WORD GAMES

Democrats may be slowly realizing the need to resuscitate the word "liberal" while taking "conservative" down a few pegs. This morning, they get some help from Robin Wright and the headline writers at the Washington Post:

Iran's Conservatives Consolidate Power

This means that either President Bush is going to start enforcing religious law at gunpoint, or that the ayatollahs plan to enact major entitlement reforms.

You probably heard that the Marxist terrorist group, the FARC, supposedly targeted the President for assassination when he visited Colombia last week. I searched high and low, yet nowhere could I find a headline along the lines of "Colombian Liberals Plotted Assassination." Hey, Washington Times! What are you waiting for?

UNILATERALISME

The Diplomad identifies the one thing I can say in favor of French foreign policy:

With genuine admiration we must say that there is no other country on earth that pursues its core national interests in as determined and ruthless a manner as France.

No kidding. France is doing just that in the Ivory Coat, where they appear to have carte blanche to prop up their stooges and protect French commercial interests. I don't know enough to say they're wrong to do so, but I think the French word for this is — I checked with Babelfish — "hipocrisy."

The Diplomad elaborates on this particular "core national interest":

Suffice it to say, that France never reconciled itself to giving up its empire there and, so, it hasn't. Countries such as Ivory Coast and Senegal are independent in name only. The French give them permission to have a flag, an anthem, some postage stamps (printed in France), some funny colored currency (printed in France), perhaps a national airline, a President and membership in the UN. That's about it.

Damn this unipolar world. The French are colonialist assholes just like us, only (a lot) worse. And of course, they do so with the backing of another set of stooges at the ever-more corrupt U.N.

The Muslim world is at war with itself — and we've been brought into it. Meanwhile, the French are at war with their own place in the world — and we're just as inextricably involved.

P.S. — Interesting blog, this Diplomad. Written by a Republican working for the State Department. It's like the late Belle de Jour, only even more on the down-low.

RATHER SILLY

Heminator, at the still-operational Rathergate.com, on Dan Rather's self-serving post-announcement reflections:

I'm not sure there's violins tiny enough for this. Someone breakout the electron microscope and the subatomic Stradivarius.

Allow me to get my Instapundit on: Heh.

P.S. — While I'm just linking and not really writing — I may do a lot of that over this Thanksgiving break — I recommend this post at Oxblog to anyone who thinks the U.N. has any moral advantage over us.

Update, 11:40 p.m. — Jay Leno, approximately, on Rather:

Dan Rather said stepping down was the hardest announcement he's ever had to make. Well, second hardest, actually. The hardest was announcing that Bush was reelected.

More Reynolds mimicry: Indeed.

THE NETWORK THAT CRIED WOLF

If you never saw the anti-Fox News documentary "Outfoxed," rest assured that it was really, really bad. So bad that some I know who were moved by "Fahrenheit 9/11" found "Outfoxed" unconvincing.

But one critique made sense to me: that Fox abuses their whoooosh-gong! News Alerts. Here's a late October post by John Little at Blogs of War, who clearly agrees.

What the hell? Rita Cosby just ran a FOX News Alert for the 5 hour old Tom Ridge announcement that the terror alert level will not be raised.

Damn they're getting annoying. They’re better than the rest but still annoying. Why don't you guys at FOX try reserving the alerts for actual news for a change.

This is true, but they also use it for "actual news" of a trivial nature &mdash most recently and egregiously, the Scott Peterson trial. I suppose I could be talked into believing the News Alert was warranted &mdash once only &mdash when the verdict came in. But please, not when the judge denies a change of venue motion. James Lileks agrees too, and he remembers a fonder time when

a Special Bulletin would make you soil your drawers. They didn’t break in for anything. When you heard the words "We interrupt this program," the best you could hope for was an assassination.

Fox is of course not alone, to paraphrase Pat Moynihan, in defining news down (though they are the industry leader). Or to paraphrase The Incredibles, when every news story is important, none of them are.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE MEDIA, PART MCXLVIII

Frequent readers of this blog know that I do not believe in media bias, because it's not a matter of belief. New evidence piles up daily (see previous post). But frequent readers also know I don't think the liberal-left tilt of many outlets and writers is the only bias making the news less reliable. There's also a bias toward laziness and a bias toward sensationalism. This post deals with the latter.

Sensationalism involves more than friviolous story selection, and I usually don't mind that kind; that's what US Magazine and tabloids like the New York Post are for. So long as the information is true and presented accurately, it's harmless. But there's the rub -- sensationalism also involves presentation; sacrificing a trenchant interpretation of the facts for a more entertaining or politically correct one.

Mickey Kaus and James Taranto frequently catch the New York Times spinning on welfare reform and crime statistics, issues on which the Times repeats liberal boilerplate. But even tabloids cross the line when they willfully misread survey results. Take for instance a New York Daily News story from this morning:

Jon Stewart's news gets their vote

America's twentysomethings, who are tuning into politics, trust Comedy Central fake-news king Jon Stewart more than network vets Peter Jennings and Dan Rather, a new study shows.

Asked whom they trust more to inform them on politics, 17% said NBC's Tom Brokaw, followed by Stewart of "The Daily Show" at 16%. ABC's Jennings had 15% and CBS' Rather had 10%.

And most people, 26%, picked "none of the above," according to the survey by Global Strategy Group and Luntz Research.

So the Daily News runs with the headline "Jon Stewart's news gets their vote" even though the top three vote-getters are well within the margin of error, and Tom Brokaw is technically ahead of Stewart. More significant is that a quarter-plus of all respondents said none. And 16% are missing -- perhaps they didn't recognize any of the names?

What's maybe news here is that Stewart is seen as a legitimate source of information (a proposition I shudder at, and anyway don't quite believe) and that story would have been fine. A little stale, but truthful. The writer here apparently wants you to think Jon Stewart is more trusted than actual news anchors, but that just isn't the case. In fact, the Daily News' story isn't even "fake but accurate." It's flat-out wrong.

The only thing that saves it is that it is trivial on its own level; this blog is probably the only one that will point out this story. Yet stories like this accumulate, day after day. I don't know what the overall impact is -- certainly not as much when it's the Daily News as compared to the Times -- but it can't be good.

It's not exactly related to the CBS scandals or the talk show-ification of the news, but I still have the nagging sense that the connection is more than superficial. And remember, it's not that Jon Stewart's respectability has risen to the level of a Rather or a Jennings. It's that they have fallen to his.

IN THE LAND OF THE BLIND, THIS ITEM IS KING

Which Washington Post reporter thinks this is a fair way to describe how fellow Skull & Bones alumnus George W. Bush views his domestic political opposition:

President Bush has ousted Saddam Hussein, toppled the Taliban and defeated the Democrats, but last week he took aim at a more enduring foe: the federal bureaucracy.

You won't be surprised, unless you didn't know the Post had a Bonesman on staff. Bush held off one Yale rival this month, but another one survived — and he thinks he's got a mandate, too.

THE NOAM-MOBILE

Did you know that Noam Chomsky has a blog? I can't be sure if I knew before this weekend, but if not, hat tip: Ben Kerstein. Apparently he's been doing it on an intermittent basis since June of this year. Simply, that I don't really know if I was familiar with this or not is a good sign.

In fact, I'm actually pleased to have the old leftist himself on the internet, because for one thing it brings his inflated stature down to our level. Chomsky's quickie paperbacks typically comprise interview and lecture transcripts and rarely add up to anything more than capitalistwarmongeringAmerica-bashing. But on the web, Chomsky has to sit down and write a post, one letter after the other, like you or me. And when he does, he gets very boring very fast.

His lectures rarely stay on one topic for more than a few seconds, which can be maddening to rebut -- by the time you have a comment on his interpretation of French withdrawal from Indochina, he's off saying something crazier about U.S. activities in post-war Germany. The blog allows time to response, and commentary is built-in. At first you might think Chomsky would do well in cyberspace, where hypertext would allow him to spin off arguments in different directions by providing links. But Chomsky never links. And when you think about it that second time, you realize that Chomsky doesn't want you to spend a lot of time comparing his argments against themselves.

This, especially after I spent a few minutes looking through the archives. Dare I say, I can't find much to disagree with in his short entry on fascism, which could even be interpreted as warning his acolytes off using it as a term for the Bush administration (almost). In another entry, he concedes that the "media IS liberal." And in the most recent, it's perhaps surprising that he doesn't buy claims that Bush stole the election through voter fraud. In fact, he actually defends the notion.

Another happy development: Chomsky's blog is all but invisible unless you visit Z-Mag or Indymedia (I did when I was locked in ideological battles, but eventually I earned my degree and left). He might sell a lot of books, attract huge crowds and media attention, and influence the thought patterns of the idle famous, but on the internet he's just another bore. In the virtual marketplace of ideas, where his disproportionately influential fans hold less clout, no one's buying.

P.S. -- Speaking of Chomsky and Chomskyites, get a load of the New York Times Magazine's interview with Elfriede Jelinek, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature:

Why doesn't your husband move to Vienna to be with you?

Because I need to have a second home in another city. I have to be able to escape from Vienna as often as I like. That's why the home in Munich is almost more important to me than it is to my husband, who is fond of Munich because he grew up there.

What a lucky guy Mr. Jelinek must be.

WHO IS JOHN GALT?

I still don't know for sure; I gave up on that book somewhere near the 400-page mark. But maybe it's one of these guys.

TIME TRAP

Harold Meyerson, contributor to the American Prospect and columnist for the Washington Post, apparently thinks it is perpetually 1933:

From Ronald Reagan to Newt Gingrich and now to George Bush, the Republicans have developed a clear [theme]: They are the party of risk, which they call "opportunity." This is most certainly not why Bush won reelection; Americans are not pining to pay for their health coverage or retirement or college tuition with no assist from their employers or their government.

To my chagrin, the era of big government isn't quite as over as Clinton declared nearly a decade ago. Indeed, President Bush's "ownership society" is emphatically not a withdrawal of the government from people's lives. Instead it seeks to make government more flexible, to create government-administered individual accounts for the expenses Meyerson lists.

According to Meyerson's risk/opportunity equation, it's obvious that when he sees opportunity, he immediately thinks "risk." The two are inextricable, of course, but there's no reward without it. And he's wrong to think people are perfectly happy with the government as it is. People would like greater flexibility when it comes to health care and Social Security. But Meyerson and his fellow New Deal defenders don't even want to try. That's one more reason why Democrats keep losing elections.

LIBERAL HERESIES

And I thought Kevin Drum was the only left-wing blogger capable of second-guessing left-wing pieties. Check out Chris Bowers from MyDD:

There are two liberal issues that I think we should drop ... The first is gun control. Even though I have never owned a gun, and never intend to own a gun, this is an issue that has never resonated with me. Have any of our gun control laws reduced gun-related violence? Are there any further laws we could pass that would be more effective than just enforcing the laws we have? Forgive me if I sound a little NRA, but are guns really a major part of the problem with our violent society?

I can almost feel the ground moving, however slightly. What's more, the (gazillions of) commenters below his post are not completely antagonistic to his point. A few invoke "Bowling for Columbine," of course, but a surprising number confess that they really aren't all that anti-gun themselves.

It's too soon to say, but maybe this election will bring about some kind of political realignment. Maybe now we're getting somewhere.

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Update, 11:42 a.m. Wednesday -- It turns out Nick Kristof wrote something rather similar on Saturday. I don't like many of his alternate solutions -- the signal-if-loaded idea is especially bad -- as they make the same mistakes as previous policies. Then again, I don't hold out much hope that the left will altogether "drop" their objections to guns as Bowers seems to recommend; rather they'll soften certain positions, more like Kristof proposes. But for the time-being I'll take their willingness to rethink gun policy as a good sign.

JUST A NOTE

I'm not sure yet if I'll put anything else up here today, but if you haven't stopped by the Washington Canard in awhile, I've been posting again starting yesterday.

PROVE YOURSELF

From a truly ridiculous left-wing blog that foolishly insists on calling itself a member of the "reality-based community":

More shocking news for the Right...

I want you all to know that, in 1999, when Bush was visiting Kennebunkport, I know people that sold him coke. They never sold their story to the media, because, well, look at what they did. But, it seems fitting now that it be released, especially on this ad-hungry Blog that is only in it for the money.

Prove my sources wrong, Right-wing uniters. I know you want to, I can already sense it.

Damn! I guess he wins this round.

THAT'S INCREDIBLE!

I neglected to mention two other important right-wing elements in "The Incredibles." It may be an important one because, as Blog pointed out in the comments to my previous "Incredibles" post, I neglected to say anything about foreign policy. I spoke tooo soon. One is the unilateral, military-aided covert mission Elastigirl/Mom and the kids undertake to rescue Mr. Incredible/Dad from Syndrome's jungle island lair. Heck, this is just "Rambo" with water around the edges.

But far more important is an early bad guy -- the cackling French villain Bomb Voyage. I think that's really all I need to say.

Also in the comments, FLOG™ noted a hostile review in the left-wing Eugene Weekly, back in Oregon where he lives and I used to. The author of that column was "unable to put [her] finger" on what it all meant, but knew she didn't like it. The Nation seems to agree, except that it knew exactly what it was saying. Their review ominously concludes:

The family is the foundation of our society. Freedom is on the march.

Yes, ominously. (Hat tip: Sullivan.)

A much more interesting and more open-minded read is the New York Observer's treatment of "The Incredibles" and "Team America," which can be found here. They write that the film's box office success -- the "first hit of the Bush II years" -- suggests (to some, if not the authors) that "the right wing has even wit and creativity on its side these days," and while liberals wander in the wilderness, the conservatives are "raking in millions of potential philosophical converts at the movies, the way the liberals used to during the Easy Rider–Graduate days of the 1960's, when the right wing couldn't catch a break in the culture."

All quite interesting. I'm still waiting to hear what Brad Bird has to say about all this.

PROTESTING TOO MUCH

Josh Marshall has highlighted a choice example of what he calls a "fringe-right spasm of hatred," namely an essay at Human Events suggesting that instead of the blue states seceding, the red states should expel the blues from the union. But there is one tiny detail he has overlooked: the title includes the presumably crucial phrase "A Modest Proposal." Perhaps Marshall would be interested to hear that a writer by the name of Jonathan Swift once advocated the murder and eating of at-risk children!

The Human Events article admits up-front its satirical nature and is clearly written as such. Just because it's not everybody's cup of tea hardly makes it hateful. If Josh Marshall is concerned with spasms of hatred from the fringe, perhaps he should take a closer look at the very popular, frequently nasty left-wing blog where he found this alleged hate speech in the first place.

UGH

Apparently Brian Williams will be anchoring live coverage of Yasser Arafat's funeral starting at 4:00 a.m. EST tomorrow morning on MSNBC. Is Arafat's funeral worth covering live a la Princess Diana or Ronald Reagan? I should think not. This is some way for Williams to preface his tenure as Tom Brokaw's replacement.

And via Drudge I learn that CBS News broke into the highly-rated "CSI: New York" during the show's last minutes to report Arafat's death. Unbelievable. But now they're apologizing. I'm pleasantly surprised, and glad to hear it.

By the way, I'm not so vexed by Jimmy Carter's heartfelt response. It's an outrage, yes, but after his praise for Kim Jong-Il nothing he says can shock me.

It took too long for Arafat to die, and now it's taking too long to get over him. The sooner he's buried and left in the past, the sooner we can move on to helping the Palestinians organize some elections. The next few months present a real opportunity for things to change -- but the window could close again all too quickly.

THE CONSERVATIVES?

If you haven't seen "The Incredibles" already, by all means go see it. Pixar continues its improbably consistent run of damn fine movies. A dull moment nowhere to be found, the animation is ever better, and it's a more adult film than "Toy Story"s and "Monsters Inc"s that have come before. More surprisingly, it may be gaining a reputation as a conservative movie. The first one I caught very quickly: the story's inciting incident is a flurry of short-sighted, foolish lawsuits against the much-needed superheroes for unintended property damage and unwanted saves, among others. John Edwards may well laugh along with the rest of the audience during this part of the movie, but perhaps he and his former colleagues on the bar should think about how people see them.

Second, the movie's treatment of achievement and recognition thereof clashes with the self-esteem-obsessed educational philosophy espoused by the liberal-left. Told by his mother (aka Elastigirl) to keep his super abilities to himself so not to set himself apart -- "Everyone is special," she advises -- son Dash mutters, "Which is another way of saying no one is." But Dad (aka Mr. Incredible) is sympathetic, grumbling, "They keep finding new ways to celebrate mediocrity." Later in the film, arch-villain Syndrome -- who is normal but has invented technology bestowing him with similar powers -- announces his plan to sell his devices to everyone: "Because when everyone is super, no one is."

The New York Times' A.O. Scott noticed some of these same things. He writes, "various do-gooders, meddlers and bureaucrats -- schoolteachers, lawyers, politicians, insurance executives -- ... have driven the world's once-admired superheroes underground, into lives of bland split-level normalcy." Say, not unlike the Title IX proponents whose policies have shut down men's university-level sports when there isn't adequate women's participation to maintain gender balance. Or as Scott calls it, "misguided egalitarianism." Scott and even suggests Ayn Rand as the movie's intellectual godmother. Did I mention that there's a diminutive, black-haired foreign genius lady in the movie? There is. (Well, this blog identifies the late Hollywood costume designer Edith Head as the model for Edna Mole, which is more plausible...)

Then there's Frederica Matthewes Green at NRO, who approves mightily that the movie's "pro-family themes" triumph over "middle-aged boredom, temptation, fidelity," the unexpected inclusion of "a knock against the notion of a right to suicide, of all things" -- i.e. Mr. Incredible's unappreciated thwarting of a suicide that sets off the lawsuit avalanche.

And now Slate's Michael Moore-defending movie reviewer David Edelstein, who joined his fellow critics in praising the movie in his initial review, even grudgingly concedes the point about the stifling of children's individuality and creativity in the face of reader e-mails, admitting his lack of experience with public education.

Certainly it's easy to pick a few scenes out of a film and fashion an argument around it. I'd be skeptical that writer-director Brad Bird (auteur of "The Iron Giant" and formerly with "The Simpsons") did much thinking about assisted suicide laws, but I would bet money he's sick and tired of the insistence that everyone is equally talented or important when that's simply not the case. It's a tough lesson to swallow, but an important one.

The absurd disappearance of the word "winner" from the Oscars is one consequence of this fixation on unrealistic equality. More consequentially, the stubborn left-wing argument for equality of outcome economic
is one such consequence of this stubborn belief. Whether Bird knows it or not, he's written and directed an effective -- and wildly entertaining -- indictment of politically correct values.

And think -- we only just finished arguing about "Team America."

JUDY WOODRUFF IS AN IDIOT

Well, I can be more diplomatic than that: During a segment on CNN's Inside Politics yesterday afternoon, she was an idiot. Woodruff interviewed the Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of the left-wing Tikkun magazine. Lerner was there to provide a recitation of the cliche that the Democrats need to get religion. Ever the skeptical journalist, Woodruff pressed him on a few claims. Relevant portion of the transcript:

LERNER: The reason why significant sections of the electorate switched to the right is because the right at least understands that there is a spiritual crisis. The liberals think that the only thing that hurts people is economic needs.

Well, yes, people care about economic needs. But for a very large number of Americans, the real crisis in their lives is spiritual.

It is the way in which people feel lonely, they don't know who they can count on, they feel that their relationships may at any point be undermined, the family life is being undermined. And the only people they hear speaking about it is the right.

If the liberal and progressive forces in the Democratic Party and outside were to talk in this discourse and be sensitive to the spiritual crisis, then it would be possible to argue the content of what's the best way to challenge the selfishness and materialism in this society. But if you just give that to the right, then of course everybody who cares about that is going to respond to the right.

WOODRUFF: But how does that square with what we know is written in the American Constitution, you know, where there is supposed to be a separation between church and state? How is it that you would have politicians addressing the spiritual needs of voters?

1) Does Woodruff really believe, as she implies, that the phrase "separation of church and state" is in the U.S. Constitution?

2) Does Woodruff really believe that a politician who talks about faith and values is stepping over the line? Or just Democrats?

If you want evidence that CNN tilts as far left as Fox does right, the fact that Lerner was interviewed as a wise man in the first place is a good place to start. As for Woodruff, though, she may be too clueless to present any coherent point of view.

P.S. -- Speaking of addled mainstream news anchors, you might want to check out this short clip of ABC ex-anchor/now-reporter Carole Simpson waxing paranoid about the connection (that exists in her mind) between modern conservatives and antebellum slaveholders. I'm not kidding. There's also a link to the archived C-SPAN program it came from, which is a post-election panel discussion sponsored by the Newseum. (Unsurprisingly, there is only one conservative on the panel, and equally unsurprising, it's the easily dismissed Pat Buchanan.) I've watched about half of it, and Simpson makes absolutely no effort to hide her condescending liberal opinions, which if you don't share, you must be stupid, and that scares her.

NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT

Last week a John Kerry "confidant" -- which could mean "dry cleaner" for all we know -- ratted out the senator's daughter Alexandra Kerry to the New York Post's "Page Six":

"She had an entourage of five people with her everywhere she went. A hairdresser, makeup artist, publicist and two assistants. It ended up costing something like $8,000 a month. And she didn't exactly do anything."

Wow, eight grand per month? Either Alex Kerry wasted a lot more money than they're letting on, or the Democrats don't believe in paying their workers a living wage.

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Update, Tuesday, 12:39 p.m. -- You comment-boarders are just being silly. Which is fair, because this post is a silly one. But Mickey Kaus seems to agree with me:

Maybe I've gone Hollywood, but $8,000 a month for Alexandra Kerry's entourage doesn't seem like so much. Does it to you?

Is that it, have I gone Hollywood? Or just East Coast? Remember, this was the most expensive presidential election in history, with some $1.5 billion likely spent overall. Yet mega-millionaire Affleck-pal Alex Kerry's publicist can't even afford a power lunch at the Palm?

Never mind terrorism, gay marriage, "moral values," the "Massachusetts liberal" label, the Swift Boat veterans and Michael Moore -- the Democrats have worse organizational problems than any of us imagined.

EU-PHEMISMS

Use of language reveals a lot about one's mindset -- there's no mistaking what side of the abortion debate someone who uses the term "anti-choice" comes from. There's another loaded phrase that's been with us for a long time, but isn't as instantly recognizable. Here it is used in a weekend op-ed in the Post, about Britain and Europe coming to terms with President Bush's re-election:

Finally, there is the Middle East, one of [Tony] Blair's central passions in foreign policy. He told his party's annual conference in September that once the U.S. elections were over, he would tell Washington it was time for another attempt to advance the peace process.

Notice how "Middle East" is used as a euphemism for "Israel-Palestinian conflict"? (And somewhat less objectionably, "peace process" for resolution thereof?) Using mention of the whole region as shorthand for one particular conflict is misleading (I need not give you a rundown of all the conflicts extant over there) and I particularly problematic because it has bestowed primacy to this conflict above all others.

Certainly during the pre-Iraq invasion debate, many asserted that a solution had to be found in Israel before Iraq could be dealt with. I disagreed vehemently because Arafat would never truly support peace (much less as a favor to let the U.S. settle business with a dictator then subsidizing terror attacks against Israelis).

I don't want to overstate my case here. This euphemism is not the cause of the impression that the Israel-Palestinian conflict must be settled before anything else can. But it has allowed it to become entrenched, because handy phrases have a way of settling debate on the matter which they describe.

Thank you. Today's English lesson has concluded.

PLEASE GO AWAY NOW

Did you know that Alan Keyes

did not congratulate Obama after the race was called, a tradition among politicians, because doing so would have been a "false gesture" because he believes Obama's views on issues like abortion are wicked.

"I'm supposed to make a call that represents the congratulations toward the triumph of that which I believe ultimately stands for and will stand for a culture evil enough to destroy the very soul and heart of my country," Keyes said. "I can't do this, and I will not make a false gesture."

Would that this be the last we hear of Alan Keyes. Also, if the idea to recruit him for the Senate was the idea of someone at the Illinois Republican Party, I hope they've been fired. Considering how much effort the state party did to support his candidacy, they already might have. And for this, of course, Keyes is blaming Illinois Republicans:

He also said he was disappointed in what he called the number of "Republicans in name only" in Illinois. An Associated Press exit poll showed that four in 10 Republicans voted for Obama, a liberal state senator from Chicago.

"I had counted on the fact that Republicans would come back home on Election Day rather than vote a socialist into office who stands against everything they profess to believe as Republicans," Keyes said.

I agree that Obama's political philosophy is a poor fit with most Republicans. But Keyes' manners, prudence, and sense of propriety are worse.

CLOSING TIME

I agree with TNR's Ryan Lizza about Kerry and Gore:

What is it about Democrats that their finest moments are their concession speeches? Gore's speech in 2000 was the best of his public life. Kerry's concession, gracious and concise, was better than a thousand of his stump speeches. He really is a good closer.

Heh. Well, they do have some practice giving them...

P.S. -- Lizza's been contrite enough that I won't bother to mock him for predicting a John Kerry landslide on election day. And even so, Lizza was way behind another campaign-watcher (whom I know a bit better) on suggesting such an outcome, but I won't hold it against him, either.

SWAN SONG OR FIGHT SONG?

John Edwards is exiting the national stage very soon, as he declined to seek another term in the Senate (in part because it was not clear he would succeed). Good. He's a phony, a jerk, a xenophobe and a demagogue. But on his way out, he happened to provide one last reason to hate him:

A senior Democrat familiar with the discussions in Boston told The Associated Press that it was Edwards who led the argument against conceding as the campaign staff’s talks continued deep into the night. The official said Edwards, a trial lawyer, wanted to make sure that all options were explored and that Democrats pursued them as thoroughly as Republicans would if their positions were reversed.

While trailing by six figures in all-important Ohio? Incredible. Part of me wishes he'd done so, just so everyone else would come to dislike him as much as I have since about 2003, when he flip-flopped from a war supporter to indiscriminate critic months before John Kerry followed suit. But give some credit to Kerry for seeing the obvious and doing the right thing for his country and party. Kerry's grace compares well to Edwards' impudence. I didn't trust Kerry with the presidency, but my skin doesn't crawl when he appears on television.

When his turn came to address supporters Wednesday. Edwards vowed that “this fight has just begun.”

“We will carry on, and we will be with you every step of the way,” he promised. “This campaign may end today, but that battle for you rages on.”

Oh, he'll be back, all right, even if he does have to deliver regurgitated Shrumisms (come on, Bob, let's make it 0-9!). But I doubt he'll get all that far, no matter what Will Saletan said -- for two columns in a row.

See you in two years, John.

FINALLY, FINALLY, FINALLY

I returned home a short while ago to find that Kerry had finally called Bush to concede Ohio and the election. I'm too wired to sleep just yet, and as I type these words there are two speeches left to be given this afternoon. In the meantime, allow me to share a few post-election thoughts:

• Yes, I really did think Kerry would win. But that was Monday and Tuesday. Had you asked me on Saturday and Sunday, it would have been a different story. The week before that, while Al Qaqaa dominated the headlines? Kerry again. The weeks before that one? Bush, of course. Before that, just after the debates? You get the picture. The important thing was being able to live with either outcome. When Bush was trailing for weeks on end throughout the summer, I managed to do this. We'll soon find out if others feel the same.


• Since relatively early last night, bloggers and journalists have marveled at and mocked the incredibly wrong exit polling -- even I was wondering if the Republicans had pushed their dominance an election cycle too far. Yet this turned out to be the sole aspect of 2004 that went more awry than 2000. I can only add: Ha! And to the Washington Monthly's Benjamin Wallace-Wells, I say: Double "Ha"!


• Karl Rove and Matthew Dowd are frigging geniuses, whereas Bob Shrum and Mary Beth Cahill are incompetent shlubs. That's what some will say. Or to get meta, that's what some will say everyone will say, even if only a few, uninformed commentators actually do. Nevertheless, the reputation of Bush's strategists will rise. Shrum, who goes 0-8 in presidential campaigns, may in fact be slammed as hard by some informed commentators.


• Along the same lines, for the last four years Rove told everyone that 4 million evangelical Christians who might have voted for Bush did not because they weren't yet convinced he shared their values. Bush's conservative social agenda surely scared off some moderates this time. Last time around Bush's final popular tally was 49,820,518. With 99% of precincts reporting, his take was 58,527,956. In 2000 about 99.9 million votes were cast; this time it was 113.5 million voters. Even adjusting for the larger turnout overall, Rove may well have underestimated the pick-up potential among religious voters.


• More along the same: Bush went from being the first president to win without a popular plurality to a) winning the first true majority since '88 -- Papa Bush, of course, and b) winning the largest popular majority in United States history. Boy, sounds like everybody must love that guy! Er ... right. An ever-larger country and an engaged electorate will do that.


• Prior to last night, Ohio's Republican Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, was being painted as this year's Katherine Harris. And why not? Ohio was supposed to be this year's Florida -- which turned out to be true in tightness (though as of now it's nowhere near as close) but wholly untrue in terms of "irregularities." Like Harris, Blackwell is ambitious -- he's running for governor in two years. But unlike Harris, Blackwell has performed his job admirably.


• Did Arnold help Bush carry Ohio? Assuming Bush really was trailing there last week -- after having mostly avoided the state throughout most of October -- it can't be entirely ruled out. Arnold has ties to the state going back to his bodybuilding days and, lest I point out, he's Arnold Schwarzenegger. I've been bullish on the notion of a Constitutional amendment to allow foreign-born citizens (of twenty years standing) run for the presidency, but it was pointed out to me this morning that Arnold may be one of the unintentional losers here. Had Bush lost, Republicans would have been looking for a new standard-bearer from outside Washington (and not named "Jeb.") But now Senators Bill Frist, George Allen and perhaps others have an eye on 2008. Any such amendment would have to meet with their approval. Why on earth would they ever allow what would amount to the "Conan The Destroyer (Of Your Presidential Aspirations) Amendment" to pass?


• Gay marriage bans passed in every state where they were on the ballot, even in my mostly-liberal home state, Oregon. This surprised me some, because Oregon has a decade-plus history of fending off anti-gay ballot measures. Even there, where its passage was the narrowest, it wasn't close at 57-43. I think gay-rights activists should take two lessons from this. One, a wide majority of voters do not believe gay marriage is a simple issue of tolerance. Two, these amendments would not have been on the ballot without the Massachusetts Supreme Court -- proof enough that, like abortion, the public does not want complex social issues decided by judges. Three, chances are pretty good that this wide majority will narrow, then flip over the next generation. Patience.


• We were spared four years of Tuh-ray-zuh (and having to pronounce it like that in mixed company). Journalists seem to think she would be tons of fun to cover, but this journalist/blogger vehemently disagrees: the shove-its, never-had-a-real-jobs, and lapses into Portugese were about as interesting as she was going to get. I was already bored. Admit it -- you were, too. Laura Bush may not be much of a character, but she is wholly unobjectionable and doesn't demand your attention to begin with.


• On the other hand, I will really miss hating John Edwards.


• The same goes for Terry McAuliffe, who has become (to my great amusment) the single worst major party chairman in the modern political era. I will certainly enjoy the deathwatch, which began last night the moment he declared: "This is the best election night in history."


• No more election ads! But to some extent I will miss them more than John and T-Mac.


• Almost as big as Bush's win was the near-landslide in the Senate and increased majority in the House. This is the second straight cycle where Republicans have gained seats (including the '02 midterms), and the second straight cycle where Democrats believed they'd learned some hard lessons. What will they fail to learn this time?


• Meanwhile, Republicans will find themselves running the country without an assured operational majority. Having been repelled by the Democratic party of recent years, I've supported their gains. But they have not delivered on their promise, and deep down, I'm still a fan of gridlock and divided rule. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if that was the result of '06. But only if the Dems actually learn something. I'll get you started: Ignore Howard Dean and his allies.


• This year was nearly a hat trick for Massachusetts. With all apologies to my friends who are from or have ties there, I can't say I'm disappointed.


• I am sick, sick, sick of blogs. I'm certainly sick of "We did it!" posts from sundry conservative bloggers who usually can be counted on to exhibit more restraint. At first I was reading the "We wuz robbed" posts on the myriad liberal comment boards and thinking: Mmm, that's good schadenfreude! But eventually I got sick of that, too.


• My side may have won -- overwhelmingly -- and to say that I am pleased is an understatement. But I've been following this personally and professionally for nearly two years, and I'm going to feel at least a twinge of loss.

After I get some sleep -- a lot of it -- I will return. It's been 34 hours since I awakened on Tuesday morning, and as it is, I'm pushing my luck. I'm too exhausted to be exhilarated. A little down time should do the trick.

ONE OTHER THING

Sometime during the wee hours of the morning, I appeared on C-SPAN dancing with an office waste basket. If you don't believe me, Blog will back me up on it.

DAWN BREAKS

On the East Coast, and we still don't have a winner. However, there were no retractions, no snippiness and no recount threats -- unlike last time. So we'll call this a success. Ohio may not be certified for 11 days while the provisional ballots are counted. They remain Kerry's last hope, but there is no reasonable expectation that they would make up the 140,000 votes he needs there. Another sign of success: Bush won the popular vote by more than 3½ million votes. While this may yet stretch on for awhile, at least we can be reasonably sure how it will end. Had it gone the other way, I would have been happy enough simply for the lack of acrimony.

And if you're wondering, yes, I'm still up. For how long? There's no telling...

P.S. -- Here's some election night trivia: This year, Bill Clinton campaigned for Senate candidates Betty Castor (FL), Chris John (LA), Joe Hoeffel (PA) and Tom Daschle (SD), plus House candidates Martin Frost (TX), Lois Murphy and Joe Driscoll (both PA). These candidates all have something else in common: All lost.

I'VE BEEN UP

Since pretty much forever at this point. I'd blog more, but I can hardly think straight. With Florida called for Bush, you might think we could get a few hours off to catch some Z's and return early and rested? Ha! No way. Not as long as the mathematical possibility exists for Kerry to claim Ohio. I've been hesitant to call anything all night, but I guess I'll go out on a limb here, shortly after midnight, and presume Bush has won -- as have Republicans in general. Of course, if anything changes ... I'll still be here.

Update -- First, Fox called Florida for Bush ... but didn't immediately call the race. That task fell to James Carville over on CNN not much later. MSNBC says the presidential motorcade is assembling. No word yet on a concession from Kerry.

LATER ON

The mood seems to be glum and getting glummer on the Dem blogs. It's been almost two hours since a state was called for Kerry, but it's too soon for them to panic or for conservatives to get giddy.

No state has yet flipped from 2000 to 2004, and I think Drudge is getting ahead of himself by coloring Michigan, Wisconsin and other states (most of them) pink. Bush continues to lead Ohio and Florida, but I'm hearing that Palm Beach County has yet to report yet, and that will yield a ton of Kerry votes. Then again, Bush seems to have put a bit of distance between himself and his opponent in the past hour.

Then again, I'm being told tonight feels a lot like 2000: moderate momentum for the Republicans most of the night until ... I don't need to remind you. It will probably be a long night anyway.

OR NOT

I've been scanning the TV networks and a wide range of blogs tonight. The left and right are both trumping the numbers where they look good for their side. I suppose it won't be a short night. I'll be back when there's something substantive to report, or something substantive that isn't being said on television.

P.S. -- Bunning might actually hold on -- with 92% of the precincts reporting, he's got a slim lead.

P.P.S. -- The BBC's blog seems to think the blogosphere is doing a better job of covering the returns than television. I call bullshit! With a very few exceptions, the blogs are just repeating what they're hearing on TV.

THE REPUBLICAN COLLAPSE OF 2004?

I don't know for sure, but if you're following early indicators, that's how it looks:

• Slate shows Kerry ahead in virtually every important battleground.


• According to MSNBC and Kevin Drum, long shot Daniel Mongiardo is beating decrepit standby and MLB Hall-of-Famer Jim Bunning, easily.


• And futures market TradeSports.com, which has shown Bush with a lead for months, now reports a total panic: Kerry ahead 70.1 to 29.0.

It's going to be a long night. Or a very short one.

ELECTION DAY

So it all comes down to this.

I. Last night I had one of those extended dreams that manages to pick up where you left off after waking up to check the clock or refill your water. Unsurprisingly, it had to do with watching the election results tonight. For a Prophet I'm not much of a predictor, but I might as well go with this:

First, in the all-important virtual state of FLOHPA -- that's a real term for Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania this year, not an invention of my unconscious mind -- Kerry kept PA, Bush kept FL, but Kerry also took OH. The truth is, whichever candidate wins two of three is very likely to win the White House. If one manages to sweep all three states, unlikely as that is, that's pretty much the whole game.

In my dream, Bush failed to win at least Minnesota or Iowa. As the rest of the states fell into predictable red and blue categories, a Kerry win seemed more and more likely. By the time Idaho fell into Kerry's column, it was really all over for the president.

If Idaho voting Dem wasn't strange enough, I was surprised to learn that Belgium is a U.S. state, occupying space where I always thought northern Georgia, western Tennessee and the eastern corners of the Carolinas should be. This didn't sound right to me, but yes, there it was on the map. Unless you're one of the few who claim never to remember your dreams (or never dream it all) then this makes perfect sense.

Anyway, this isn't a very good omen. No doubt the outcome was borne of my own anxiety, and the truth is that I am expecting Kerry to be the victory. In the past week since I posted, my feeling about who would win has swung back and forth repeatedly. While al Qaqaa was on the front pages, the race seemed to be tilting in Kerry's direction -- but the polls didn't reflect it. Then the Osama tape seemed sure to help Bush -- but the polls didn't show that, either.

The good news is that, in my dream, the winner of the presidential contest was apparent by shortly after midnight. This may be as likely as the land of Famous Potatoes turning blue, but maybe we'll be surprised. The latest national polls all show Bush ahead, but it's all within the margin of error. I'm afraid error is the only thing we can count on.

II. I promised I'd make my ballot public, and I'll hold to it:

Federal and Statewide Office:

• President -- George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. If this surprises you, then you must be a first-time visitor. Welcome.
• Senator -- Al King. He has zero chance, but I'm no fan of Wyden, and I can't bring myself to vote for a Libertarian at the federal level.
• Represenative -- I actually like Peter DeFazio, and might well have voted for him. But ... I don't want to say too much, but after I did some pro bono work for him, let's say I didn't get the kind of feedback I'd expected.
• Secretary of State -- Whoever the Libertarian is. Does it matter?
• Attorney General -- Ditto. As long as they stick with domestic policy, they're fine by me.
• State Treasurer -- You guessed it.

Ballot Measures:

• Measure 31 -- Yes. I can't think of a good reason to vote against it.
• Measure 32 -- Yes. From the bit of background reading I did on this, it sounded okay to me.
• Measure 33 -- Yes. This isn't the best pro-marijuana law I've seen, but that doesn't mean I won't support it.
• Measure 34 -- Abstain. I didn't have time to figure this one out.
• Measure 35 -- Yes. Tort reform is badly needed in the state and the country at large.
• Measure 36 -- Abstain. There are good reasons to vote for or against this, but I've never found gay marriage to be an easy call. I'm with the president, though -- civil unions are a good compromise.
• Measure 37 -- Yes. Danimal may be sorry he backed my right to vote in Oregon because of this, and perhaps this bill isn't the best possible version, but in principle I like this as a threat against the government to keep it from meddling with private property.
• Measure 38 -- Abstain. I was not about to spend my time researching the finer points of the SAIF Corporation.

Local Races:
For various local judgeships and water board positions where most candidates were running unopposed, I added the names of these Lane County, Oregon residents:

• Daniel Atkinson
• Ashley Olson
• Olly Ruff
• Tyler Graf
• Matt Beutler
• Morgan Beutler
• William Beutler
• Dave Frohnmayer
• Jared Siegel

If one of you happens, somehow, to be elected, I apologize. Except for Siegel. You can count on him.

III. As some of you know, it's a short day for me at work today because I'll be working late into the evening. Perhaps all night. Assuming plenty of down time, I'll keep blogging into the wee hours of the morning. So I'll see you back around here later.