Serena's Fashion Faux Pax

What exactly was Serena Williams thinking? [NSFW Yahoo News Link]

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Note to the Big Media...

The word you are looking for but just can't seem to find is MANDATE.

Bush is the first President to be re-elected while gaining seats in the House and Senate since 1936 and the first Republican President since 1924 to be re-elected while re-electing Republican House and Senate majorities.
The first President to win a majority of the popular vote since 1988.
He received 57.4 million votes - more than any other candidate in history. He broke President Reagan's 1984 mark of 54.5 million. (96% reporting)
He increased the popular vote by seven million votes since 2000 - more than twice Clinton's increase from 1992 to 1996.
He improved his percentage in every state except four (MD, OR, VT and WY). This includes a four percent increase in John Kerry's home state, Massachusetts.
More

Meanwhile the dimwits in the media are arguing that since the Democrats got humiliated by the voters, Bush should adopt the policies the voters rejected. (Gee did anyone predict the media would do this?) If the voters rejected one party out of hand it is obvious to any thinking person it is time for the party who got rejected to move to the mainstream, not vice versa.

The results of this election WAS NOT a call for Bush to be more liberal. indeed it is a wake up call to liberals that they have strayed too far to the left for the American people.

BREAKING NEWS - Kerry Concedes

ABC is reporting that the Senator Kerry is conceding the election to the President [Link].

AP is reporting Kerry has called Bush and conceded. [Via MSNBC]

Update: Pay no attention to the "count every vote" whiners. Every legal vote will be counted, the Electoral College will meet in December, etc. This is an election ritual that we as a nation expect to occur. It has no influence on the actual results - it's just one side admitting that they will not win...

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Concession Watch 2004

I'm hearing mid-afternoon - 1PM to 2PM - for a Kerry concession speech.

Update: Captain Ed explains why the provisional ballots in Ohio won't make any difference in the results. Bottom line - Kerry will conceed because the numbers don't add up...

Update 2: Who will be the first major Democrat to break ranks and pressure the Kerry camp to conceed?

Dems take a bath - Still can't remove stink

By any (rational) measure, this was the best night the Republican party has had since it was founded. Yes, even better than when Republicans took the house and the Senate on the same night. (Though that one was more fun on a visceral level.)

Consider the following:

With 97% of the popular vote reporting:
George W. Bush 51% 57,813,650
John Kerry 48% 54,011,435

George Bush won the popular vote by almost 4 million votes, earning over 50%, something no President has done since 1988, even Clinton never broke 50%.
By the time John Kerry concedes, Bush will have won the Electoral College 286 to 252.
While the Dems loudly projected they would take back the Senate, as of 4:36AM it looks like the Republicans will pick up 4 or possibly 5 seats. Bringing them to a near filibuster busting 55 votes.
In the House, the last number I saw was the Republicans gained 4 seats.
The Republicans also picked up another Governor for good measure.
In closely watched seats, Frost lost in Texas, Tom Daschle is dead and to show what a groundswell election this was, in Louisiana they have their FIRST Republican Senator EVER. (not in 100 years-- EVER) Facing 4 Dem challengers, the Republican challenger still got 51% of the vote.

In short, it was the Democrats' worst nightmare. Add the Supreme Court into the mix and Dr. Kovorkian's pager must be going off continuously.

After 4 years of the Dems crying "never again" and building every bit of infrastructure they could muster, why did they lose so horrifically? The exit polls, which are not designed to predicted winners but learn voter motivation, tell us it was issues of morality that swung the vote.

Sure gay marriage bans were on the ballot in many states, but it was more than that. We have, in the Democrats, a failed party. A party more concerned with the acquisition of power than governance. A party whose motto is "win at all costs" and has shown a willingness to do just that.

In the last few years to say the Democrats have broken all bounds of civility and decency would be an understatement. They've played politics with national security and made slanderous charges against the President during a time of war.

They've shot up, broken into and vandalized GOP offices. Kicked people who wore GOP t-shirts and slashed tires of GOP vans. And that was just in the last 48 hours.

They have increasingly lost touch with the needs of the average voter and have been co-opted by the radical left. Where once the Democrats stood for the common man, now they stand against all his values.

But the electoral nightmare is not over for the Democrats. They predicted a large turnout would help them, but instead the good honest people who were discussed by their behavior turned out in even bigger numbers and learned that they are indeed part of the silent majority. These people now got a vivid reminder that they are the majority and their vote counts. A lesson that won't soon be forgotten.

Is the Democrat party irreparable? Not by a long shot. They could turn it around in one election cycle.

Quit lying to the American people. Get a coherent foreign policy and plan for terrorism. Drop the class warfare and the victimology and appeal to what is best in America and not it's worst.

Don't bring the full force of law against someone who has the temerity to say the word God. Work to build poor people up rather than tear the middle-class down. Quit cheering for our enemy while we are at war. Admit the terrorists are responsible for terrorism and that we didn't "bring it upon ourselves."

Basically, quit being jackasses and the American people will support you.

[Written with no sleep in over 24 hours so I might be harsh... But I don't think so.]

Larry Sabato Bats .998

If you didn't know what was going to happen last night you didn't look into the Crystal Ball.

High Traffic Warning - Day 2

Once again the internet (or at least the portion of it Wizbang is hosted on) is buckling under a tremendous crush of traffic. Posts here are mirrored from the main Wizbang site again today. If you have problems reading or commenting there, you should have no problem doing so here.

The joys of a two-party state

Here in Cow Hampshire, we have a pretty healthy two-party system. True, the Republicans have largely dominated, but we just tossed one of them out for a Democrat for governor. We've also had other Democrats in the House, the governor's office, and in the state legislature. It's good; it keeps both parties on their toes and relatively honest.

One of the things that keeps it easy is the graphic example of a one-party state just to our south.

The Republicans in Massachusetts must occasionally feel like the Jews in Iraq -- an incredibly small minority surrounded by hostility, but with a sheer stubborn bent that insists that where they are is their home. But it's never easy.

Yes, Massachusetts has had a string of Republican governors, but that's largely attributable to 1) the voters realizing that giving the Democrats all the power would be tantamount to suicide; B) the Democratic machine feeling the need to keep some token Republicans around that they can plausibly blame for problems and rail against; and III) the sheer crappy quality of the Democratic candidates for governor.

But when you look beyond the corner office, though, you see just how bad things are in Massachusetts. In 2002, the Republicans didn't even bother to run someone against John Kerry. This year, four of Massachusetts' ten Representatives (all Democrats, BTW) ran unchallenged, and a fifth was up against an independent. That's right -- the Republicans couldn't find candidates for the United States House of Representatives in exactly HALF the seats.

The legislature -- where the real power resides -- is even more telling. Before yesterday, the Democrats had (I am not making these numbers up) 33 out of 40 State Senate seats, and 138 of 160 seats in the State House. Governor Romney's vetos were overridden with barely a yawn. This time Romney went all out for Republican candidates, hoping to pick up at least enough Republicans to sustain an occasional veto.

Instead, the Democrats look like they gained yet another Senate seat, and two more House seats.

This does not bode well for those of us in New Hampshire. Every year we notice more and more refugees from Massachusetts streaming north. That wouldn't be so bad, but so many of them immediately start wanting to recreate the conditions they just fled. They forget just why they came here, and just how bad things were down there.

So learn from Massachusetts' bad example. Don't give too much power to a single party. Keep a healthy opposition around to keep them on their toes. For when one party grows fat and lazy and complacent, you end up with things like Michael Dukakis. And John Forbes Kerry.

And Edward Moore Kennedy.

J.

Patience has its virtues

As promised, I've been watching C-BS coverage of the election off and on all night (I also got a bit of sleep in), waiting for Dan Rather to have his meltdown. It hasn't happened, but there have been moments.

Earlier, he described the voting in Ohio as something "that would give an aspirin a headache." I kinda like that phrase.

But now, at 4:45 a.m., he finally gave me my satisfaction.

While running down the various governor's races, he got to us here in New Hampshire. He described incumbent Governor Craig Benson as "fighting for his life," his challenger Peter Lynch as a "millionaire" (ignoring that Benson is richer), then gave the nod to Lynch by saying "and New JERSEY goes to the Democrats, for whatever that is worth."

Screw you, too, Gunga Dan. Go back to browsing nursing home brochures and hope to hell they're more authentic than those Bush National Guard Memos.

J.

The New Minority Party

Given the history of presidential elections, it appears that a Democratic candidate gets 40% of the vote for just showing up. Republicans historically did not have that kind of built-in base. GOP candidates had to reach out to Independents and continuously expand the GOP base in the face of the larger Democratic vote machine. Building on the success of Ronald Reagan's Dixiecrats (conservative Southern Democrats), the GOP has converted large swaths of former Democrats and Independents into Republicans.

The defeat of John Kerry proves that the historic equation has reversed. Democrats now cannot win a national election without drawing from a conservative/libertarian pool in the red states. The 40% Democratic base is not enough to win - period. Winning both costs without turning some Republican states. The last two Democratic presidents who won the White House needed to capture a good percentage of that socially conservative vote and win a few Republican leaning states.

That's what make the various liberal post mortems even more fun to watch. The emerging consensus among the lefty blogs is that the activism and liberalism have to be ratcheted up even more in 2008. Markos Moulitsas (Daily Kos) likes to point to Republican Barry Goldwater's shellacking by Lyndon Johnson as a point from which the GOP majority was built.

Personally I'm hoping that things like Howard Dean for DNC Chairman pan out. Keep pinning your hopes on P. Diddy, Michael Moore, George Soros, et. all. If they continue down that path they'll know exactly what Goldwater felt link in 1964.

Update: That was fast - I found two petty and hate filled posts that agree the with the math. One from Eric Alterman and the other from Atrios.

Wizbang Calls Election For Bush

With NBC and Fox both projecting Bush with 269 Electoral Votes and a 3.2 million vote popular vote lead, it's very safe to call this election for Bush. That and the fact that Bush will win New Mexico - even if the absentee ballot counting is delayed...

Update: It looks like he might win Iowa too, and Nevada (17 EV's total).

Update 2: It's entirely possible the final results will not be officially known for 48 hours, but rest assured that the President will win. He's ahead by 125,000 votes in Ohio with 97% of the vote counted.

Update 3: John Edwards was trotted out to say that the Kerry-Edwards team was keeping up the fight in Ohio. If the provisional vote total is more that the margin of Bush victory they'll only need to win something on the order of 9 out of every 10 provisional ballots that were legally cast. It's desperation time for Democrats...

Wizbang Calls Ohio For Bush

See the Ohio results by county at CNN.

Cuyahoga Co. (Cleveland) is Kerry's last hope. Al Gore won it in 2000 somewhere in the 60% range. Kerry currently has 63% with 2/3 of the precincts counted. It's not enough to close the Bush lead of 150,000 with 75% counted.

Ohio is going to Bush.

Update: Bush wins Clark county. Voters tell The Guardian to sod off with their ballots...

Update 2: FOX and NBC call Ohio for Bush. Bush is up 266-211.

Update 3: ABC reports there are 106,000 provisional ballots and with 96% of the vote counted Bush leads by 120,000 votes. By law the votes are only examined (they're not counted unless registration is verified) if the total number of provisional ballots are more than the margin of victory.

NBC Reports No Extra Youth Turnout

Brian Williams just reported that the percentage of voters nationwide remains basically unchanged from 2000.

	2004  2000
18-29   17%   17%
30-44   28%   33%
45-59   30%   28%
60+     24%   17%

The youth vote is always a risky proposition to pin your hopes on.

New Mexico Off The Table

191,000 absentee ballots won't be counted until tomorrow (Current results). The state appears to be headed toward Bush, but we may not know for 48 hours.

Liberal Blogger Panic Watch

Bush leading in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, New Mexico, Florida...

I'm going looking for panic posts... If you find any links drop them here.

Keep track of all of the states at The Command Post Election coverage, and check NZ Bear's election resources.

Update: Kos - Youth did not vote. That's what's killing us...

Washington Monthly - Paranoia check?

Wonkette - Were we played?

Classic!!! The Daily Kos wingnuts are out!!! Read the whole thing then tell me who is part of the reality-based community. The commenters are arguing that the exit polls are reality, and that they prove the election is being stolen...

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Exit Poll Issues

Is it possible that there is there are millions of hidden Bush voters, or at least those who say one thing and did another?

Given the viciousness of the anti-Bush left is it possible that many people just said one thing to avoid a stigma, then did another by voting for Bush?

The exit poll numbers and the actual numbers aren't matching up. Bush has 56% of the national vote already...

Update: Jim Geraghty has this tidbit:

Larry Sabato was just on one of the DC-area local stations, and just said something shocking - the reason it took forever to call Virginia, South Carolina, and North Carolina is that the exit polls had them for Kerry.

For Kerry!

Sabato also said that the exit polls also had at least two other states "wrong" — which is not to say they had the wrong winner, but that they had results that were immediately detected as out of whack.

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Who Has The Best Electoral Vote Map?

So far my vote goes to CNN.

Among bloggers, MegaPundit's race map is excellent, and Stephen Green's map is very nice.

Suggestions welcome.

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Wizbang Backup Site

This is a placeholder entry. In the event of a server outage at Hosting Matters, I'll move posting to this site.

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