Haha:

One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent “tens of thousands” more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast,” and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.’

Good Lord please let her run in 2012.

Remember when I said, “We just won the election,” right after McCain picked Sarah Palin?  Yeah.  Everyone still puts the root cause of Obama’s rise to Lehman and the finanacial crisis, but, not to say that all that didn’t help, but I still believe Sarah Palin was a fundamental reason why John McCain lost this election.

Obviously, I’m pretty pissed off.  The fact that one of the most liberal states in the union didn’t affirm the rights of gays to marry just shows how far we still have to come on this.

But on a much larger note, it seems to me like there is something fundamentally flawed with a state’s constitutional amendment process when a 2-4 point plurality can effectively strip the rights of another human being.  I mean, I feal like there’s a lot of bad stuff out there that could pass by a 2 point plurality in some states.  So basically, what I’m saying is, there’s a reason why it’s really, really hard to amend the United States Constitution.  It’s huge deal to amend a constitution, and it shouldn’t be an easy process.

So my advice to California is, put the reverse of prop 8 back on the ballot in 2 years (by then, enough 65+ voters will have died and enough 18+ voters will have come of age to swing this back our way), make sure it wins, then, 2 years later amend the constitutional amendment process to require a two-thirds legislature vote, as well as a majority vote in an election.

Basically, they should just strike Article 18 Section 3 & Section 4.

So, remeber all that Obama-is-a-socialist stuff?  Yeah, well they were just kidding, because you know, the socialist can’t actually win, because that would mean that we all voted for the socialist by 6 points.  So, you see, this just proves that Barack Obama actually ran a center-right campaign, because the nation as a whole is center-right, and they voted for him in a landlside, ergo the nation is center-right.  Got it?

[Via Yglesias]

BLin: 8:22 PST – just got back from the hotel bar, and when president elect obama came on the screen, there was an out burst of applause.  i haven’t stopped smiling in 24 minutes.

BLin: 6:58 PST – wtf, AZ? no results in an hour.  i’m ashamed.

BLin: 6:54 PST – Obama takes the lead in VA.  He likely will not relinquish it the rest of the night, as all the votes out are in NoVa.  Juice the Blog Calls VA for Obama.

BLin: 6:36 PST – OHIO! OHIO! hahaha OHIO! It’s over! Yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.  WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

BLin: 6:19 PST – McConnell wins in KY.  Peace out 60 D’s.  Oh well.

BLin: 6:12 PST – shoot.  we lost GA.  oh well.  174-64, good guys.

BLin: 6:00 PST – New score 174-49, good guys.  96 EVs to go.

BLin: 5:51 PST – Look for CO to get called at the top of the hour, a big part of the state voted early.  If this happens, pop your corks and start practicing “President Obama”.

BLin: 5:42 PST – Score is now 102-34, good guys.

BLin: 5:40 PST – HAHA!!! WOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOO!!!!  CNN calls PA for O!  We’re gonna do it.

BLin: 5:28 PST – AP calls NH.  This is a great indicator.  We’re gonna win.

BLin: 5:26 PST – Hagan wins in NC, as well as Sununu Shaheen in NH, and Warner in VA.  That’s 3 D pick-ups so far…

BLin: 5:19 PST – FL is still looking really good.  We might be headed for good night…

BLin: 5:08 PST – WHOA!! MSNBC just called PA for O!!  We’ll see if/when the other orgs follow…i don’t trust it unless CNN calls it, they are the most conservative

BLin: 5:03 PST – PA exit poll shows D +9 on party ID, and 90-9 split among D’s for O.  This looks good.

BLin: 5:00 PST – Boom.  77-34, good guys.

BLin: 4:56 PST – SC for M.  3-16, bad guys.

BLin: 4:52 PST – coming up, a whole bunch of quick calls: CT (O), DE (O), DC (O), IL (O), ME (O), MD (O), MA (O), AL (M), TN (M), TX (M), OK (M), and prob MI (O).  Then there’s NH, NJ, PA, MO, MS, and SD.  Whew.

BLin: 4:39 PST – RE: Virginia, stop worrying, NoVa isn’t in yet.  right now only appalachia (or “Real” virginia is in).

BLin: 4:33 PST – remember this guy?

“Let me tell you, when all the votes are counted, when Gary comes in, I think you’re looking at something for the world to see,” Clay, an Obama supporter, said in a telephone interview from Obama’s Gary headquarters. “I don’t know what the numbers are yet, but Gary has absolutely produced in large numbers for Obama here.”

yeah…i’m waiting for lake county, fo’ sho’.

BLin: 4:29 PST – up next, OH, NC, WV, none should be called…and they aren’t.  this is good.

BLin: 4:19 PST – just to put this in perspective a little, Bush won IN by 21 pts in 2004.  Tonight, with 9% reporting, it’s too close to call.

BLin: 4:15 PST – Holy shit.  Turn to CNN right now, they have Jessica Yellin in holograph form, star-wars-emperor-style

BLin: 4:03 PST – GA exit poll shows 30% AA.  Could be enough to turn GA blue…

BLin: 4:00 PST – as expected, CNN calls VT for O, and KY for M.  3-8, bad guys.

BLin: 3:47 PST – still looking good in IN with 2% reporting.  we got some interesting states coming up at the top of the hour.  some quick calls: KY (M), VT (O), and prob SC (M).  But FL, GA, VA, and IN should take some time to call.  Keep an eye on the delta between Martin’s vote and Obama’s vote in GA…

BLin: 3:28 PST – finally, O out to an early IN lead

BLin: 3:24 PST – still no IN results…you’re killin me indiana.

BLin: 3:12 PST – neck and neck so far in KY senate race…

BLin: 2:48 PST (did i mention i’m in san jose right now? well i am.) – first up, (most of) Indiana and (most of) Kentucky.

1.9%?!?!?  That’s a little ridiculous…

First, the past:

Cheney and Bush, unlike any presidency in American history, have dangerously pushed constitutional government to the brink of collapse. They did not merely assert a unified executive in which actions and regulations reserved to the executive branch were kept free from Congressional and judicial tampering. That is a perfectly defensible position, especially in wartime. They did not merely act in the immediate Agabuse wake of an emergency to protect American citizens swiftly – again a perfectly legitimate use of executive power, unhampered by Congress or courts. They declared such power to be unlimited; they asserted also that it was as permanent as the emergency they declared; they claimed their dictatorial powers were inherent in the presidency itself, and above any legal constraints; they ordered their own lawyers to provide retroactive and laughable legal immunity for their crimes; they by-passed all the usual and necessary checks within the executive branch to ensure prudence and legality and self-doubt in the conduct of a war; they asserted that emergency war powers applied to the territory of the United States itself; they claimed the right to seize anyone – anyone, citizen or not – they deemed an “enemy combatant,” to hold them indefinitely with no due process and to torture them until they became incoherent, broken, brutalized shells of human beings, if they survived at all. They did this to the guilty and they did this to the innocent. But they also had no way of reliably knowing which was which and who was who. Never before in wartime has the precious, sacred inheritance of free people been treated with such contempt by the leaders of the democratic West.

They seized countless individuals with no trials and no hearings. They tortured dozens to death. They subjected many more to some of the worst psychological torture techniques devised by Communist totalitarians and the worst physical suffering devised by the Gestapo. They crossed lines no American president had ever crossed before. They withdrew the US from the Geneva Conventions – and did so Padillagoggles secretly. They tapped American’s phones without warrants, and forced many of their randomly grabbed prisoners into the black hole of insanity. They set up secret sites in former Soviet gulags to torture their victims. They single-handedly devastated America’s reputation for human rights and the rule of law in the minds of the vast majority of people in other Western democracies, let alone the developing world, let alone the millions of Muslims across the Middle East who now suspect that America is not really better than their own thugocracies, that America also tortures when it wants to, that the shining city on a hill is actually a place where men above the law can do anything they want to other human beings in their custody.

Then, the future:

It will not be easy. The world will soon remember why it resents America as well as loves it. But until this unlikely fellow with the funny ears and strange name and exotic biography emerged on the scene, I had begun to wonder if it was possible at all. I had almost given up hope, and he helped restore it. That is what is stirring out there; and although you are welcome to mock me for it, I remain unashamed. As someone once said, in the unlikely story of America, there is never anything false about hope. Obama, moreover, seems to bring out the best in people, and the calmest, and the sanest. He seems to me to have a blend of Midwestern good sense, an intuitive understanding of the developing world that is as much our future now as theirs’, an analyst’s mind and a poet’s tongue. He is human. He is flawed. He will make mistakes. His passivity and ambiguity are sometimes weaknesses as well as strengths.

But there is something about his rise that is also supremely American, a reminder of why so many of us love this country so passionately and are filled with such grief at what has been done to it and in its name. I endorse Barack Obama because I will not give up on America, because I believe in America, and in her constitution and decency and character and strength.

And the world needs that America now as much as it ever has. Can we start that healing, that rebirth, tomorrow?

Yes. We. Can.

Read the whole thing here.

See, I was going to act all cool tonight and write up an hour-by-hour election night guide for tomorrow, but Nate Silver just had to go and do it before I did.  Oh well, his is better than mine would be anyway…here’s the most important part:

7 PM EST. Polls close in Virginia and Georgia, as well as most of Florida and most of New Hampshire.

Virginia, for my money, is the most important state in this election. If John McCain loses it, his path to victory is exceptionally narrow—he would need to pull out an upset in Pennsylvania, while holding on to Florida and Ohio, and avoiding a sweep out West. Barack Obama has considerably more ways to win without Virginia, but a failure to close out the state would suggest at best a more circuitous route to victory. As Obama remains about five points ahead in most polls of Virginia, what we’re really looking for is a quick call on anything before 8 PM that would indicate that the map has indeed changed from 2004, and not in McCain’s favor.

Georgia and New Hampshire are a bit less essential electorally, but they may tell us the most about whether the polls are off in this election. If there’s one state where Obama is likely to overperform his polls, it’s in Georgia, where 35 percent of early voters are African-American, and where almost 30 percent of them did not vote in 2004. These are the sorts of voters that may erroneously be screened out by “likely voter” models that rely on past voting history. Obama could not only carry the state, but he might help boost Jim Martin to victory in the U.S. Senate race there—giving the Democrats a plausible path to a 60-seat caucus.

On the other hand, if there is any state where the polls might overestimate Obama’s numbers, it’s in New Hampshire, where nearly the entirely electorate is white and where Obama was famously upset by Hillary Clinton during the primaries. If McCain holds Obama to within about five points in New Hampshire—closer than any current polls—we may need to be worried about some sort of Bradley Effect.

A couple things I’ll add is (not that exit polls are all that great) but one thing I’ll be looking for is a party ID shift in PA.  Party ID split in PA in 2004 was D 41/ R 39 / I 20.  A new split with significantly more D’s would be a good sign, as McCain’s campaign has been hoping that party ID will snap back to 2004 levels.  Also, watch Philadelphia and the Philly suburbs.  Obama really needs to run up the numbers in Philadelphia county, and post good numbers in Bucks, Montgomery, Delaware and Chester counties.  Kerry won Philly by 412,000 votes, and barely won the suburbs.  PA is key; it makes the road to 270 infinitely smoother with PA in our column.

In VA, watch NoVa.  If Obama can crush in the DC suburbs, then things are looking real good.  If he’s not getting killed in western VA, than things are looking really, really good.

Nate mentions this, but (if the race hasn’t been called yet) really watch Washoe county in Nevada.  If Obama can win this county and really run up the numbers in Clark county, he’s going to win Nevada and the election.

And, if you want the quick and dirty version, remember Nate’s shorthand:

That leaves our five states in play. The victory conditions for Obama involving these five states proceed something as follows:

1. Win Pennsylvania and ANY ONE of Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, or Nevada*
2. Win Ohio and EITHER Colorado OR Virginia.
3. Win Colorado AND Virginia AND Nevada.

(* Nevada produces a 269-269 tie, which would probably be resolved for Obama in the House of Represenatives.)

Now, suppose you think that Colorado is already in the bag for Obama because of his large edge in early voting there. We can then simplify the victory conditions as follows:

1. Win Pennsylvania
2. Win Ohio
3. Win Virginia AND Nevada

That’s basically what it comes down to, although I’m sure each campaign would claim that there are a larger number of states in play.

Oh, and make sure you check out the dKos scoreboard.  It looks like it’ll be real sweet.

Update:

Holy crap.  Talk about a guide.  Here’s dKos’s election night guide (and here it is in pdf form).  Looks like I got some reading to do tonight…

I think one of the most foolish fights that we, as Americans, get into is the quadrennial fight over who’s committing “voter fraud” and who’s committing “voter suppression.”  You see, this is really a microcosm of the two competing ideologies in this country: one side is concerned about someone cheating, the other is concerned about someone getting screwed.  In both cases, the believer thinks that someone’s freedom is at stake.  But the unique thing about this problem is that it can be solved with relatively little bickering over the solution.  And this solution is an affirmative, or automatic, voter registration that is performed solely by the federal government (in cooperation with other agencies).

(more…)

Here’s a little supplement to my previous post.  The McCain campaign has made it very clear that victory runs through PA.  So in the spirit of understanding their thought process I used DailyKos’s beta version of their electoral scoreboard, which looks like it’s going to be really sweet come Tuesday.  Here it is:

I made this by flipping PA red, and then sequentially flipping states in order of their Pollster.com averages until McCain hit 270.  Here’s the list of states and their margins, that McCain has to win on Tuesday in order to be successful withe his PA strategy:  MT (M +3.3), GA (M +2.2), IN (M +0.6), NC (O +1.8), MO (O +1.9), FL (O +2.7), ND (O +3.1), NV (O +5.9), OH (O +6.3), PA (O +9.3).

That’s a full blown sweep of the current toss-up states, as well as what would be a few surprising pick-ups in NV and OH.  But the most surprising element of all would be the keystone (haha) of this entire strategy: PA.

McCain has not led there pretty much ever. And the trend is by no means moving swiftly enough in his direction. Let’s call this what it is: a hail mary.

I’m not talking about their lack of reporters, statisticians, pundits, or fancy touch-screen graphics.  I’m talking about the very real possibility of a landslide on Tuesday.  I like to spend a little bit of time on the weekends watching cable news, just to catch a whiff of the narrative.  And the narrative these days is, “What the heck is Obama doing campaigning in all these red states, and even running ads in Arizona, when this election is so close?”  Y’all already know the answer to this, because your jobs don’t depend on the fact that people remained interested in the horse race.  But just to recap, here’s where we are:

Fivethirtyeight

Pollster.com

RCP

John McCain has very real problems.  Barack Obama’s fivethirtyeight landslide percentage (>375 EV) is currently at 38.5%.  So basically, the only argument you could make in order to convince someone that this race is close is if the polls in a large portion of the United States are completely and utterly wrong, which does have a small possibility of being right.  But then you throw this into the mix:

These ground campaigns do not bear any relationship to one another. One side has something in the neighborhood of five million volunteers all assigned to very clear and specific pieces of the operation, and the other seems to have something like a thousand volunteers scattered throughout the country. Jon Tester’s 2006 Senate race in Montana had more volunteers — by a mile — than John McCain’s 2006 presidential campaign.

And then there’s this:

** In NV,  43% of Democrats who have voted early are new or sporadic voting Democrats

** In NC, 19% of Democrats who’ve voted early are Democrats who’ve never voted in a presidential election before

** Says Plouffe: “We are going much better with Hispanic voters in Florida than certainly was the case in 2004 and we believe in 2000. Puerto Rican voters, Columbian voters, and doing surprisinglky well with younger Cuban voters.”

** “In Florida, a quarter of sporadic voting Democrats are turning out out that the same rate as very likely Democrats.”

Democrats are currently outnumbering Republicans in early voting in Florida by 250,000 votes.  In 2004, early voting in Florida ended with a 40,000 vote Republican advantage.  Democrats are also banking a solid majority of votes in Washoe county in Nevada, a county that voted Bush in 2004.

And finally, a little perspective for good measure:

I know it’s a little scary to be a Democrat and actually be winning, and I’m also aware of the track record we have as a party to blow it in the end.  But I have to say, the evidence is overwhelming.  Now, this doesn’t mean we should just sit back and not do anything and coast across the line, but I just want y’all to be prepared for the party on November 4th.  It’s gonna be rockin’.

Publius sums up my feelings about it:

Remind me to stop doubting the Obama campaign. I can’t seem to stop it — the doubt comes [start melody] regularrrr like seeeeeasons. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and each day publius doth worry about something stupid. Today’s worry was that the ad was overkill, that it was unnecessary, etc. It literally bothered me all day long.

But then I watched it — and I honestly thought it was great, and even sincerely moving at times (I’m basically a sucker for stories about his mother). Like everything else they do, it was pitch perfect. It wasn’t focusing on Obama (as I feared it would), but upon the struggles of working families and how an Obama administration would address them. I didn’t hear the word McCain once.

So I’m done doubting. I’m done saying Axelrod needs to do this or that. My measly pundit powers pale in comparison. I’m like a rope on the Goodyear Blimp.

In case you missed it:

It’s our turn.

This one is like clockwork.  It’s the oldest trick in the book, and it comes out every election cycle.  From a phony flyer in Virginia:

Due to the larger than expected voter turnout in this years [sic] electoral process, An [sic] emergency session of the General Assembly has adopted the following emergency regulations to ease the load on local electorial [sic] precincts and ensure a fair electorial [sic] process.

All Democratic party supporters and independent voters supporting Democratic candidates shall vote on November 5th as adopted by emergency regulation of the Virginia General Assembly.

All Republican party supporters and independent voters supporting Republican candidates shall vote on November 4th as precribed [sic] by law.

We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause but felt this was the only way to ensure fairness to the complete electorial [sic] process.

These kind of tactics are exactly the reason candidates started listing the election date in their ads (in fact, if I remember right, Obama was somewhat of a pioneer in this regard).