I must admit, Sarah Palin sounds better (or reads better) when she’s speaking to her fellow Republican governors about “conservative solutions to these economic challenges” than when she’s stirring up vicious mobs at hate-filled rallies on the campaign trail. Not that I approve of “conservative solutions,” but at least she was coherent today. Besides, I’m not entirely against “the federalist principle” (whether in the U.S. or here in Canada)....

Obama and Hillary met in Chicago yesterday and apparently discussed what role she might play in Obama’s administration. Secretary of State remains at the top of the rumour mill, and, as I put it earlier today, although I would prefer Kerry for the job, strictly in terms of policy considerations, I am certainly intrigued by the idea of Hillary and Obama working together, if that is possible (and if she wouldn’t overshadow him), to chart a new course for U.S. foreign policy. Steve Clemons...

Democrat Mark Begich overtook Republican/felon Ted Stevens late yesterday, at one point holding a lead of just three votes, and he has expanded his lead as the counting continues. As the Anchorage Daily News is reporting (and CNN and Alaska Elections have the same numbers), Begich is now up by 814 — “132,196 to 131,382 — with the state still to count roughly 40,000 more ballots over the next week.” In percentage terms, it’s Begich 47.41, Stevens 47.12. Sean Quinn at...

With the election now over, pretty much, I really don’t want to waste much time on as loathsome a creature as Sarah Palin. I wrote about her extensively during the campaign, but what I may not have expressed explicitly — though it was certainly there implicitly — was my utter contempt for her. There are few political figures I despise as much as I came to despise her. She is, as I put it, an ignorant thug and an arrogant twit. Simply put, she was, given her place on the presidential...

Well, it now seems that both Obama and Durbin want Lieberman to remain as chair of the Homeland Security Committee, at least according to Newsweek‘s Howard Fineman. It has been reported that Obama wants Lieberman to remain in the Democratic caucus, but it hasn’t been clear whether or not he wants him to keep his chairmanship. It has also been reported that Durbin wanted him to be stripped of his chairmanship. Meanwhile, the Politico is reporting that some Democratic senators — including...

As the presidential campaign was nearing its end, as the Republicans were getting more and more desperate amid prospects of doom, the McCain-Palin fear- and smear-mongering focused not just on Obama’s “socialism” but on how horrible so-called “one-party rule” would be for the country. McCain himself put it this way: “We’re getting a glimpse of what one-party rule would look like under Obama, Pelosi, and Reid. Apparently it starts with lowering our defenses...

I’ve been focusing much of my attention lately on the still-unresolved Senate races in Minnesota and Alaska, but, lest we forget, there is still one undecided state in the presidential election: Missouri. Here’s the latest: [T]he vote count in Missouri is tightening. Republican John McCain’s statewide lead has shrunk to fewer than 5,000 votes, as various counties have recounted and revised their totals from last Tuesday’s election. Since Election Day, Obama has gained almost...

The WSJ is reporting that “Obama is leaning toward asking Defense Secretary Robert Gates to remain in his position for at least a year, according to two Obama advisers. A senior Pentagon official said Mr. Gates would likely accept the offer if it is made.” I’m sorry, but that’s not change I can believe in. (To those of you who think I’m now turning on Obama because he’s not progressive enough, I’m not. It’s just that I’m not so rigidly ideological...

In addition to Frank Rich’s fine NYT column, about which I wrote here, there was a lot of good stuff to read yesterday — and reading was what I was doing to try to to take my mind off the Steelers’ loss to the Colts, a game they should have won but let slip away. (I’m looking at you, Big Ben. Thanks for the interceptions, the first two at terrible times in the game. And thanks also to Bruce Ariens, offensive coordinator, for those predictable and uninspired play calls when...

The Minnesota Senate race, now in its post-election is nothing if not intriguing. I wrote yesterday evening that Coleman’s margin over Franken had narrowed to just 239. Well, it was down this morning to 204, according to the Star Tribune (via Chait), and CNN now has it at 206. Which is truly remarkable, given that almost 2.9 million votes were cast (or have been counted so far), including 437,389 for independent candidate (and Ventura supporter) Dean Barkley. As of right now — 3:30 pm...

At The New Republic today, Jonathan Cohn argues that has actually accomplished a great deal as president, from overhauling the tax code to reforming education to gutting the regulatory state to rewriting “long-standing doctrine on foreign policy and human rights” to launching “a war that overthrew a dictator, destabilized a region, and committed the U.S. to an occupation whose end is still unknown.” Put another way, Bush has been a profoundly transformational president, achieving...

Via Yglesias, check out this interesting map showing where McCain did well in ’08 in relation to Bush in ’04. It makes sense that he would do better in Arizona and Alaska, as well as in the Florida panhandle and parts of Georgia (given his military record), but his strength was clearly in that dark-red swathe that, from west to east, begins in Oklahoma, sweeps across Arkansas, Tennessee, and northern Alabama, dipping down into northern and eastern Texas, as well as most of Louisiana,...

Believe it or not, yes (like Maine, Nebraska apportions its electoral votes by congressional district): [Obama's] odds of bagging an electoral vote in Nebraska grew stronger this morning, with word that 10,000 to 12,000 early ballots and 5,200 provisional ballots are left to count in Douglas County. Obama won about 61 percent of the early votes counted before Tuesday’s election. If that percentage holds with the early ballots left to count, Obama stands a strong chance of winning the Omaha-area...

“What In The Hell Happened in Alaska?” asks Nate Silver. Good question. As of right now, Republican incumbent Ted Stevens is leading Democratic challenger Mark Begich 48 to 47 (with 99 percent reporting) in their Senate race. The margin is 3,353 (with almost 210,000 votes counted). As I mentioned the other day, however, there are tens of thousands of ballots left to count: absentee and early ballots, as well as questioned ones. So what stinks? 1) As Nate Silver points out, even with all...

Clintonite and Congressman Rahm Emanuel has accepted Obama’s offer to be his chief of staff. Like David Corn and Ezra Klein, I’m ambivalent about it. On the one hand, Emanuel hasn’t exactly been an ally of the liberal-progressive elements in the Democratic Party. On the other hand, he’s a tough, hard-nosed insider and aggressive partisan with White House experience. So what does his appointment mean? What does it signal with respect to the Obama presidency? – Is Obama...

Obama’s win was all over the front pages of our newspapers yesterday and the lead story on our television news. From what I could tell, it was a really big deal for Canadians. I know that’s not exactly a scientific way to put it, but I do know that public opinion polls showed overwhelming support for Obama leading up to the election, that there was genuine interest in the election and its outcome, and that, by and large, Canadians were paying very close attention, and still are. Certainly...

I’ve been trying all day today to put my finger on just how I feel about yesterday, to find the right word for it. I still feel overcome, overwhelmed. I’m euphoric, but not deliriously so, immensely happy, but not without a sense of the difficulties and challenges that lie ahead. Joyous, but also sober. Incredulous, on one level, but also humble. Aware of what happened, but not yet fully. As I’ve been telling people today, we have been witnesses to history, to something very, very...

There’s a lot of live-blogging going on tonight, as you might expect. Here are some links for your convenience: I’ll be live-blogging, along with several of my co-bloggers, from before 7 pm ET to well into the early-morning hours. Come check it out, and, should you feel so inclined, join the conversation by adding your comments. I’d love to hear from you. – The Reaction And, of course, make sure you follow Shaun’s post here at TMV. Here are some others. I’ll be...

Peter Beinart wrote this in yesterday’s Washington Post: Why has America turned on Sarah Palin? Obviously, her wobbly television interviews haven’t helped. Nor have the drip, drip of scandals from Alaska, which have tarnished her reformist image. But Palin’s problems run deeper, and they say something fundamental about the political age being born. Palin’s brand is culture war, and in America today culture war no longer sells. The struggle that began in the 1960s — which...

For what it’s worth, Marc Ambinder has Karl Rove’s map going into the election. It’s Obama 338, McCain 220. Over the weekend, I predicted 375 to 163 for Obama. The difference is that Rove gives Indiana (11), Missouri (11), and North Carolina (15) to McCain, whereas I give them to Obama. This morning, I think that my prediction may be overly optimistic. I can certainly see all three of those states going to McCain. I may change my mind as the day goes on, but I’m going to stick...

Ahead in the polls, and with the Kerry states pretty much wrapped up, including Pennsylvania, Obama has been setting his sights lately on traditionally-red states like Indiana and North Carolina, and even McCain’s home state of Arizona. Obama has substantial leads in key battleground states like Virginia, Colorado, and New Hampshire, the race is more or less even in others like Missouri and Indiana, and polls show that he is close even in Georgia. And, now, even in Louisiana, where, according...

Kos is reporting that Arizona is “neck and neck.” McCain is up by just a single point in a new Research 2000 poll, 48 to 47, with Obama leading 54 to 42 among early voters. (And, in a possible preview of the 2010 Senate race, Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano, who has an extremely high favourability rating in the state, is ahead of McCain 53-45.) With the Obama campaign recruiting volunteers and campaigning seriously in Arizona, surely a sign that things are going well, McCain will actually...

Think things are bad here, financially speaking (not so bad here in Canada, but pretty bad south of the border)? Well, be thankful you don’t live in Iceland*: Iceland’s central bank upped its key interest rate by 6 percentage points to 18 percent on Tuesday, two weeks after it had eased policy to soften the impact of the country’s financial meltdown. The move, which one economist called extreme, was the latest by authorities to prop up the country’s frozen currency and markets,...

In other words, McCain’s latest campaign strategy. We saw it in Pennsylvania, where prominent Republicans sent out an e-mail to Jewish voters likening the situation in 2008 to the situation in Europe in the 1930s and ’40s (with Obama akin to Neville Chamberlain, an enabler of evil — then the Nazis, now Iran). And we’re seeing it again in a new McCain ad likely to be aired in Florida (if it hasn’t started airing already). Via Benen, the ad says this: Iran. Radical Islamic...

I thought it was excellent: the focus on the economy, on the middle class, on his personal story, a story that is so profoundly American, on a strong foreign policy that focuses on the real threats and that restores America’s standing in the world, on the themes of hope and change that have come to define Obama’s run for the presidency from the very beginning. And, once again, as in the debates, he presented himself as a strong, determined leader with a bold vision, certainly not someone...