Bleary eyed random hazy thoughts

I got sorta drunk and sat up late refreshing election returns so.. who cares what or if I think at the moment.

• Even in this day and age it takes a long time to move a bunch of lawyers out to Montana so it might be a while.. before anyone asks those five people what they wanted (ba da bum)



• Naturally I'm expecting a lot of you to pile on the pessimistic prognosticator today. Knock yourselves out. I can take it.... especially if Webb and Tester squeak through.



• Speaking of which, I should have known better in Missouri. McCaskill was a far superior campaigner every step of the way. (I'd also like to write a sentence that contains the words Talent, powerfully, and stupid. Consider it done.) But I was thrown off by the Michael J Fox thing. If I have one glaring weakness as an analyst it is that I always expect voters to be moved by the uglier sides of their nature. It's a flawed but not entirely unreliable approach.



• It seems to be the correct approach to the Tennessee race where the deciding factor was likely the "call me, Harold" ad. I say likely because Ford, as a son of privilege who ooozed phoniness with his forced religious schtick was a weak weak candidate. I still can't get the image out of my mind of Ford crashing a Corker press conference and awkwardly asking "Can we talk about this Iraq thing?" Ugh!



• I'm almost sad to be wrong about the Maryland race. I have this pet theory that the quirks of Louisiana politics are ahead of and not behind the national curve. In New Orleans we just went through a Mayoral election where much of the black vote went to the conservative candidate for racially based reasons. It would appear that Maryland is not quite ready for this yet... maybe after Baltimore is catastrophically flooded and people are desperate and fearful enough. Come on, global warming.. you can still make me right about this!



• The voting problems everywhere are getting worse and are unacceptable. As a nation, we are losing our grip on the very nuts and bolts of the democratic process. Aside: I have an eyewitness who informs me that John Goodman was turned away at her polling place yesterday due to some sort of registration issue. This may not be such a bad thing.



• The talking head last night were terrible. As the Democrats took seat after seat, the narrative became a louder and louder version of, "This means that the voters really wanted to vote Republican but..." Liberal media at work. I did enjoy Jon Stewart's take on the Democrat's strategy which he likened to "quietly backing out of the room while your brother gets yelled at for burning the house down."



• Melancon voted for the torture bill. That's bad.... but I've got a good feeling about this guy for some reason. We'll see how he does in the majority party.



• One tax assessor in New Orleans. Um.. woo hoo? I'm sorry, I'm from Louisiana. "Good government reform" makes me suspicious.



• Dollar Bill vs. Karen Carter will be soooo mean and negative and slimy and... a thing of utter beauty really. I can hardly wait.