like]

Remember 2000? Anyone?

I do. I demand a recount of the ballots. I demand that they keep recounting them until we get the results that we want.

[damon]

@Bingo:

Then where can we go? What can we do? We have to fight loudly to wrestle the definition of liberty away from the Republicans, we have to be out there, confronting, convincing, evangelizing.

This is an important moment. It is time for us to put up or shut up.

[SIV]

If Obama wins VA I look forward to a months worth of long, rambling, educational elitist, html-free, often drunken comments from Mr. Nice Guy Crow Eating Dumb Ass.

[Andy Craig]

Looks like the LP's strongest major races are Mike Munger (4% for NC Gov) and Alan Buckley (5% GA Sen, with 10% in the under-30s)

Not looking all that great for Barr.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Long?

Yes, I do believe in paragraphs as well as predicates and subjects.

But I don't think CEDA is going to have appear here.

[Todd]

Bingo, Damon: I look at it like this. They looked at Goldwater as a nut, but he eventually got a movement going. While the libertarian movement isn't dead, we're going into the wilderness for a bit. I hope you have your camping gear packed, because we're going to be out here for a while. Also, I think the best we can do is push the whole we-like-teh-gey-and-teh-latino meme as hard as possible. While that won't pull the social cons, I think we could pull a lot of the economic conservatives (who really don't care much about social issues, anyway) and the independents. That said, we're going to be out here for a few years. Know a nice place were I can celebrate my 30th birthday out here? LOL

[BDB]

50/50 in the Commonwealth...hey MNG can I up the wager now?

[Todd]

@ Bingo: James K. Galbraith's latest book mentions the exact point you're talking about...and uses it as a sign that since we're all socialists now, mind as well use it for "the people." Oh, can I say it really sucks to be dissing a fellow brother for the next 4-8 years? That'll make for some fun Thanksgivings.

[SOFL Hockey Fan]

Damon: Gentlemen, I hope you're all ready to wage an ideological war of philosophies... because the next four years are going to be very difficult for libertarian minded individuals.

Will they be any more difficult than the past 8 years?

[BDB]

MNG, can I raise the stakes on the wager?

Oh please oh please oh please.

In the counties that have come in so far, it looks just like the Kaine/Kilgore race.

I'll let you get out if it now MNG, or you can raise it.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

No Suffolk and Charles City numbers.

Only 26% from Fairfax, yeah I'm a lil' nervous.

But McCain's been keeping his lead throughout...

[MlR]

Heh. I forgot the other night to give the best punchline of the entire deal.

With a Democratic Congress McCain was never going to get authorization or even a figment of international political support (besides perhaps Sarkozy) for airstrikes against Iran.

Obama very well might.

So again, good job guys.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Figures. I move out of VA and it becomes a politically exciting state.

MD will be exciting nationally maybe in 2030...

[BDB]

MNG--

This is just like 2005 Kaine/Kilgore.

The Reps take a big lead, then NoVA dumps its numbers and the Dem pulls ahead. Good luck, Crow Eating Dumbass.

[damon]

I don't know about you guys, but I blame this election on everyone but myself.

[Kaiser]

I wonder if after tonight, anyone will actually be willing to admit the "Bradley Effect" never existed in the first place?

I also was wondering if anyone else noticed that Joe Biden won the Senate race in Delaware?

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Oh shit.

[BDB]

Yeah, NoVA holds back its votes on purpose to demonstrate its electoral power so it gets more road funding.

[BDB]

Obama in the lead now in VA, MNG.

And all the "red" counties have fully reported.

[MNG]

Not so fast BDB.

Va beach only 44% reporting.

[GILMORE]

where are the people reminding us that this would never happen?

[BDB]

LOL@VA Beach. It will be tied.

Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William have yet to fully come in.

This is like EVERY statewide race in VA these days. The Democrats pull it out when NoVA dumps its #s.

[domoarrigato]

congrats joe. your guy is in. now we'll see what he does with the power he craves so badly.

I hope you have the courage to stick around this forum for the next few years to try and logically and consistently support the policies your candidate enacts while he starts compromising, appeasing, and floundering (like all presidents end up doing)

Beware, young Icarus.

[Brian Courts]

Give it up MNG, VA was over a long time ago. States fall along a spectrum of blueness / redness that you can pretty much rank from one end to the other. Now how that relates to the actual vote changes from year to year based on the specifics of the given election (their place on the spectrum changes too over time, but that is a much longer term and slower movement). When IN turned out to be the fulcrum, so to speak, the tossup that could fall either way, then it meant that states which were "bluer" than IN were pushed to the Obama side of the ledger for this particular election. That includes VA, NC, FL - all of which will go to Obama.

Sure, if some states are very close to the same level of blueness and end up being toss-ups then one might go one way and one another, but as long as there is a distinct spread between them, the likelihood of a movement in the blue direction in one state (say IN) that isn't represented in the others that are, again "bluer" (VA, NC, FL) is small.

[joe]

OK, how's this: if Obama wins by taking the dark blue states plus Ohio, Iowa, and New Mexico, (and even if you add Indiana to that list) it means this:

The map has barely changed. The Democrats are strong in the northeast, the industrial midwest, the upper plains states, and the Pacific states. They have a barely-there sputtering presence in the entire rest of the West, and nothing in the South. The solid South includes Virginia, Florida, West Virginia, Louisiana, and Arkansas. The southwest is strongly Republican, the mountain west even moreso, and Missouri is part of the Oklahoma/Kansas/Nebraska Republican lower plains strongholds, its big cities be damned.

It's would be basically the same Bush map. The Democrats would have just captured some of the battleground states this time, in an extremely favorable environment. Strategically, they would have captured some territory but stretched their lines, and it's them playing defense in the next election.

Obama needs to win a few of the following to really demonstrate that a major shift has taken place in the electorate: Virginia, Florida, Missouri, Colorado, Nevada, North Dakota, Montana, North Carolina, Arizona. If he takes any three of those, along with his pickups in Iowa and Ohio and his win in New Mexico, the Democrats are the majority party and the Republicans are the opposition for years to come. Any four of them, and they're a regional party that has to try to stage a breakout - oh, and Sarah Palin is probably going to be their candidate in four years.

[BDB]

Joe--

Obama has won Virginia. I'm 100% sure.

[joe]

I demand a recount of the ballots. I demand that they keep recounting them until we get the results that we want.

You can have all the recounts you want, bi-atch. It's not going to get any better for you.

[BDB]

Fox News calls VIRGINIA for OBAMA.

Hi, Crow Eating Dumbass.

[joe]

domo, didn't you hear? Barack Obama only speaks in vague platitudes, so there aren't any actual policies he has to back away from.

I'm going to keep doing what I always do - say exactly what I think about what the president is doing, whether I like it or not. I imagine I'll like a lot more of what this Democratic president will do, because, you know, I broadly agree with his political outlook.

Brian Courts, I was just explaining that to someone. Actually, I was doing it a couple of hours ago, when Indiana didn't get called.

[BDB]

Joe, this is what Obama can do to make me feel safe--

Sec. of Defense--Chuck Hagel

Sec. of State--Dick Lugar

Sec. of Treasury--Robert Rubin

[Crow Eating Dumbass]

Well fuck me.

How the hell?

[joe]

You know, a boring white guy from the South whose politics are indistinguishable from John McCain - thus eviscerating the McBush argument - and who is just ok at giving a speech, and who didn't have much of a background in organizing, and who wasn't as keen on the importance of legal defenses of voting rights, and who quite frankly isn't the sort of person who would have stuck his neck out and opposed the Iraq War in 2003, would have won by 9 point.

No, 20. No, a zillion.

[Crow Eating Dumbass]

Picking Hagel would be a great idea.

If the GOP had ANY brains they would run Jindal in 12 (but alas, his stellar educational background may make him unpalatable to them).

[joe]

More bubbly.

[Crow Eating Dumbass]

I will note that Obama is, as I argued, underperfoming the Senate candidates around the country.

[BDB]

So, I'm a coastal elite now.

[BDB]

The final margin in VA will be Obama 53, McCain 47.

[Brian Courts]

Fox News calls VIRGINIA for OBAMA.

That means the only mathematical possibility for McCain now requires winning CA. And that means the election will be called at 8:00 PST when CA is called for Obama.

[joe]

Hell, if he's going to have a Republican Secretary of Defense, just keep Gates on. He's doing a fine job, he's a good soldier, and it would eliminate the transition drama.

No drama Obama.

[BDB]

Joe--

Gates would make me feel safe, too.

I just hope he brings in the Clinton economic people.

[joe]

Fuck that. Krugman, Frank, Reich...and Kucinich for Labor.

[joe]

So, it occurs to me: we just elected a black man to be President.

Has there ever been a country that wasn't majority-black that did that?

Certainly, none of the European countries.

Are we the first?

USA! USA!

[BDB]

Yeah, and Ayers for Secretary of Education, right?
lol

[joe]

OK, I'll take it out for one last spin:

His professional background and charitable work would seem to make Secretary of Education a natural fit for Bill Ayers.

But then, I understand he's done some work at the Pentagon as well.

[punk7]

Anyone know how Issue 6 (casino issue) is doing in Ohio?

[smacky]

It looks like it's not going to pass.

[punk7]

shit . . . where are you getting your info?

[yo mama]

So, it occurs to me: we just elected a black man to be President.

Has there ever been a country that wasn't majority-black that did that?

Yeah. The US of A back in '92.