Just thought everyone would like to know that I couldn't buy beer at the grocery store this afternoon.

Election day. Indiana. No alcohol sales until the polls close.

Unbelievable.

I've been suffering through Chris Matthews for the last hour or so... I feel dumber because of it

I can't believe Matthews is giving so much airtime to Cantor gloating over the VA GOP victory. Also, he just called the guy who wrote a thesis on keeping women subjugated a rising star. He premised the whole discussion on how the press would hyper bloviate over the whole matter and then proceeded to hyper bloviate.

What are we to do? Common sense is no longer applicable.

yes, it is extremely frustrating. If it weren't for Rachel Maddow, and Keith Olbermann to a lesser extent, MSNBC would be dead to me.

I'll be half watching the results as I bask in the glory that is Dragonage: Origins.

Tonight's a good night to read a book.

1984?

All the King's Men?

Consider this an open thread. . .

Well as much as I hate to admit it, I do have to agree that Obama is paying for his overindulgence to bipartisanship and failure to capitalize on his mandate. I think his critical mistake was turning over the Wall Street debacle to the same element that caused the debacle in the first place. It's hard to escape the 'beltway' once you become entrenched.

There are 3 key gay rights battles, Steve, in Maine, Washington state, and Kalamazoo, Mich. The other three in that op-ed by the NYT concern legislative fights in NJ, NY and DC.

citizen_pain said "I do have to agree that Obama is paying for his overindulgence to bipartisanship and failure to capitalize on his mandate."

What? What race that is going on makes you think that?

What I am saying is the Obama admin spent too much time appeasing people when they should have taken advantage of their momentum. They allowed the naysayers an audience without silencing them with action and results. Bold action was called for, and the lack thereof hascorroded the whole debate.

This will be such a disaster of epic proportions for Obama that he'll have to resign and commit suicide. And Glenn Beck will be appointed President by popular acclaim.

How can we still be having free elections where the opposition party wins, when we have a Stalinist dictator running a one-party state? Hmmm??

Any surprises?

Nope. Here in VA, we have a sucky candidate who ran a sucky campaign, and as a result, the next four years are gonna suck here.

Well, at least we can buy alcohol on Election Day...

>How can we still be having free elections where the opposition party wins, when we have a Stalinist dictator running a one-party state? Hmmm??>How can we still be having free elections where the opposition party wins, when we have a Stalinist dictator running a one-party state? Hmmm??

This is part of what's wrong with the American political system. People who spout off ridiculous statements in hopes of creating opposition to one office holder/candidate or another. A bit less obfuscation and more information would make all of us better voters.

citizen_pain: Bold action was called for, and the lack thereof hascorroded the whole debate.

Considering the make up of the Senate, I don't think that bold action was in the cards.

who's decided to skip politics altogether tonight and tune into the opening night of "v"?

spoiler alert: sarah palin is a lizard...

so... if that question one in maine doesn't pass tonight, that is a referendum on the republican party's policies. right? Right?!

Jeff Pierce: "A bit less obfuscation and more information would make all of us better voters."

What are you - some kind of communist? Yerah, like we need better voters.

If only more people like you would just do as they're told, instead of asking questions all the time, the people who are in charge wouldn't have to take time out from their busy days to explain things to you, everything would be more efficient, and people could spend time with concerns that really matter, like why Jon Gosselin emptied out his estranged wife's bank account. ;-)

Rachel's guest just said that Bob McDonnell's graduate thesis, in particular regarding his ideas about women, was written in his early 20's. As has been discussed here before... he was 34! As someone who is 25, I admit that I am much different than I was at 22, or even 23, but jesus I hope that by the time I'm 34 I will have my shit figured out. I doubt if most of us, at 34, said that women don't belong in the workplace, there would be too many people saying, "yeah, but you are only 34 so it's ok you said that..."

Daily Kos reporting: Pawlenty purging Snowe from the GOP! News at 11!

For those waiting for WA state results, we are mostly voting by mailed in ballots. I suspect returns will be slow. This is the first time we've voted this way on a wide scale. FWIW.

The aliens in V announced that one of the benefits they offered to humanity was universal health care. No doubt Republican politicians and talk-show hosts are going to prove from this that Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are actually reptiles from another planet in human form--which, incidentally, makes them ineligible for public office. Show us your original X-rays, Mr. President! What do you have to hide?

I am sad to report that watching those fulminations will likely be more entertaining than watching V.

Yeah, the Repugs swept the top tier here in VA - but friend and local Delegate challenger Democrat Robin Abbott in the 93rd District beat 22-year Republican incumbent Phil Hamilton by a wide margin. Hamilton had been dogged by ethics problems over a conflict of interest.

The Repubs will claim this is a boost for them, but the real news is their Party breaking apart as revealed in the race for NY 23rd (the "23 mystery" at work! As Robert Anton Wilson revealed in Cosmic Trigger, the 23rd Hexagram of I Ching is "breaking apart"!) BTW do they know for sure who won yet?

538.com is calling the 23rd for Hoffman, although they last reported at 6:20pm.

If you can't say anything good, don't say anything at all...

The new governor of New Jersey sure has nice hair.

The race that should worry the administration is the Virginia governor's race. Deeds sucked as a candidate and should have lost in any event, but large groups of Democrats (young and minorities) stayed away in droves. The Democratic party has done next to nothing to keep the flame alive. Obama has surrendered to Wall Street and the beltway types. Insider people should be moved out of 1600 Pennsylvania including Rahm Emanuel. Of course, the Goldman Sacks Secretary of Treasury should be fired out of hand.

If you think I sound frustrated you would be right. The Wackos have one thing right, the current crowd (Democrats and Republicans alike) are all looking out for each other. They don't give a shit about the rest of us. Of course, the Wackos are wrong on just about everything else proving that even a blind dog catches a rabbit every once in a while.

This country needs leadership that understands it is the economy stupid. Job creation should be job one for the administration.

Ron- curious; do you think that Virginia voting for the opposition party of who is in the whitehouse for the past 8 elections, or whatever, is a fluke?

As to V I saw it back in the 80s. Spoiler alert, the humans used weapons of mass destruction to send the lizards packing.

John, I don't know about the last 8 elections, but Virginia has been trending Democrat for about 15 years as the demographics have shifted in the northern part of the state. The state should be Democratic if the minorities and educated young people in the northern part of the state just show up. Deeds didn't give them a reason to show up. Obama's timid approach to governance doesn't inspire anybody except the cigar smokers on the top floor of Goldman Sacks and their toadies at the Treasury.

Ron,

"The race that should worry the administration is the Virginia governor's race. Deeds sucked as a candidate and should have lost in any event, but large groups of Democrats (young and minorities) stayed away in droves. The Democratic party has done next to nothing to keep the flame alive."

The party did next to nothing precisely because Deeds sucked as a candidate. Kaine and Obama showed how Democrats can win in Virginia, but the dumb cluck Deeds refused to take the advice.

As someone who is 25, I admit that I am much different than I was at 22, or even 23, but jesus I hope that by the time I'm 34 I will have my shit figured out.

In eastern elite GOP world, 34 is the new 21. This also explains the low turn out rate for military service in this demographic. By the time they're sufficiently grown-up, they're too old.

Deeds sucked and should have lost, but the Republican victory was massive. That happened only because the Democratic voters sat home and watched Dancing with the Stars.

The Democratic party has abandoned it's base just like it always does.

The Democratic party has done next to nothing to keep the flame alive

By the way I hear there is going to be yet another teabagging mob making noise on the Mall soon...
Lots of shouting.
Lots of TV cameras.
Lots of air time.

Any idea when the progressives and Dems are going to do the Mall march thing for Health Care?
Or was that canceled due to lack of interest?

Watertown Daily News is reporting Owens ahead by about 3000 votes (49% - 46%) in NY-23 race; still lots of absentee and other votes to count.

This worries me; "Four precincts in St. Lawrence County are having mechanical problems and total results for the county won't be available tonight."

I understand Ron Byers' point about the Dems not giving the rank and file reasons to stay active, but I think there are some real limits to that thesis if progressives ever want to hold any sway in the political process.

1) People who say this sound surprised, and I'm not sure why. It didn't take much to realize during the entire campaign that Obama was a consensus-comes-first moderate. His health care plan was never as aggressive as Clinton's or Edwards'.

2) At some point, the rank and file have to motivate themselves, not let their energy rise and fall based on the last election. The resurgence of energy in the once comatose right wing certainly isn't coming from strong leadership getting major conservative results in Washington (after 30 years of screaming, abortion is still legal, after all) -- the source of the energy is diffuse, and not coming from centralized leadership (Steele? ummm. . . ) If we can't match their will to win elections, we probably deserve to lose them.

That said, I think there are two very different problems in play. For a very small percentage of very progressive hardcore activists, there is a demoralizing disappointment. But among non-political-junkie liberals I know who were more active than usual in Obama's campaign, it is just the opposite: there is a complacency, a "our hard work sure paid off, now we can take 4 years to rest up for next time" retreat. And of course the usual low-info types who believe whatever the media tells them - and the media loves them some Teabaggers.

The combination, unfortunately, is killing us in off years in terms of who is actually showing up at the polls. But we need to solve the problem, because the losses will then drive the story line, which will further demoralize Democrats and lead to "second guessing" (and taking the "cool factor" off of being a Democrat) and the losses will become self-sustaining.

Which is to say the left needs to buck-up and fight hard whether they feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football or not. Because we may never kick the football with traditional Democratic candidates, but we know we'll never kick it standing on the sidelines.

Honest to Pete, GROW UP. Obama is TIMID? How about CALM? The things he's done this year in reversing the last EIGHT years are NOTHING? Doesn't show LEADERSHIP? He needs to fight them on the floor? You KNEW he wouldn't be like this. You KNEW last September that the world (or at least OUR world) SUCKED...You don't stick a credit card in the machine and the world changes. You don't sit at your keyboard and whine about the 'lack' of issues...you get out there and HELP. Where were YOU on election night? Did you VOTE? Did you help people VOTE? Are you helping Obama in your neighborhoods? OR are you sitting there wondering about a health care MARCH? There is a reason we lost tonight...

John, @21:39,

It isn't just what Bub (Taliban) McDonnell *wrote* at 34; he *might* have changed his views in the 20yrs following the "opus" (though I haven't changed mine much between 18 and 60). It's that he spent 15 of those years implementing, in the legislature, the plans he laid down in the thesis. He only became a "surface moderate" in '05, when he ran against Creigh (Deeds) for AG. The new AG, BTW -- cuckoo Cuccinelli - is a total creep who didn't even bother to try and hide his zealotry.

Virginia is going to be one sorry state to live in for the next 4 yrs and possibly longer, depending on how much wreckage the unholy trio (though Bolling, being a La-Z-Boy, is the least likely to matter) manages to inflict on us.

I'm not sure that the defeat can be blamed entirely on the disenchanted Dems in NoVa. If you look at the map, the cities/towns pretty much delivered for Deeds, in NoVa and elsewhere. It's the rural and suburban areas that went for the blow-dried Ken-doll. But, by all means... If you guys are willing to brag that you couldn't be bothered to vote because you're in a snit and because you didn't like the hick-y Deeds, I hope to hell you'll enjoy your day's work for the next 4 yrs.

The county-by-county map:
http://www.sbe.virginia.gov/cms/Election_Information/Election_Results/2009/November_General_Election.html

Attention Republican party

Referendum is in for Missouri 73rd District

STATE REPRESENTATIVE DISTRICT 73
(VOTE for) 1
(WITH 16 OF 16 PRECINCTS COUNTED)

STACEY NEWMAN (DEM). . . . . . . . 3,663 61.28%
DANIEL F. O'SULLIVAN JR. (REP). . . . 2,293 38.36%
WRITE-IN. . . . . . . . . . . 21 .35%

The county-by-county map: - exlibra

That is one red state.
Powhatan 80% red. Wow.
Be neat if they show %turnout, seems the counts aren't big...but I'm on the left coast.

Keep in mind the fact that in NJ and VA, the Democrats had two pretty crappy candidates.

Corzine is a schmuck, and a former CEO of Goldman Sachs to boot.

Deeds had already lost to McDonnell in the AG's race four years ago.

Just remember, in a two-party race, the fact that the least-disliked candidate wins does not necessarily mean much.

Whatever the outcomes, Emmanuel will conclude congressional democrats must continue to steer starboard.

Like his boss, he is who he is.

to jharp, first comment:
I lived in that horrible state for years. Advance warning: on the first day of the new year, liquor stores are closed ALL DAY LONG.

V was pretty uninspiring, it moved awful quickly.

The most entertaining part of 'V' was watching Scott Wolfe in the Chris Wallace role, having just a momentary twinge of regret as he flushed his journalistic integrity away, doing a suck-up interview of his space-lizard overlord.

(The alien lizards must be Republicans. Who else would expect people to believe they'd really traveled billions of miles across space to find water they could have scooped from the cloud layers of any nearby gas giant?)

HI

Good information for us.

Just a bit of history regarding Virginia governor races. Since 1977, whatever party held the Presidency, the opposite party won the Virginia governors race. I guess Virginia has been holding referendums on Presidents for some 30 years now. Carter, Raygun, HW, Clinton, GW, and now Obama all sucked, according to Virginians. Yes Virginia, there are facts to dispute any bloviating.
http://www.virginia.gov/cmsportal3/facts_and_history_4096/facts_4104/governors.html

@exlibra-Time for calls of secession in Virginia. Since we already have a W. Va. how about N., S., and E? We can suggest it elsewhere too and reach those 57 states Obama had mentioned and elevate him to the level of psychic, just as the wingnuts proclaim to be.

The biggest smile this am should be on the face of the repub lady in NY23, they knifed her in the back, she supported a dem and the dem won. I think this is a blow for the Palin, Beck candidate.

@JS-My local VA wingnut paper didn't even editorialize the astounding blow to Obama of a republican governor winning. They are now presenting an editorial and a WSJ/NBC poll prediciting some psychic event next year, because "it's the economy stupid" argument.

I suspect more jobs created in the NY 23rd, three
24 hour bodyguards.

I can suspend disbelief well enough to watch a show about lizards from space disguised as human beings, but to see a newscaster even have qualms about sacrificing his journalistic integrity in order to grease a source... naaah. Can't happen. Back to the Doctor Who DVDs.

Saw the comment this morning about the mayor race in Minneapolis. I worked this year as an election judge in Minneapolis, and I can tell you two things.

1) No official results will be available for a while. Minneapolis used Ranked Choice Voting (a type of Instant Runoff Voting) this year for the first time. However, since no machines are certified to count RCV ballots, all of the ballot counting needs to be done by hand. On the plus side, due to the Senate race recount, the election officials have a lot of experience with counting ballots...

2) However, unoffically? RT Rybak won. There was no real opposition. He was opposed by a guy who was running on the "is awesome" party, a guy who thinks that Laura Ingalls Wilder is God and that the 250 miles around Minneapolis should secede from the US, and a folk singer known as "Papa John". And the folk singer was his most credible opposition. From the unofficial results in my precinct, Rybak blew away the competition for people's first choice.