2008 USGE RESULTS THREAD PS GOP U LOST DIXVILLE NOTCH LOL

elmore leonard's get palin

This election is a gift that keeps on giving.

played by fred ward, of course

More seriously, the turning point:

In mid-September, McCain was in Florida when the financial crisis broke. First the venerable investment-banking house Lehman Brothers announced it would file for bankruptcy, then the giant insurer AIG sought an emergency loan from the Federal Reserve, then the giant Merrill Lynch collapsed in a fire sale to Morgan Stanley. At a rally in Jacksonville, McCain trotted out a familiar line from his stump speech. "The fundamentals of our economy are strong," McCain insisted, as he had for months. "But these are very, very difficult times … I promise you, we will never put America in this position again. We will clean up Wall Street. We will reform government."

At Obama headquarters, the oppo team wasted no time. "We're grabbing up YouTube, we're driving it, everywhere," an aide recalled. "McCain says economy 'strong'," read an e-mail from the Democratic National Committee. In Colorado, Obama openly mocked McCain, in a way that not too subtly depicted the 72-year-old senator as mentally out of it. "It's not that I think John McCain doesn't care what's going on in the lives of most Americans. I just think he doesn't know. Why else would he say, today, of all days, just a few hours ago, that the fundamentals of our economy are strong? Senator, what economy are you talking about?"

Now it was McCain's turn to seem caught unawares, to appear knocked back and unsteady. His campaign tried to explain that by "fundamentals," he meant American workers, and if Obama disagreed with that, well, then the Illinois senator was clearly against American workers. This spin was so outrageous that the regular traveling press laughed out loud.

McCain, the fighter pilot, began to swoop and veer. On the "Today" show, he declared, "We are in crisis. We are in total crisis." He called for a 9/11-style commission to investigate what exactly had gone wrong. He was ad-libbing; his staff was caught by surprise. Obama attacked again, mocking McCain for offering up "the oldest stunt in the book—you pass the buck to a commission to study a problem." McCain never mentioned the commission again.

But he continued to lurch. He announced that as president he would fire Chris Cox, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. It was pointed out to him that the president does not have the power to fire the SEC chairman, who serves a fixed term. McCain, now in forgiveness mode, called Cox a "good man" but said he would ask for his resignation anyway.

Ouch:

No Republican leaders rallied to McCain when he arrived in the Capitol. "They don't like him very much," a McCain aide ruefully acknowledged. McCain called Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to tell him his plan, and the Democratic leader coldly read from a press release accusing McCain of coming to Washington to stage a "photo op." "C'mon, Harry," McCain privately protested to Reid, whom he had known for almost three decades. (Hanging up, McCain just laughed and shook his head.)

elmore leonard's get palin

So OTM

"So how about the Eskimo? Is he on the level?"

seriously wtf is this a david mamet script

I know! I can't get over that! I keep playing the scene out in my head!

GlenPalin Glen Todd

"So what's the difference between a snowmobile and a snow machine, anyway?" Salter asked. "They're the same thing," Todd replied. "Right, so why not call it a snowmobile?" Salter joshed. "Because it's a snow machine," came the reply.

vs

Bergman: Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money.

Seriously, let's cast that scene:

Schmidt
Salter
Sarah
Todd

i hope he said it like deadpan "because it's a snow machine" instead of "because it's a snow machine hahahaha, get it, guys, good times."

http://www.channel4.com/film/media/film/2l/B/being_there_lg_01.jpg
because... it's a snow machine

Hahaha

siren.gif

Politico’s Mike Allen reports today that Robert Gibbs, communications director in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and a key strategist who “helped plan and package” his “rapid move to the national stage,” will be named as the Obama administration’s White House Press Secretary. Allen adds that the “announcement is likely to be viewed favorably by reporters because Gibbs has unquestioned authority, access and institutional memory.”

posted elsewhere

todd =

http://www.geocities.com/seinfeld_soundbites/puddy_elaine.jpg

He does seem particularly puddy-esque.

david puddy = born again, hockey fan, face painter
so yeah

schmidt is played by jeff gannon

Yargh.

Meantime I love how it looks like the weirdest place for voter shenanigans this year is...Alaska!

The emerging conventional wisdom is that there was some sort of a Bradley Effect in this contest -- voters told pollsters that they weren't about to vote for that rascal Ted Stevens, when in fact they were perfectly happy to. Convicted felons are the new black, it would seem.

The problem with this theory is that the polling failures in Alaska weren't unique to Stevens. They also applied to the presidential race, as well as Alaska's at-large House seat. In each case, the Republican outperformed his pre-election polling by margins ranging from 12 to 14 points:

Contest Projection Result Delta
AL-ALL Berkowitz +6.4 (i) Young +7.7 GOP +14.1
AL-Sen Begich +12.9 (ii) Stevens +1.5 GOP +14.4
AL-Pres McCain +13.9 (iii) McCain +25.3 GOP +12.4

(i) Pollster.com Trend Estimate
(ii) FiveThirtyEight Polling Average
(iii) FiveThirtyEight Trend-Adjusted Estimate

There are three plausible explanations I can think of to explain this discrepancy. The first and most likely is that the Democratic vote became complacent and did not bother to turn out. The outcome of the presidential contest was not going to be close in Alaska, and Barack Obama's victory in the Electoral College was apparent as of about 4 PM local time. Begich supporters, moreover, may have looked at the polls and concluded that their candidate was far enough ahead that they didn't have to bother to vote. Meanwhile, the Republican base was going to turn out no matter what because of their enthusiasm for Sarah Palin. There seems to be a sort of danger zone at about 10 points wherein a candidate is far enough ahead that many of his supporters assume the race is in the bag, but not so far ahead that he is immune to poor turnout (a similar dynamic affected then-Governor Jim Blanchard of Michigan in his 1990 race against John Engler).

The second possibility is that a substantial percentage of the Democratic vote is tied up in the early and absentee ballots that have yet to be counted. We know that Barack Obama overperformed among early voters in many states, and Alaska may be no exception. (Although, I would guess that the absentee vote is predominately rural, whereas Begich's base is in Anchorage).

The third possibility is that a lot of those "questionable" ballots are Democratic ones, and that there have been irregularities in the voting tally. Although this is the least likely possibility, Alaska is a provincial state with some history of corruption, and Democrats ought to be making sure that too many of their ballots haven't been disqualified.

salter by joe eszterhas

todd palin =
http://www.nbc.com/30_Rock/images/photos/scet/1888/NUP_130017_0151.JPG

Mark McKinnon, a media adviser who had worked for Bush-Cheney '04, described the difference between the Bush campaigns he had worked on and the McCain campaign as the difference between the Royal British Navy and Capt. Jack Sparrow's ship in "Pirates of the Caribbean." McCain loved the comparison. He began making guttural pirate noises, punctuating his jokes and one-liners with "Aaarrgh" and occasionally greeting reporters with this oddly cheerful growl. PIRATES FOR MCCAIN T shirts (complete with skull and crossbones) eventually sprouted on the backs of campaign volunteers and even a few reporters.

McCain = Custos?

Todd Palin is not even half as cool as Dennis Duffy.

gah, which reporters wore the pirate shirt?

I'm trying to imagine McCain as Jack Sparrow, with the eyeliner.

http://ninjasforobama.com/ninjasforobama.jpg

Cornerites are squealing about the impending imposition of the Fairness Doctrine, but has any Dem even mentioned trying to pass it?

I think Schumer muttered something.

McCain seemed caged, cooped up with his friend Lindsey Graham, who was annoying him by trying to "visualize" victory. By 7 p.m., Cindy and Graham were ready to "jump out the window," Graham later recalled. McCain's 95-year-old mother, Roberta, tried to lighten the mood by cracking jokes about how she wanted to marry Lindsey.

Lindsey Graham:

http://z.about.com/d/animatedtv/1/0/0/B/smithers.jpg

xpost

from wiki:

* On October 22, 2008, Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico, told a conservative talk radio host in Albuquerque, NM that "I would want this station and all stations to have to present a balanced perspective and different points of view," and "All I’m saying is that for many, many years we operated under a Fairness Doctrine in this country, and I think the country was well-served. I think the public discussion was at a higher level and more intelligent in those days than it has become since."[13]

* On June 24, 2008, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (who represents California's 8th congressional district) told reporters that her fellow Democratic Representatives did not want to forbid reintroduction of the Fairness Doctrine, adding “the interest in my caucus is the reverse.” When asked by John Gizzi of Human Events, “Do you personally support revival of the ‘Fairness Doctrine?’”, the Speaker replied "Yes."[14]

* A year earlier, in June 2007, Senator Richard Durbin (Democrat of Illinois) said, "It’s time to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine,”[15] an opinion shared by his Democratic colleague, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts.[16]

Obama's plane was taking off from Denver airport around 9 a.m. when Axelrod got confirmation that McCain had indeed picked Palin as his running mate. He went to the front cabin to tell Obama and his new running mate, Joe Biden. Biden asked, "Who's Palin?"

Glad I wasn't the only one.

http://ndn.newsweek.com/media/49/081106_mccainLost_dl-dynamiclead.jpg

Bacon wins over fries
Associated Press

LOVELAND, Colo. - There was a tasty race for Colorado senate when voters got to choose between Bacon and Fries.

In the end, Bacon won.

Democrat incumbent Bob Bacon defeated Republican challenger Matt Fries on Tuesday 63 percent to 37 percent to represent the district that encompasses most of Larimer County in northern Colorado.

"I am so pleased that the voters appreciate the work that I have done," Bacon said.

Bacon originally was elected to the seat in 2004 after serving three terms in the state House of Representatives. Fries is a long time education advocate.

Johnson beats Dykstra

ive spent a lot of time in larimer county

hey are all these elmore leonard palin excerpts coming from the same big newsweek HOW HE WON piece?

yah go to main newsweek page, they keep adding chapters

Are parts 6 and 7 up yet? Best. Election. Postmortem. Ever.

Latest from MN Senate. Coleman up by 342, still counting.

Republican NORM COLEMAN 1211538 41.99
Democratic-Farmer-Labor AL FRANKEN 1211196 41.98

Not yet, suzy.

when does the print version come out?

Edition of Nov 17

can we start placing bets on who plays the inaugural ball?

I'm guessing Stevie Wonder, Wilco, fingers crossed for Jay-Z or Kanye

I'm not sure this is the best image for Bush to have circulating right now:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/images/2008/11/06/bushleavespauljrichardsafpgetty.jpg

to back up to some earlier stuff in the thread, this might be interesting as far as history re: the PUMA thing -

i've no idea what in the world could cover 81 pages from bill, but, a couple grievances that came up on the blogs: axelrod telling the politico that HRC would literally do or say anything to get elected. they pushed that on conference calls with the press, too. constantly. calling HRC disingenuous. jesse jackson jr demanding to know, apropos of the famous NH incident when she got misty eyed, why HRC 'never cried over katrina.' running things up the flagpole accusing HRC's campaign of an insidious pattern of race-based attacks. pushing the story that HRC actually was sticking around in the primaries because she thought of the possibility of what happened to RFK, happening to obama. olbermann delivered a particularly deranged Special Comment on that & the obama campaign promptly sent around links to it to the national press corps. (stephanopoulos called them on that on the subsequent sunday talk show.)

the PUMA movement really got going from a bunch of hillary supporters leaving some of the big "liberal" blogs en masse because they were sick and tired of obama supporters constantly portraying their candidate as an evil, lying, racist bitch & also being determined to shut down discussion wherever they could. this was rampant @ daily kos, nothing was done about it, and eventually the hillary people all bailed out. not all the obama people were like this whatsoever, but the loudest, rudest people who went all-scorched-earth, all the time, were allowed to take over. daily kos used to be a lot more reality-based and open to discussion. then, while the primaries were still going on, there was a constant barrage of demands (from blogs, media, prominent democrats) for hillary to quit, which naturally annoyed the hell out of her supporters, and then once things were decided, insistence that we were all unified, unity unity unity, and that the hillary folks who were still smarting from the primary battle should just STFU.

the hillary supporters also wanted to see a real floor vote at the convention so that her delegates would have the opportunity to vote for her. obama's supporters & powers-that-be at the dnc tried to shut this down. hillary folks also had a BIG problem with the rules & bylaws committee deciding that florida did not count, and that the michigan primary results didn't count and that delegates could be awarded according to.. what the committee thought the vote would've been, including taking away a few hillary delegates and awarding them to obama. this was infuriating because nowhere in DNC rules does it state that the results of a primary can be made up like that. completely undemocratic. at some point when this was happening, a commenter on one of the blogs where hillary people had gone after being driven off daily kos, mydd, et al, declared out of frustration, that she was now joining the PUMA party: Party Unity My Ass. so that's where it started, if you all want to know - the republicans had nothing to do with it.

when does the print version come out?

Cover dates and street dates don't usually match up -- I think I heard one of the Newsweek reporters on Diane Rehm the other day saying it would be out, um, later this week? Don't quote me on that. But I'm pretty sure it'll be before the 17th.

xp Hey look it's the way-back-machine!

gah, which reporters wore the pirate shirt?

― z "R" s (Z S), Thursday, November 6, 2008 2:50 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol was wondering this too

xpost - heh. i'm just saying that's what went on in the blogosphere. some of these sites have since gone off the rails into conspiracy world, unfortunately. but i notice a lot of blogs do that. the republican sites are really lost right now & some of them crying about how ACORN stole the election..

going to read that newsweek piece now.

Looks like another electoral vote for Obama -- thanks Omaha!