ROGER SIMON has a Hollywood election scoop.

UPDATE: Read this, too.

HEH.

STEPHEN BAINBRIDGE notes that CNN’s Alan Wastler can’t seem to count. He’s claiming daily traffic totals of 34,000 for DailyKos, 80,000 for all of Typepad, and 325,000 for all of Blogspot.

What is this guy smoking? Back when I was on Blogspot I was running a third of that all by myself — and by these numbers, InstaPundit would be getting more traffic than all the Blogspot blogs put together. Hmm. Maybe he’s just trying to make InstaPundit look really good, but this is absurd.

UPDATE: N.Z. Bear looks at the CNN methodology: “I gather that comScore is coming up with their figures by using a panel of web users and surveying their surfing habits, then extrapolating that behavior to the web universe as a whole.”

Sounds like exit polling. Hey, that couldn’t be wrong. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hmm, CNN has a rather dubious history regarding numbers and the blogosphere. It’s like they’re trying to talk down their competition or something. . . .

MARK STEYN writes that it wasn’t just rednecks voting for Bush:

The great European thinkers have decided that instead of doing another four years of lame Bush-is-a-moron cracks they’re going to do four years of lame Americans-are-morons cracks. Inaugurating the new second-term outreach was Brian Reade in the Daily Mirror, who attributed the President’s victory to: “The self-righteous, gun-totin’, military-lovin’, sister-marryin’, abortion-hatin’, gay-loathin’, foreigner-despisin’, non-passport-ownin’ rednecks, who believe God gave America the biggest dick in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us and make their land ‘free and strong’.”

Well, that’s certainly why I supported Bush, but I’m not sure it entirely accounts for the other 59,459,765. Forty five per cent of Hispanics voted for the President, as did 25 per cent of Jews, and 23 per cent of gays. And this coalition of common-or-garden rednecks, Hispanic rednecks, sinister Zionist rednecks, and lesbian rednecks who enjoy hitting on their gay-loathin’ sisters expanded its share of the vote across the entire country – not just in the Bush states but in the Kerry states, too.

Read the whole thing, which is Steyn at his most amusing. (“You can drive from coast to coast across the middle of the country and never pass through a single county that voted for John Kerry: it’s one continuous cascade of self-righteous urine from sea to shining sea.”) I’ve been reading James Webb’s new book, Born Fighting : How the Scots-Irish Shaped America and it’s amazing to note how the comments Steyn quotes above match up with things that English writers were saying about the Scots-Irish two or three centuries ago, now turned into a view of Americans in general. This supports Webb’s thesis that Scots-Irish culture has become the strongest thread of American culture, I suppose. If you’ve already read David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America, there’s not a whole lot that’s new in Webb’s book, but Webb’s book is much more digestible for the casual reader than Fischer’s rather lengthy book. And as you might expect, it’s well-written. If you want just the gist, though, you might want to read this column by Webb, or this piece by a somewhat less impressive author.

IT’S LITTLE GREEN MEN, WITH SQUEEGEES:

As NASA’s Mars rovers keep rolling past all expectations of their useful lives, scientists have a happy mystery: For some reason one of the vehicles has actually gained power recently.

Opportunity recently experienced an unexplained rejuvenation from what can so far be described only as two or three significant “cleaning events,” said Jim Erickson, the rover project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

“Now we’re assuming they’re cleaning, but all we can really say is that overnight the solar panels produced between 2 and 5 percent additional power immediately,” he said. “We’re surmising that for some reason dust is being removed from the solar panel and that’s increasing the efficiency of the sunlight being converted to electricity.”

The rover team has been bandying about theories, but hasn’t figured out the cause.

“One favorite is that a dust devil happened to pick the vehicle to go through and go over the surface of it and clean it off a little bit,” Erickson said.

Another government coverup.

OKAY, ONE MORE before I head back over to the hospital this morning. Hugh Hewitt has some advice for Republicans:

The opposition to Specter seems headquartered at The Corner. Many friends post at The Corner, so I paused, considered their arguments, and thought it through. On reflection, it seems to me a very bad idea to try and topple Senator Specter from what in the ordinary course of events would be his Chairmanship. I hope my colleagues on the center-right that embrace pro-life politics will reconsider.

I understand that Senator Specter voted against Robert Bork, and that Senator Specter is not a friend of the pro-life movement. But genuine progress in the fight to return American public opinion to an affirmation of life before birth cannot be made through strong-armed tactics and almost certainly will not be lasting if it is accomplished through a putsch.

I’m not a pro-lifer like Hugh, of course, but I’ve felt that the folks at The Corner have been a bit carried away on this, too. I hope that they’ll listen to Hugh in a way they probably wouldn’t listen to me on this subject.

I’M PLEASED TO REPORT THE BIRTH of my nephew, William Glenn Uti Reynolds! Nine pounds, three ounces, 21 1/2 inches. We grow ‘em big.

My blogging is likely to be limited today. But Jeff Jarvis and Andrew Sullivan have lots of new posts. So does Tom Maguire, who’s discovered an interesting campaign surprise for John Edwards.

And several readers note that Michael Moore doesn’t have anything on his website about the assassination of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh by Islamic extremists, just more Bush-bashing.

That’s OK. Jeff Jarvis thinks Moore lost the election for the Democrats. Do we really want him taking an active role in the war on terror? Er, on our side, I mean.

I’M OFF TO MY BROTHER’S: Blogging will resume later.

ALL THE RED STATE / BLUE STATE “VALUES” TALK puts me in mind of this passage from Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, in which he compares and contrasts the two styles:

Weirdly, the ones who adopted the sternest and most terrible Old Testament moral tone were the Modern Language Association types who believed that everything was relative and that, for example, polygamy was as valid as monogamy. The friendliest and most sincere welcome he’d gotten was from Scott, a chemistry professor, and Laura, a pediatrician, who, after knowing Randy and Charlene for many years, had one day divulged to Randy, in strict confidence, that, unbeknownst to the academic community at large they had been spiriting their three children off to church every Sunday morning, and had even had them baptized. . . .

Randy hadn’t the faintest idea what these people thought of him and what he had done, but he could sense right away that, essentially, that was not the issue, because even if they thought he had done something evil, they at least had a framework, a sort of procedure manual, for dealing with transgressions. To translate it into UNIX system administration terms (Randy’s fundamental metaphor for just about everything), the post-modern, politically correct atheists were like people who had suddenly found themselves in charge of a big and unfathomably complex computer system (viz. society) with no documentation or instructions of any kind, and so whose only way to keep the thing running was to invent and enforce certain rules with a kind of neo-Puritanical rigor, because they were at a loss to deal with any deviations from what they saw as the norm. Where as people who were wired into a church were like UNIX system administrators who, while they might not understand everything, at least had some documentation, some FAQs and How-tos and README files, providing some guidance on what to do when things got out of whack. They were, in other words, capable of displaying adaptability.

Somehow, this seems quite relevant to the discussion.

EUROPEANS, TERRORISM and Theo Van Gogh: The Belgravia Dispatch has some useful observations.

And read this piece on post-Arafat maneuvering, too.

I’M BLOGGING FROM BORDERS at the moment, and I couldn’t help but notice all the Michael Moore films in the discount bin.

Yeah, I know. Probably this has absolutely nothing to do with the election, but . . .

And note all the Jerry Lewis films behind them. Well, they’re both big in France!

BUSH OR BUST! I think they should have taken this picture a bit earlier, though.

JIM LINDGREN notes David Brooks’ comments about the Scopes Trial in the column I link below, and points out that things aren’t as many remember them where that trial is concerned. He’s right. For a more — dare I say it — nuanced view, I highly recommend Ed Larson’s book, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion. Larson and I were on a Court TV program about this trial a few years ago, though I don’t think it’s available anywhere.

ECONOPUNDIT: “Great election, kid. Don’t get cocky.”

A VIEW OF THE ELECTIONS FROM IRAQ, via The Mudville Gazette.

DAVID BROOKS:

Every election year, we in the commentariat come up with a story line to explain the result, and the story line has to have two features. First, it has to be completely wrong. Second, it has to reassure liberals that they are morally superior to the people who just defeated them.

In past years, the story line has involved Angry White Males, or Willie Horton-bashing racists. This year, the official story is that throngs of homophobic, Red America values-voters surged to the polls to put George Bush over the top.

This theory certainly flatters liberals, and it is certainly wrong.

He’s got numbers from Andrew Kohut.

HEH: “Post-Election, Hollywood Seen as Liability to Left.” Indeed.

HOW YOU COULD HAVE HAD MY VOTE: Another reluctant Bush voter tells the Democratic Party why:

Many Bush voters, like myself, were not happy to be voting for the President’s re-election. Many Bush voters agonized over our decision and cast our vote in fear, trepidation, and trembling. Many of us would have given our left arms for a Democrat we could have supported. . . .

Read the whole thing. Especially if you’re a bigshot Democrat — or E.J. Dionne.

VAN GOGH UPDATE: Dutch Charge 7 Muslim Men in Killing of a Critic of Islam.

CHRISTMAS IS COMING, and Kim du Toit has noticed that the Violence Policy Center has published a helpful list of guns specially designed for children. Unfortunately, there’s no link for ordering them, though after perusing their list and using Google, I’m thinking that the Anschutz 1451 youth model might be good for the Insta-Daughter.

ERIC SCHEIE isn’t so sure that reality is what the “reality-based community” has a grip on.

UPDATE: Meanwhile at “reality-based” blog The Daily Kos, reality seems less important than, well, lying:

And thus, the biggest silver lining of this election is how the GOP’s victory is thus far being claimed, framed and explained. To that I say, “Let us join that chorus.” And we should do so now, because there is immediacy in the post-election window of opportunity.

Marching order #1, therefore, is this: No matter whom you talk to outside our circles, begin to perpetuate the (false, exaggerated) notion that George Bush’s victory was built not merely on values issues, but gay marriage specifically. If you feel a need to broaden it slightly, try depicting the GOP as a majority party synonymous with gay-haters, warmongers and country-clubbers. Because I, for one, am tired of hearing whiny complaints from conservatives that, not only do I not have values, but that I fail to properly respect the values of people who are all too happy to buy into, no less perpetuate, inaccurate caricatures of the 54+ million Americans who voted Tuesday for John Kerry.

Criticizing the GOP ain’t gonna build us a new national majority. But the process is brick by brick, or perhaps, brickbat by brickbat. We didn’t decide the rules of engagement, but that’s what they are and so we may as well start firing away.

This doesn’t strike me as a very productive approach, but the post is certainly revealing.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reality: “Daily Kos raised more than $500,000 to assist the campaigns of fifteen candidates. None were elected.” Ouch.

MORE: Further reality-based blogging, here.

INTERESTING COMMENT FROM A RELUCTANT BUSH VOTER over at Roger Simon’s place, illustrating some of the things the exit polls left out. Meanwhile, over at Andrew Sullivan’s an emailer crunches the numbers on states with anti-gay-marriage initiatives and states without them, and concludes: “On the contrary, there is no evidence that suggests that the strategy of putting the anti-marriage initiatives on the ballot in several states did anything to improve Bush’s performance in those states.”

Sullivan’s posted the numbers, which are quite interesting. This is the kind of analysis we ought to be getting from Big Media.

UPDATE: More here on “Gay Marriage and the Ground Game” from the Ashbrook Center. It’s generally consistent with what Sullivan’s reader says — gay marriage didn’t make much of a difference.

ANOTHER UPDATE: And here’s Paul Freedman in Slate, saying the same thing: “Terrorism, not values, drove Bush’s re-election.”

These differences hold up at the state level even when each state’s past Bush vote is taken into account. When you control for that variable, a 10-point increase in the percentage of voters citing terrorism as the most important problem translates into a 3-point Bush gain. A 10-point increase in morality voters, on the other hand, has no effect. Nor does putting an anti-gay-marriage measure on the ballot. So, if you want to understand why Bush was re-elected, stop obsessing about the morality gap and start looking at the terrorism gap.

I think that’s right.

OLD POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS DON’T REALLY DIE — they don’t even fade away much, apparently, as this 1996 bumper sticker I noticed on campus the other day illustrates.

I’m not sure why this sighting struck me as somehow profound on the day before the election, but it did. A political campaign is an evanescent thing, but its consequences live on . . .

Let’s hear it for long-lasting ink.

TORONTO SUN COLUMNIST THANE BURNETT offers advice for angry Kerry supporters wanting to emigrate to Canada:

As Canadians, you’ll have to learn to embrace and use all the products and culture of Americans, while publicly bad-mouthing their way of life.

Not much of a stretch, really, for some people.

NEWS FROM FALLUJAH: The Green Side is a blog worth reading.

It looks like things are about to happen there. And Ann Althouse notes a post-election shift in tone at the New York Times.

WATCH FOR DANIEL DREZNER on ABC World News Tonight in a little while.

TIM BLAIR has your post-election news roundup. And don’t miss this photo feature!

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES IS UP: Just in time for dinner!

HERE’S MORE on the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh in by an Arab terrorist. And Dutch blog PeakTalk has more here, and here.

HEH.

LEX GIBSON thinks that Democrats should embrace federalism.

PROF. MIKE RAPPAPORT nominates Chief Justice Michael McConnell.

I’m still standing by my candidate, Eugene Volokh.

UPDATE: Volokh endorses McConnell — and has a list of other candidates. That’s not stopping me, though, anymore than Lileks’ coyness about his Senate run . . . .

FELLOW ANNOYING LIBERTARIAN RANDY BARNETT offers some advice to social conservatives.

It’s good advice. But hell, the advice I’m giving to the Democrats is good advice, too. Will either group take it?

UPDATE: Related thoughts here, including a triple-violation of “Wolcott’s rule.” Wolcott has rules?

ANOTHER UPDATE: More advice here:

It only takes a 3% swing to lose the executive.

Bold is good when you have a mandate. But bold must be in programs that are likely to have positive MEASUREABLE results.

Other wise you sow the seeds of your next defeat.

Remember the middle. It is where you win and lose elections.

Indeed.

IT’S NOW 286-252, as Bush has won Iowa. Perspective, from the Boston Globe:

The Democrats’ defeat in Iowa reflects a larger problem for them in the Midwest and across the political map.

Along with Wisconsin and Minnesota, Iowa and its seven electoral votes are part of the once-Democratic Upper Midwest that is growing more conservative with each presidential election. Kerry won Minnesota by just 3 percentage points, Wisconsin by a single point.

In addition, Michigan and Pennsylvania went Democratic by 3 percentage points or less and Bush won Ohio despite its economic miseries.

Democrats hope to cultivate the Southwest as a fertile substitute for Midwest losses, but Bush narrowed Democratic advantages among Hispanics in the region.

I just don’t think Hollywood, Dan Rather, Mark Halperin, and George Soros provide enough of a base. Rather than rethinking, though, I suspect that the Democrats will deploy the media troops again, in an effort to “Nixon” Bush, and perhaps some of his more prominent supporters — Arnold Schwarzenegger, perhaps, or some other prominent Republican.

UPDATE: A reader notes that the popular-vote gap has widened, too: 52-47, or 56,783,329 to 52,120,230, for a difference over 4.5 million votes.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Yahoo seems to be updating their site, and the numbers keep changing, so far in Bush’s favor. Meanwhile reader Dave Cole sends this email:

On Tuesday, a majority of the American electorate took a look at their party and asked, “Who are these people?” Who are George Soros, Michael Moore, Tim Robbins, Susan Sontag, Teresa Heinz Kerry and all these other self-anointed spokespersons for everything good and true? And what does a party that is dominated by a loose coalition of the coastal intelligentsia, billionaires with too much spare time, the trial lawyers’ association, the Hollywood Actors’ Guild, rock stars and unionized labor have in common with what’s quaintly known as Middle America? The majority’s answers were (a) not us; and (b) not a whole lot.

Growing up in Topeka, Kansas (where my dad still lives), and now living in Denver, this is pretty much what my friends and associates are thinking, too. What I’m hearing from the Democrats is that middle America voted on moral values, which I take to be code for “they are a bunch of ignorant, bible thumping sheep”. There seems to be a lot of hand wringing over how they could have better conveyed their message to the Midwest, and an arrogance that if they had, Kerry would have won in a landslide. What the Democrats don’t understand is that yes, we do understand your message, and we reject it.

I don’t think the Democrats are ready to accept that, yet. Related thoughts here:

The Democratic Party–my party–has finally become nothing more than the party of cognitive dissonance. That is why, like Zell Miller and a large fraction of usually Democratic middle America, I backed the other side on this one. . . .

Mainstream media bragged of being able to boost the Dems by 15 percent (do you remember Newsweek saying that?). The “blogosphere” has been crowing that MSM failed to do so (for which the blogs also claim responsibility), but I don’t agree. I think the MSM actually succeeded in bringing the Dems a 10 to 15 point boost in the election (and maybe more). Before the media spin machine started systematically slamming Bush 18 months ago, he was favored at around 66% in the polls. 66% minus 15% is…well…the 51% margin Bush was re-elected by. Thing is, even the thinly veiled support of most major media outlets wasn’t enough to put Kerry in the White House. The Democratic party has completely, utterly, undeniably marginalized itself. The Dems no longer have a national party. All it takes is one look at the electoral map to illustrate that. The so-called “Purple Map” may make them feel better, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. A party that can only win in the Northeast and Left Coast is not a national party anymore. A party that manages to lose by 3 percent even with a huge boost from blatantly partisan favorable media coverage is on its deathbed politically.

I’m afraid that’s right and — since I’m not a Republican and don’t share Karl Rove’s ambition to do to the Democrats what Tony Blair has done to the Tories — I’m not happy about it. But I think “self-marginalized” is about right.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Doh. The first paragraph in the email quoted above is from an editorial in yesterday’s Wall St. Journal. That wasn’t clear to me from the original email. I’d provide a link, but it’s on the pay side.

And William Schneider emails: “That Yahoo map has NY at only 3% reporting, which would account for Bush’s “new” lead over Kerry.” Using Mozilla, I wasn’t getting the popup with state data, but I opened it up in another browser and he’s right. Weird. I don’t know why Yahoo is so far behind, but this CNN page seems more up to date and shows Bush 3.5 million ahead.

WEB OF INFLUENCE: Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell have an article in Foreign Policy looking at blogs and foreign affairs.

If that interests you, you might also enjoy The Diplomad, a group-blog by foreign service officers. (Right now there are some interesting observations on how the election is playing within the State Department).

Those who have read Keith Laumer, as I know many InstaPundit readers have, will find the tone familiar, somehow. . . .

NOVELIST ROGER SIMON RESPONDS TO JANE SMILEY’S SCREED on the idiocy of American voters:

The mind of a good fantasist must make those stories vivid. And to do that you have to live in those stories, believe your vision and live it like an actor. Contradictory ideas are to some extent not allowed because they would vitiate the drama, leaving only a lifeless essay.

That means the novelist (myself included) must be something of an hysteric when writing. You are inventing your own private reality. That is what Ms. Smiley has done in her article.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Speaking of fantasy, Smiley has her Civil War history backwards, too:

According to Smiley:

The worst civilian massacre in American history took place in Lawrence, Kan., in 1862—Quantrill’s raid. The red forces, known then as the slave-power, pulled 265 unarmed men from their beds on a Sunday morning and slaughtered them in front of their wives and children.

Now, if history hasn’t completely reversed itself recently, wasn’t William Clarke Quantrill a Confederate raider?

According to PBS, the strongly pro-Union stronghold of Lawrence, Kansas, had 183 (again, social promotion does not help math skills) of their predominately Republican citizenry slaughtered by pro-slavery Democrats. These same Democrats, of course, went on to found the original Ku Klux Klan.

Of course, we are the party revelling in the “ignorance in America” so I guess she didn’t think we’d notice her attempts to play fast and loose with the facts…

Truly an embarrassment for Smiley — and for Slate.

HOWARD KURTZ is reading the post-election tea leaves. And John Ellis has thoughts on why Kerry lost — and how he could have won.

THIS ARTICLE BY JANE SMILEY in Slate is getting a lot of attention. Jessica Harbour suspects a cruel plot to discredit novelists who talk about politics. (We need a plot for that?) The Belmont Club summarizes it this way: “One of the several ways to parse this argument is to take it on its own terms. In this account, the bulk of Ms. Smiley’s enemies consist of a single, undifferentiated mass of red staters with the bestial appetites and intelligence of retarded slugs. . . . As a model of simplification it is unexampled. Nothing could be clearer; nothing more proof against refutation.”

I suggest that Ms. Smiley read James Lileks’ response to the “undifferentiated mass of red staters” school of argument.

And she should also buy Lileks’ new book! But then, so should everyone.

UPDATE: Interesting observation from the comments at The Belmont Club:

If Kerry had won, the war would undoubtedly be repudiated in the press everywhere. But now that Bush has won, it has been decided that he won on other issues like gay marriage and abortion.

Indeed.

I MEANT TO NOTE BOBBY JINDAL’S ELECTION in Louisiana, but forgot in all the other events. But what’s most interesting now is the reaction from Indian newspapers:

Bobby Jindal Mirrors the Immigrant Aspiration — New Kerala

Jindal in Congress, History in Tow — Hindustan Times

A Coming of Age for Indian Americans — Economic Times India

There are a lot more along these lines. Meanwhile, although I missed this earlier, Power Line put up a big post on Jindal’s election from a U.S. perspective.

ELECTIONS AND THE NEW MEDIA: My TechCentralStation column is up.

AUSTIN BAY LOOKS AT THE ELECTIONS AND THE WAR ON TERROR: The elections of 2008, 2012, and 2016, that is. “As for the 2020 campaign—we should have a good feel for the War on Terror in that campaign by 2015 or so.”

He continues: “The re-election of George W. Bush bodes well for peace in 2020. A John Kerry victory would have cost us an additional two years of blood, toil, sweat, and tears -—the two years it would take the Kerry Administration to discover that the Bush Administration’s strategy in the War on Terror is the right one.”

Read the whole thing. I guess there’s still room for Hillary Clinton to become “the most uncompromising wartime president in the history of the United States.”

FOOL’S GOLD AND EVANGELICALS: Geitner Simmons notes that Garry Wills is talking through his hat on the election results. (“In other words, he has set aside the very argument he made in his 1990 book — recognizing the long-standing significance of social traditionalists as an obvious aspect of American political life — for the sake of maintaining solidarity with Kerry supporters.”) Can’t say I’m surprised.

BASEBALL CRANK (hey, he knows statistics!) says that 65% of new voters went for Bush. Interesting.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh emails that it should be “65% of new and switching voters” above. It’s late here, I’m about to go to bed, and I’m too tired to check this, but since (1) it’s three hours earlier for Eugene; and (2) regardless of the time zone, he’s Eugene Volokh and I’m not, he’s probably right about that.

I AGREE WITH DANIEL DREZNER: Lots of people are going to be reading Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.

I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know if he has the right answer — from the Amazon blurb I’d say not — but at least he’s asking the right questions.

UPDATE: Or maybe not. I had forgotten — until reader Angie Schultz reminded me of it — Josh Chafetz’s savage panning of this book in The New York Times.

I WROTE A COLUMN on space warfare a few weeks ago, and now DefenseTech notes that the Pentagon is increasingly worried about satellite vulnerabilities:

Aviation Week quotes a “nightmare” that the country’s top military space officer sometimes shares with his colleagues: “A phone call from the White House asking, ‘What happened to our satellite? And what are you doing about it?’ With few exceptions, today’s response will be the same as a former Cincspace [Command-in-Chief of Space Operations] gave the Vice President several years ago: ‘We don’t know, and there’s not much we can do.”‘

Everyone agrees that the first step to satellite defense is to get some sort of sense of what’s happening in orbit. But the job of setting up this “Space Situational Awareness” has been bogged down in the bureaucratic muck.

This is the kind of thing — important, but with no deadline — that tends to get insufficient attention until it’s too late. I hope it gets more attention.

FELLOW ANNOYING LIBERTARIAN DAVID BERNSTEIN notes that we seem to be popping up everywhere.

NOW, SEE, THIS POST-ELECTION RALLY IN SAN FRANCISCO isn’t laying a good foundation for a Democratic comeback.

The Democrats are going to have to distance themselves from stuff like this, if they want to carry swing states.

UPDATE: A reader sends this quote, allegedy from Napoleon: “when your enemy is making a very serious mistake, don’t be impolite and disturb him.”

Well, yeah, but while I don’t feel especially good about that guy with the sign, he’s not actually my enemy. And certainly the Democrats overall aren’t. I’d much rather see the Democratic Party as a viable and sensible competitor to the Republicans than as a marginalized regional party based around some safe congressional seats in urban areas. And that’s where it’s headed, I’m afraid, if stuff like this catches on.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Not in the same league as the above, but this Joan Baez minstrel show doesn’t bode well.

THE BBC ASKED AMERICANS WHO VOTED FOR BUSH to explain their reasons and it makes for interesting reading.

ADVICE TO FELLOW DEMOCRATS, from The Backseat Philosopher:

Many Democrats think that our patience and understanding are our weakness. “We don’t know how to fight like the Republicans,” we all told ourselves after Florida 2000. “We have to be more like them: tougher, meaner.” “We have to energize our base more.”

Actually, no. Our error is that we Democrats actually are far less understanding than we think we are. Our version of understanding the other side is to look at them from a psychological point of view while being completely unwilling to take their arguments seriously. “Well, he can’t help himself, he’s a right-wing religious zealot, so of course he’s going to think like that.” “Republicans who never served in war are hypocrites to send young men to die. ” “Republicans are homophobes, probably because they can’t deal with their secret desires.” Anything but actually listening and responding to the arguments being made.

And when I say ‘responding,’ I don’t just mean ‘coming up with the best counterargument and pushing it.’ Sometimes responding to an argument means finding the merit in it and possibly changing one’s position. That is part of growth, right?

Read the whole thing, which is quite perceptive.

BOIFROMTROY HAS MULTIPLE POSTS ON “MORAL VALUES” and exit polling. I have to confess that this bit is my favorite: “me and my gay husband will NEVER get an abortion!” One of his commenters has an important observation, too:

I suspect IF the MSM asked what people meant when they answered “moral values”, it was more than just gay marriage. It wouldn’t supprise me if they includes “moral” in the sense of personal and public integrity….knowing where one stood.

He also has more on exit polling here, and Dianne Feinstein’s spitting match with gay groups.

I DON’T LIKE TO SEE DEMOCRATS HOPING FOR DEFEAT IN IRAQ, or, in the case of Richard Cohen, observing that “From a Democratic perspective, what this country needs is a good recession.”

Call me crazy, but this isn’t the way to win elections. It’s the way to look like angry, bitter losers.

UPDATE: On rereading Cohen’s column, I think that my quote isn’t quite fair — though he means it, there’s a lot more there than bitter wishes for doom, including some good advice for Democrats.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Not so with Seymour Hersh, though. Check out his comments in this WP live chat: “the reality is that far too many americans are not interested in the facts, or in reality. not a new concept, tho.”

No bitterness here.

READER CHRIS WREN EMAILS:

There were a few things that convinced me that yes, there really is such a thing as the monolithic Main Stream Media, and that they really are biased to the point of unprofessionalism: Dan Rather’s petulant rant blaming bloggers for exit poll confusion, the haste which the networks and major media outlets leapt at calling the election for Kerry, and finally that whole thing Drudge is posting right now with the CNN Bush images labelled a**hole.jpeg and moron.jpg.

On the whole, I have to concede that the blogosphere conducted itself with far greater professionalism and integrity than the media giants.

Yes, I had seen the photo story earlier on Wizbang. And, yes, it does raise the question: If they’re willing to do something this petty and spiteful where they think no one will notice, what other things are they doing where they think no one will notice?

UPDATE: I received this statement in the mail from Turner:

“A web image and text disparaging President and Mrs. Bush currently circulating on the internet was not created, disseminated or posted by CNN at any time, as is alleged. It was done by an employee of Netscape and posted on Netscape.com. CNN had no knowledge of it until it surfaced on other websites.”

The dangers of co-branding, I guess.

ANOTHER UPDATE: You can see a more complete statement on CNN’s homepage — click the “Netscape responsible for Bush photo insult” link at the top right. But since that’s a java box and can’t be directly linked, and probably won’t be archived anywhere, I’m going to reproduce the full thing in the “extended entry” area below. Hit “read more” to read it.

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OVER AT GLENNREYNOLDS.COM, I’ve been posting advice for the Democrats. Here’s yesterday’s post, and here’s today’s post, which comments on the angry “Americans are dumb” remarks by some disappointed Kerry supporters.

THE BIG-MEDIA SPIN is that “Bloggers are to blame” for the leak of early exit-poll info. Hmm. Conspiracy theories aside, why blame the bloggers instead of the network folks who did the actual, you know, leaking?

If bloggers (is Drudge a blogger?) are to blame for publishing leaked information from news organizations, then why aren’t news organizations equally to blame when they publish leaked information from government officials? Do they really want to go down that path?

RADLEY BALKO is Fisking David Frum over a nannyish plan to tax fattening food. I’m with Balko, here: “What’s most troubling about Frum’s position is not only that he assumes a top-down government tax remedy to a perceived social problem will work, but that it’s okay in principle. Desirable even.”

UPDATE: Dollars to, er, donuts that if a plan like Frum’s went through it would tax HoHos and Big Macs but not stuff like this.

BUSH’S PRESS CONFERENCE is already producing sniping from the right: “And he calls himself a conservative.” I must say, I’m troubled by the omission, too. Look for a New York Times story by Adam Nagourney on how Bush’s coalition is already fracturing. . . .

BILL STUNTZ LOOKS AT THE ELECTORAL MAPS and observes:

Democrats aren’t likely to win when they can’t top Dukakis in the Midwest. And this is a moving target. Bush won Missouri in 2000; this time, he won Missouri and Iowa. With similar candidates in 2008, the Republicans might win all four. Ohio could be the least of the Democrats’ problems.

Still, the news is not all bad for Democrats, and not all good for Republicans. By historical standards John Kerry ran a very strong race, and George W. Bush was a shaky incumbent. Bill Clinton would probably have won this election by five or six points. Just as John McCain would have beaten Kerry in a landslide.

Which leads to a piece of conventional wisdom that’s actually pretty wise: America divides into red and blue because those are the colors the parties give us. Perhaps both sides need to see that the smart move is to paint with a different color. Purple beats red or blue, every time. In 2008, when Rudy Giuliani faces off against Barack Obama, those maps will look very different.

Now that would be an election!

THE “HOWARD STERN EFFECT” — I’m not vouching for his math, but Frank says that there was one!

ARAFAT IS REPORTEDLY DEAD, though a Palestinian official denies it.

PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW WHAT I THINK ABOUT 2008 ALREADY: Give me a break. But here goes, just to stop the emails:

Dems: Everybody expects Hillary to run. I think the nomination is probably hers if she wants it — if Edwards can beat her in the primaries I’d be surprised. But he’ll try. Will Kerry run again? I think the close election and his nicely done concession speech keep that option open. What he’ll have to do, if he wants to, is to take on some serious high-profile national security stuff and look strong doing it. I’m guessing he’ll choose windsurfing instead, but I could be wrong.

Repubs: McCain is obvious, but his biggest base of support is in the press. I don’t think he’ll run. Cheney won’t run, in fact I doubt he’ll finish the term. My favorite scenario: Cheney steps down, Condi Rice becomes VP, and runs in 2008. Long-shot, but I’ll keep pumping it. Beyond that, well, I’m not sure. Arnold would win in 2008, I think, but he can’t run and I don’t think that they’ll amend the constitution for him.

By the way, if we’re amending things we should make Senators ineligible for the Presidency. They seldom win anyway, so it’s no loss — and keeping Senators from thinking about running for President would probably improve the Senate immeasurably . . . .

ASHCROFT TO RESIGN? Hope it’s not because I keep blaming him for stuff.

BILL BENNETT thinks that Bush’s victory was all about traditional values, which to him apparently means opposition to gay marriage. Well, to me, the election was about the war. But if victory has a thousand fathers, it also produces a thousand people with their hands out, wanting to share in the spoils.

What’s funny is that there’s a weird alliance, here, with many others — including Andrew Sullivan — quoting the exit polls to suggest that opposition to gay marriage was the big motivator for Bush voters. And hey, maybe they’re right: when Andrew Sullivan and Bill Bennett agree on something gay-related, it’s certainly reason to sit up and take notice.

But given that the exit polls weren’t especially reliable — Jeff Jarvis calls them “laughably discredited” — I’m not sure why we should be accepting this point so uncritically. Nor am I sure that Andrew’s invocation of Jim Baker makes quite the point he intends. . . . Meanwhile, Virginia Postrel writes:

Nationally, gay marriage is a loser, but civil unions are a big winner, with 35 percent support (and 32 percent in the South). Assume that the 25 percent who back marriage rights (17 percent in the South), and you’ve got a clear majority (and a slim lead even in the South, where Bush won 32 percent of gay voters). The public is squeamish about “gay marriage,” but not about giving gay couples public recognition and legal rights.

So even if you believe the polls, they don’t make quite the case for anti-gay sentiment that Bill Bennett hopes for, or Andrew Sullivan fears. And if Bush is getting 32 percent of gay voters in the South, well, it’s hard for me to believe that the election was about gay-bashing — and I doubt that those, on the left or the right, who stake their political plans on that characterization will flourish.

UPDATE: Zach Barbera emails: “Bush took a majority of the people who support civil unions. Not exactly a group hat would be a part of the toss-the-gays-in-concentration-camps right-wingers, I imagine. And note that a 1/3 of the folks supporting a no legal recognition did vote Kerry.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Stephen Bainbridge has a different take — I guess I count as one of his “annoying libertarians” who don’t get the moral-values argument. I’m afraid he’ll continue to find me annoying on this front.

MORE: Andrew Coyne isn’t buying the “invasion of the theo-cons” argument, and also notes: “This, after Kerry campaigned from the pulpit in black churches on five straight Sundays.”

Everybody knows that’s different. Those are black churches.

STILL MORE: Fellow annoying libertarian Eugene Volokh has related thoughts.

THE EUGENE VOLOKH SUPREME COURT JUGGERNAUT has started to roll!

ADAM NAGOURNEY IS BUSTED for Kerry-speech revisionism, by Greg Djerejian.

JAMES LILEKS HAS A NEW BOOK OUT: Do you need to know any more?

JONAH GOLDBERG: “I’ve got to say that when people try to convert lions to Christianity (or Buddhism, Taoism, whatever) and then they get bit, it’s a sign to me that the universe is humming along properly.” Bill Bennett, take note. . . .

HITTING THE NAIL ON THE HEAD:

Who was the biggest loser of the 2004 election? It is easy to say Mr. Kerry: he was a poor candidate with a poor campaign. But I do think the biggest loser was the mainstream media, the famous MSM, the initials that became popular in this election cycle. Every time the big networks and big broadsheet national newspapers tried to pull off a bit of pro-liberal mischief–CBS and the fabricated Bush National Guard documents, the New York Times and bombgate, CBS’s “60 Minutes” attempting to coordinate the breaking of bombgate on the Sunday before the election–the yeomen of the blogosphere and AM radio and the Internet took them down. It was to me a great historical development in the history of politics in America. It was Agincourt. It was the yeomen of King Harry taking down the French aristocracy with new technology and rough guts. God bless the pajama-clad yeomen of America. Some day, when America is hit again, and lines go down, and media are hard to get, these bloggers and site runners and independent Internetters of all sorts will find a way to file, and get their word out, and it will be part of the saving of our country.

I think that the Big Media folks know it, too.

And I wonder how Jonathan Klein feels about his infamous “pajamas” remark now?

BUSH’S VICTORY is not playing well some places:

When it became clear that the American voters wanted none of that, the chattering classes in Europe were left speechless. One Paris TV anchor was literally struck dumb mometarily when, after hours of crowing over Kerry’s victory and the American people’s supposed liberation from Bushist tyranny, he had to admit that things had gone differently.

The shock felt in Europe was even greater because of the size of Bush’s victory. The president won more votes than any candidate in the entire history of America. Dubya also became the first to win the presidency with a majority of the popular vote, since his father in 1988.

People like French President Jacques Chirac, whose party has won just 16 per cent of the votes in a series of recent elections, or German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, whose party has lost every election in the past two years, would look with envy at the clean sweep made by Bush and his Republican Party on Tuesday.

I guess they’re starting to figure out the truth, now. . . .

Meanwhile, Arthur Chrenkoff has more on the diplomatic consequences of the Bush reelection.

FOLLOWING UP MY POST BELOW on media reactions, here’s a link to the NPR All Things Considered segment featuring E.J. Dionne’s astonishing anti-Bush tirade. And here’s video of Dan Rather’s attack on bloggers.

IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT THE ELECTIONS! Check out this week’s Blog Mela for a roundup of posts from the Indian blogosphere.

WELL, A LOT OF CONVENTIONAL WISDOM has tumbled: the incumbent rule, the “taller person wins” rule (to my great personal sadness), the predictive validity of the final Redskins game before the election, the exit polls, and all the other “infallible” indicators which showed Kerry going by a landslide.

What can we take out of this? Well, some of the conventional wisdom — like how the incumbent always wins if the economy is doing okay — has held up. Until next time, anyway.

I think the big story of this election was distributed information. That starts with blogs, of course. Bloggers were able to skewer some of the SwiftVet stories, blow up Dan Rather’s big “scoop”, and in other ways bring thousands of fresh eyes and fresh analysis to important issues that might otherwise have lain fallow. The media is a bubble world; we all mostly live in the same places and talk to the same people. The mainstream media has many advantages over blogs: resources, experience, editing, time to pursue a story, rigorous fact checking (no, really, I mean it), accountability. But it’s invaluable to have bloggers around to burst that bubble when needed.

But it sure doesn’t end with bloggers. I’m probably happier about the performance of the election betting markets than I am about the performance of George Bush in this election, because they vindicated a long held belief of mine: that if you take a bunch of people, and make them put their money where their mouth is, they generally get the right answer. Oh, there was a wild ride when the exit polls started showing up, but if you look at the electronic markets the day before the election, they called it better than the pundits — certainly better than yours truly, who had been expecting a Kerry win for months. (This is the first time I’ve voted for a presidential candiate who actually, y’know, became president. It’s a rather heady feeling.)

Finally it was a victory for public opinion, and not because the public voted the way I did. America’s a pretty neat place, and it’s been taking care of itself since long before I was alive.

I’m talking about Americans’ assessment of who would win. The polls had a hard time pinning down their eventual votes, but when the pollsters asked people who they thought would win the election, they called it correctly by an overwhelming majority. Each of the people asked was their own little pollster of family and friends; collectively, they were an information processing powerhouse. So really, what we should take away from this is that we shouldn’t trust the pollsters or the commentariat; we should trust ourselves. While those of us in the pundit biz were see-sawing with every poll, your friends and neighbours knew the answer all along.

It’s been an amazing experience blogging here for all of you, especially with three such outstanding co-bloggers. I hope a few of you will drop in at my blog, Asymmetrical Information, and keep sending me emails and leaving me comments, because I’ve enjoyed your attention immensely. Thanks to all the Instapundit readers, to Michael and Ann, and most of all, to Glenn, for inviting me to spend a week here. I’ll miss you all.

WHY KERRY LOST: It may be presumptuous to say John Kerry lost the election for the reasons I personally voted against him. But I’ve decided to say it anyway.

I didn’t vote for George W. Bush in 2000. I’ve never voted for any Republican president. This time was my first. And I did so because of the Terror War.

I know quite a few people who didn’t support Bush last time but did support him this time. And every single one of them did so for the same reasons I did. Because of the Terror War. Because Kerry could not be trusted.

I don’t know of anyone, anywhere, who swung from Al Gore to George W. Bush because of gay marriage, tax cuts, or for any other reason. I’m not saying they don’t exist. But if they do exist, I haven’t heard of ’em. They’re an invisible, miniscule minority.

There aren’t enough of us liberal hawks, disgruntled Democrats, neo-neoconservatives – or whatever else you might want to call us – to trigger a political realignment. But it does appear we can swing an election. At least we can help. And though I don’t think of myself as conservative (I did just vote for a Democratic Congress), my alienation from the liberal party is total. A political party that thinks crying Halliburton! is a grown-up response to anti-totalitarian war just isn’t serious.

I may vote for the Democratic candidate next time around. Then again, I might not. I’ll be watching what happens over the next four years, trying to decide if I’m part of the new wave of neoconservatives or if I’m just Independent.

This is my last post on Instapundit – for now anyway. You are all invited to join me on my own blog, Michaeltotten.com, where I’ll keep an eye on the next four years of history.

Thanks, Glenn – thanks so much – for letting me, Megan, and Ann play on your lawn.

HOW CAN BUSH DEMONSTRATE MODERATION? What better way than to nominate Eugene Volokh for the next Supreme Court vacancy? (Thanks to reader Mike McConnell for the suggestion).

BILL OF RIGHTS UPDATE: Dave Kopel says it was a good election for the Second Amendment.

TIME TO GO BACK HOME, to my home blog, Althouse. It’s been fun coming over here and cavorting on the big stage that Glenn Reynolds built out of sheer good sense and great writing. It’s been great blogging alongside Michael Totten and Megan McCardle. And it’s been a real pleasure to reach so many new readers here. I hope some of you will follow me over to my usual place. I started my blog back in January of this year, when this campaign season was already well under way. My departure from Instapundit and return back home begins a new phase of blogging without the election to kick around anymore, and I’m interested to see what new subjects I’ll discover with this old topic gone.

When I started my blog I didn’t have a particular topic in mind. I just wanted to express myself. I wanted to live freely in writing. My earliest posts are about high and low culture and life in Madison, Wisconsin. My first post about the presidential campaign was a very silly little thing about Wesley Clark’s body fat, not really even political at all. But as the weeks wore on, I got drawn into the fray, and I found my ways to talk about politics, a subject I’ve normally been content to leave to others. Using my blog to talk about politics, I was able also to see how not talking about politics had been, for me, a way to get along in the hothouse environment that is Madison, Wisconsin. Even though I didn’t mean to use my blog to talk about politics, I end this political season exposed on line as a person with political positions that do not fit in my real world environment. I was happy with the way the election turned out, but I was also confronted by people all around me who were very sad and really angry about the outcome. These people had endured the first term of George Bush’s presidency, beginning with outrage at the way he came into office and suffering a growing, festering anger as new events unfolded. That horrible – illegal! – war in Iraq! Yet there was always Election Day — an end in sight for all of that pain. And now, upon reaching that longed-for end they find it was a mirage. There will be four more years! How unendurable!

I’ve tried to use my last day on Instapundit to reach out to those people, those people who, after all, make up my real world environment. Can’t we put aside the anger and see what we share? An elevator conversation:

Did you hear Kerry’s concession speech?

I’m so glad he conceded today and did not drag it out. It was good of him.

You think so?

I think it will help people deal with things in a constructive, positive way. People have been so angry, and I think it will help heal the wounds …

Except that it won’t heal the wounds! George Bush got reelected by a bunch of gay-hating bigots, religious fanatics … a bunch of gun owners…

My interlocutor got out of the elevator and the doors slid closed in the middle of the list of lowdown, worthless folk from the hinterlands who have unleashed this new atrocity, this second term.

So life goes on in Madison. And I’ll go on blogging from Madison, my special, passionate little town, on my little blog, Althouse. Please come over and keep me company.

MORE WORDS OF WISDOM ON ELECTIONS from economist Steve Lansburg:

. . . if you really believe in democracy, and if the election is close, then it doesn’t much matter who wins. The theory of democracy (stripped down to bare essentials, and omitting all sorts of caveats that I could list but won’t) is that the guy who gets more votes is the better guy. Surely, then, it follows that the guy who gets only slightly more votes is only the slightly better guy. And if one guy’s only slightly better than the other, then a miscount is no great tragedy.

You might have a strong preference for one candidate over the other, but if you have an overriding preference for democracy (“Let the majority rule, even when I’m in the minority”), then you can stop worrying about miscounts. Surely there’s not much difference between a world where Bush gets 3 more votes than Kerry and a world where Kerry gets 3 more votes than Bush. If Bush is the rightful president in one of those worlds, he’s got to be darn close to rightful in the other.

Just something to consider.

THIS MAY BE the real lesson of the election.

UPDATE: Heh.

SOME REALITY-BASED BLOGGING for Democrats.

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE WINNERS is to be responsible for their vote. Now that Bush has won, to my frank surprise, I’ve been denied the pleasure of being in opposition, which is to say the pleasure of disclaiming responsibility for any stunts the president may get up to in the next four years.

What’s more, those of us who voted for Bush, warts and all, haven’t even the excuse that Kerry voters would have, which is to say declaring they had no idea he’d do that. Bush voters walked into his next term with eyes wide open. Even if we voted not so much for Bush as against Kerry, we still have to be willing to accept that if he screws up, we put him in a position to do so knowing exactly what he was like.

That gives us, I think, a special responsibility not to gloss over his policy flaws, but rather to hold him to account as much as possible, to make sure that we can be proud of our choice. That means getting on the phone to the white house, congressmen and senators to block bad legislation. That means being honest about his mistakes, rather than trying to gloss over them in order to make ourselves look better. It means, in short, thinking about what’s best for the country, rather than What’s Best for The Team.

That’s the responsibility of anyone who voted for the guy in office, whether he’s a Democrat or a Republican. It’s the responsibility of the people who voted against him, too, but they generally don’t need reminding. We’ve put all our eggs in one basket, guys–so in the words of Mark Twain, let’s watch that basket.

DON’T PACK YET: Disgruntled? Want to hide from the red staters in the Great White North? Canada says no.

A DEMOCRATIC FRIEND OF MINE JUST GOT A PHONE CALL from a Republican she doesn’t speak to that often, allegedly to “say hi” but transparently to gloat. This is my plea to Bush voters to give peace a chance. If we have any chance of ending the sniping and bitterness that characterise the current political scene, it’s going to start with Republicans being gracious winners. If you have to indulge your schadenfreude, do it silently by lurking on Democratic websites and reading hair-tearing left-wing editorials, not by alienating people with whom we’d like to eventually build a better America.

BITTER, ANGRY LOSERS: No, not the Democrats, but the real losers in this election — the Old Media, still angry that they couldn’t deliver their fifteen percent. I just heard E.J. Dionne on All Things Considered (audio not posted yet) delivering himself of an astonishing amount of anti-Bush venom. Dan Rather was reportedly dissing bloggers last night. And, of course, there are the rather churlish remarks of ABC’s Mark Halperin, declaring Bush a “lame duck” before his first term has even ended.

They know who the big losers were in this election. And we’re not talking Kerry/Edwards.

UPDATE: Well, at least it’s not James Wolcott’s “Good, Go Ahead, America, Choke on Your Own Vomit, You Deserve to Die.” I think that needs more tweaking, but I guess we should just be glad he’s not calling down killer hurricanes again.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Frank J.’s response to Halperin’s “lame duck” remark:

I think it’s safe now to admit that Bush stole the first election and served illegitimately. Thus he was elected for the first time for real yesterday. So, can Bush now run for real reelection in 2008?

Hmm. Based on what I’ve heard from Michael Moore about the 2000 election, I think Frank’s onto something. . . .

REPEAL JANE’S LAW: My esteemed temporary Insta-colleague Megan McArdle goes by the handle “Jane Galt” on her blog. I first discovered her when she coined Jane’s Law.

Jane’s Law: The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant. The devotees of the party out of power are insane.

Now that we have a fresh start, of sorts, can we try to prove her wrong? She’s been right for as long as I’ve been paying attention to politics. But all things must someday come to an end.

PREDICTIONS FOR THE NEXT FOUR YEARS I don’t have many at this point, but try this one on for size: Republicans in New York and California will follow the lead of Democrats in Colorado, and propose initiatives to split the states’ electoral votes.

In the case of New York, California, and Texas, that would actually be good for the states, since each could easily put as many votes in play as any medium-sized battleground sate. It would attract a lot more attention their way. I don’t expect such a measure to pass in any of the three, but I imagine the Republicans will give it the old college try anyway.

TERRORIST DEATHWATCH: Yasser Arafat’s downward spiral continues.

I SEE SOMETHING VERY HEALTHY ON THE LEFT-WING BLOGS: commenters who are looking at themselves, rather than blaming Karl Rove, the supreme court, or [cough] conservative media bias for their loss. The most destructive trend of the last four years has been the left’s resort to ever-more-tenuous conspiracy theories to explain their political failures.

This is certainly not a unique vice of the left. Libertarians have it in spades. I’ve sat through aproximately 8 zillion heated conversations about how the reason libertarians don’t have more power is that the electoral system is stacked against us, when it’s crystal clear to me that the reason we don’t have more power is that a clear majority of Americans don’t agree with us. They like middle-class entitlements, drug laws, mortgage tax deductions, farm subsidies, and most of the rest of it. If we want to see our programmes enacted, it won’t help us to change the system (proportional representation is the usual magic bullet of choice for libertarians) if we don’t first change America — at which point we won’t need to change the system.

Though of course I’m not exactly rooting for it to happen, I firmly believe that the left can stage a convincing political comeback, if they’ll stop looking for a scapegoat and start looking for some new ideas. I think we may be witnessing the beginning of that change.

EXIT POLLS A number of people have emailed to point out that the samples in individual precincts are small. That’s true, but the overall sample is large, and it went awry on every level: in each state and in the national vote. Sure, it was a close race, but as far as I can tell, the errors all ran one way: towards Kerry. Rumour has it that the reason the networks were so slow to call the Carolinas is that the exit polls showed them going for Kerry, a nonsense result in light of the result, and even in light of previous polling.

Perhaps people were ashamed to tell exit pollsters they’d voted for Bush; I would have been leery of doing so in my polling place, which resembled a Kerry campaign rally. Or perhaps there’s some sort of systematic bias in the results, starting with the abnormal number of women sampled: are women more likely to respond? Did the exit polls oversample former swing districts, when increased turnout in “lock” districts seemed to be the key to the race? I don’t know, but I hope someone’s finding out.

EUGENE VOLOKH notes that “the 51-48 popular vote margin, while far from a blowout, is larger than the 1976 Carter-Ford margin, or the 1968 Nixon-Humphrey margin, plus of course the famously close 1960 and 2000 margins.”

LEFT-WING BLOGOSPHERE REACTIONS: John Kerry’s side of the blogosphere offers a diverse range of views of Bush’s victory.

Marc Cooper: Could there possibly have been an incumbent more easy to knock-off than George W. Bush? A real-life opposition party would have been insulted to be matched with a such an unworthy and frail rival. The Democrats, by contrast, got their lights punched out.

Tbogg: I look at the big map and all of the red in flyover country and I feel like I’ve been locked in a room with the slow learners.

Andrew Northrup: The national Democratic Party needs to shift to the right, culturally, in order to compete nationally. No choice. Wah wah wah, I’m going to go vote for Nader, wah wah. You should have voted this time.

Jeff Jarvis: Good for you, Kerry, for conceding. Thank you.

Daily Kos: [I]t’s clear the Democratic Party as currently constituted is on its deathbed. It needs reforms, and it needs them now. Quite frankly, the status quo simply won’t cut it. Howard Dean for DNC Chair.

Oliver Willis: We’re telling the world that we endorse the last four years, and give thumbs up to more evil. Sick.

Ezra Klein: I, like most of us, fell for the echo chamber. Daily Kos, MyDD, Steve Soto, Pandagon, and all the other blogs are run by good people with positive intentions, but if they’re you’re primary source for information, you’re outlook is perverted by an overwhelming amount of good news and a general disdain for the factual accuracy of bad news. It perverts your perspective and, because the sample group is so totally different than most of America, it begins to twist your political predictions and assumptions of what works…

Kevin Drum: MOST IMPORTANT EVENT….RECONSIDERED… I’ll plump for the Massachusett’s Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage. The result was nearly a dozen initiatives across the country to ban gay marriage and a perfect wedge issue for Republicans. For the second election in a row, it looks like the president was chosen by the courts.

Matthew Yglesias: With a majority of the popular vote and expanded margins in the House and Senate, we’re going to see Bush Unleashed — something that will probably be much crazier than what we’ve seen over the past four years.

Andrew Sullivan: George W. Bush is our president. He deserves a fresh start, a chance to prove himself again, and the constructive criticism of those of us who decided to back his opponent.

DID ANYONE ELSE NOTICE Dick Cheney claiming a “mandate” for Bush? That undoubtedly set off a lot of bells in liberal heads.

I too am worried about what Matthew Yglesias calls “Bush Unleashed“, at least so far as spending and social legislation goes. Democratic hopes that Bush would somehow be compelled to govern like a Democrat, for no clear reason that I can see, were always destined to be dashed, but the pickups in the house and Senate mean he’ll have a freer hand than I was expecting when I endorsed him.

On the other hand, there’s that gaping deficit, which will limit his freedom of action considerably, and entitlement reform is looming overhead. I think the biggest place where he’ll try to claim that “mandate” will be the supreme court, and I think he’ll probably succeed — the Democratic filibusters seem to me to be a successful tactic only because 99% of the public is unaware of them, which wouldn’t be true if it were a supreme court justice. Moreover, there’s likely to be severe illness on the court, with all the over-80 justices, and that may well mean a vacancy which will put heavy pressure on the Dems to pass whomever the president nominates. I’d guess Bush gets to put in at least two justices who are fairly conservative.

NICE BUSH SPEECH, TOO: I hope the conciliatory mood lasts. I listened on NPR, and was happy to hear the NPR folks saying that Bush’s popular vote majority erased any concerns about legitimacy from 2000.

UPDATE: I guess the conciliatory mood hasn’t reached the rest of the media, where ABC’s Mark Halperin has just called Bush a “lame duck.” Dude, at least wait until the first term has expired, okay?

CATCH UP: Marcus Cicero says the Democrats need to own the war, for their good as well as for ours. And before they can do that they need to “get their heads out of the pot smoke of the Sixties and get serious.”

NICE KERRY LINE: “In American elections there are no losers, because whether or not our candidates win or lose, the next morning we wake up as Americans.”

UPDATE: Very nice speech.

I’M WATCHING EDWARDS INTRODUCE KERRY, and he looks like he’s running in 2008.

WELCOME TO THE 2008 CAMPAIGN Trad sports is already looking ahead to 2008, for those who can’t wait for the mayhem to begin. Meanwhile, Coyote Blog points out that 2008 will be the first election in more than fifty years in which neither candidate is an incumbent president or VP.

EXIT POLLS: So why were the exit polls wrong? Here’s a guess. Perhaps most of them were conducted in cities, not small towns and rural areas, skewing the results toward Kerry. Urban voters are more likely to be Democrats, after all. This is just a guess, though. As far as I know, media outlets haven’t published their exit poll methodologies.

MICHELE CATALANO offers words of comfort.

KEVIN DRUM: “[S]crew the youth vote. That sure didn’t work out well, did it?”

The “youth vote” has never been enough to put a candidate over the top, has it? Not that I can recall. Josh Marshall has a take that’s similar to Kevin’s, if less pungent: “the much-ballyhooed youth vote simply did not show up.”

I AGREE WITH ANN: Congratulations to Senator Kerry for doing the right thing, particularly as I imagine he was facing pressure from some diehards to stretch things out.

KERRY HAS CALLED BUSH TO CONCEDE REPORT AP AND CNN. Good man! Thanks.

UPDATE: From the AP report:

Kerry told Bush the country was too divided, the source said, and Bush agreed. “We really have to do something about it,” Kerry said according to the Democratic official.

Again, thank you, Senator Kerry.