Vee

I never doubted it.

ABC News is claiming Jeb Bush told Romney's people FL is gone.

Time to call this thing. I thought Baldwin was already locked.

It's a nasty speech worth watching for the schadenfreude. Same with Brown's, I hear. Apparently he was crying.

He was just raging about everything wrong with the other side, no faith, no Constitutional law, lazy people, etc.

Akin's concession speech is awful.

Romney High Command has gone radio silent, missing in action and not replying to emails or calls.

He brought jack [!@#$%^&*]. He embarrassed himself at the veep debate, then completely disappeared. I can't imagine whose idea he was. They claim it was Romney's, but I think it was a Koch Brothers gambit. Rumor was they promised a big payday if he picked Ryan, the right wing darling.

People write off women too much. Remember when everyone thought Liz Warren was a lost cause? She roared back and never lost the lead again.

A rare moment of honesty from Chuck Todd, scoffing at Republican losses, saying it's not Sandy but bigotry and an inability to embrace the growing minority vote that lost them these states.

I don't.

Warren is in, Baldwin is in.

I'm getting tired of this ride with Florida and VA.

Michigan and Pennsylvania!

Ken Blackwell is such a criminal !@#$%^&*].

Man, I remember going through this early Republican [!@#$%^&*] in '08 and the piecemeal results minute by minute, but I just don't have enough alcohol for this.

I saw Billy's ass and the rest of the goods in a clip from BE. And it's not the first time I've seen the whole package either. A fine specimen who fortunately enjoys getting naked.

I get really fuckin' annoyed when the Morning Joe crew mocks Howard Dean for talking about ongoing voter suppression and poll [!@#$%^&*]-ups in Ohio. "Oh, you're setting that up." It is happening on the ground, and it happened before. I don't think it'll be anywhere near enough to stop Obama from taking the state, but it infuriates me when these people pretend like this is some crazy fringe issue. They need it to be to avoid having to ask real questions and take an honest look at the Republican Party beyond all this ancient "hail fellow well met" [!@#$%^&*] that only exists in their fantasy bubble. They sit in a heated studio with hot coffee and designer clothes while real Americans sit in the cold and wait for one or two blinkered machines or deal with voter intimidation. It's real easy to pretend the rest of the world is just like you and your 'bipartisan' cocktail parties when you refuse to actually deal with anything that might ruffle your beautiful minds. They also were whining and bitching about Nate Silver this morning, whose honest analysis will put them all out of a job over time. Pimping some editorial by a Bush speechwriter about how Silver's "cold, sterile" analysis discounted character, voters' feelings and "the issues." Because as we know, these morning pundits are such fans of discussing the issues.

I saw Carla and Dorian together in an older episode, some party of Asa's.

Trust me, the media adored John McCain. He'd been courting them for years on his campaign bus and at various events designed to charm them. He was a war hero, he made them feel rugged and masculine by association. They loved him to death. "Good news for John McCain" became a punchline throughout the 2008 campaign. There's a reason he's still consistently a favorite of the Sunday morning Beltway press shows, despite being increasingly angry and irrational. He's a Beltway sweetheart. But eventually most of them could not ignore the train wreck of the last two months of the campaign.

Sandy is just the rationale for another crushing Republican defeat for some in the Beltway press circle that refuse to believe Democrats can win on values, strength, issues and popularity. Obama was up well before that, and I think most people know that. In other news, 10-year-old Sophia Bailey Klugh wrote to the President for advice on how to deal with people teasing her at school about her two dads. The President responded. The original letter, which is adorable, should be linked in turn at the link.

Wow, I never thought I'd see her exit. When I thought of the characters returning, I always thought of them coming together after they both left the show, and then reconciling and splitting again and again because of Carla's headstrong ways, full of causes and activism and drive, choices that drew her away from home and family - still a runner, just as she started out on the show. If you brought on a new generation of Halls, they would be coming from a background where Ed and Carla were more separate than united, where Grandma was kind of nuts, and an older Carla would be up to her own game while a weary Ed is just trying to manage the youngsters. Eventually, of course they would reconcile for good, as that story played out and then probably exit the show or fade into elder recurring status (as Carlotta and Renee once had, before they barely ever appeared) while their descendants played on the show.

Obama will always try to work with both sides of the aisle. That's who he is, that is his brand and that is what he believes. He is not often overtly aggressive and emotionally fulfilling in the way a lot of angry liberals (of which I can certainly be counted at times) feel they require after the trauma of the Bush years. But he also acts when he feels it is necessary, just often without a lot of fanfare or chest-thumping. Remember, this is the man who smiled at Donald Trump's nonsense at a press dinner the day before he oversaw his risky (and pooh-poohed by much of his cabinet) operation to kill Osama bin Laden. And he pushed back for health care when others wanted to walk away. He's a quiet operator. I expect he'll become more aggressive in that arena in his second term, but we won't always see it coming upfront.

I think most of the Obama machine is far more aggressive than many of the defeatist pols and pundits (and voters) we saw in the last twelve years. They got called arrogant by everyone, but in truth they won it and continue to win it. Too many baby boomer liberals live and thrive from a position of weakness and downtrodden trauma - it's a mindset that works for them, breeds populist fire. But it doesn't work in practice, and it's dying out. Morning Joe is digging up any obscure poll he can to claim this race is still tied, as are people I believe on main line NBC. Hilarious. They're even entertaining the possibility that Mitt will take Pennsylvania. If Mitt Romney wins Pennsylvania I will go out Wednesday, pick up a woman (any woman - I'm not picky) and have boisterous, Christian heterosexual sex. And Carl is right - this comes out of, IMO, far too many of the Beltway elite coming up in the Reagan dream. They have a preexisting mindset (like a lot of older liberals) through which they see the world - liberals wusses, Republicans awesome. Obama has fucked with that in a major way.

The Republicans - particularly Karl Rove - have already begun spinning, claiming it was only Sandy that won it for Obama. In reality, Obama was well up at least two weeks before.