What web resources are you looking at tonight to watch the results? I'm using greenpaper's poll close times along with this great graphic from the Swing State Project based on Green Papers data. Other than that I'm following Nate's projections and Al's projections and DemConWatch. I think all of these websites have been among the best through the primaries and general election.
Voting was smooth in my area of Arlington Heights (IL) but it has been so for the last 12 years at least. Today, no more than a 30 minute wait (but others have seen as long as 1 hr, 20 min. at our location). I really hope Dan Seals can ride Obama's coattails into office. We'll post another open thread tonight for results, but meanwhile, how is it going for you today?
Here is what the Obama's have been doing this morning. I wonder why they look so happy? Or maybe one of them said something humorous just before the snap.
At age 96, Studs Terkel died on Friday. He became a national treasure and an icon of Chicago by chronicling the lives and struggles of regular folks. He was a distinctly skilled interviewer. He was a listener. Many remember his WFMT radio show after which he signed off with his Woody Guthrie inspired line, "Take it easy, but take it."
I last saw him in person at a Chicago anti-invasion protest in October 2002. He was sharp and feisty as he commented on Bush's distinct lack of wisdom about invading Iraq. He spoke about how when George Bush prayed to God, God responded, "George, you're a dull boy!". He praised the people there for using their minds and not following the hysteria.
At the same rally people heard a speech from a Chicago politician with a lot of B's and A's in his name. We will miss Stud's commentary on the election if that politician wins on Tuesday.
Studs spoke at more than one of these rallies and similar content to what I heard is available here:
I feel great. Things are looking great for the first time in a long time. The polls have never looked better (up in Florida?!). The voter registration numbers are off the hook. Sarah Palin looks destined for disaster in tomorrow's debate. With every upward tick in a tracking poll, with every superb performance by Barack in a Presidential debate, my confidence in the inevitability of 2008 grows.
But what really is inevitable? This is inevitable.
I just watched all the Sunday morning talk shows and one overriding theme emerged. Nearly everyone, Democrat or Republican, that got up and talked about our current economic crisis largely blamed the lack of oversight and regulation. Let me repeat that.
The emerging consensus is that a lack of meaningful oversight and regulation over the financial services and mortgage industries is now causing us to socialize both industries and put at risk at least $1 trillion of taxpayer money to bail it out.
In light of this, the choice for President in this coming election has now become absolutely and unarguably clear. McCain has spent his nearly three decades in Washington being aided and abetted by Phil Gramm and his cronies in push through every possible measure to keep the financial and mortgage industries from being subject to meaningful oversight and regulation.
[McCain's] record … suggest[s] that he has never departed in any major way from his party’s embrace of deregulation... [H]e has consistently characterized himself as fundamentally a deregulator [yet] he has no history prior to the presidential campaign of advocating steps to tighten standards on investment firms. McCain has always been in his party’s mainstream on the [economic] issue. In early 1995 … McCain promoted a moratorium on federal regulations of all kinds. 'I’m always for less regulation,' he told The Wall Street Journal last March…. 'I am fundamentally a deregulator.'
The bottom line: John McCain's loving embrace of the fundamental Republican dogma of "deregulation, deregulation, deregulation" has caused the worst financial crisis in American history since the Great Depression.
John McCain, Phil Gramm and their Republican cohorts got us into this mess. It would be, at this point in history, absolutely and profoundly wrong for the American people to reward John McCain's failure by electing him to lead the world's biggest economy.
Period.
There is no more room for debate. None.
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This is the video library that we need to circulate far and wide to highlight how wrong John McCain has been (and will be) on the economy:
Obama Campaign on McCain's Disgraced Economic Advisers:
Obama Campaign on McCain's belief that the "Fundamentals of the Economy are Strong":
I just posted this at the One Million Strong Facebook group and now wanted to send it out netroots wide...
One KEY advantage Barack could have is a MONEY advantage.
(But as this newsweek article shows, he needs to push for continued historic rates of giving to get there)
Money equals more commercials, more ground forces in more places, and a stronger message.
Even with the RNC getting HUGE checks from big donors, Barack has been out doing them with historic amount of PEOPLE POWERED low dollar donations. As we move towards what may be as close an election as Bush/Gore we need to give Barack every possible tool to win.
Let's make ONE MORE BIG MONEY BOMB at the END OF THIS MONTH, and then FINALLY AT OCT 15th. In time to be of REAL USE for the last weeks.
So we're shooting for an additional $15K by the 15th of October.
Past One Million Strong group efforts have raised $25 thousand dollars for the campaign. That is pretty amazing. Our average donation was 30 bucks.
So since posting this on FB yesterday we raised $500 bucks, and we're just getting warmed up...Give here to be counted in this group money bomb:
That is the same bill that Republicans blocked in a procedural vote on July 28, of this year. The bill, originally co-sponsored by Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Edward Kennedy (D-MA), was part of a package of health care legislation that Republicans voting along strict party lines blocked from floor action. Despite the 52-40 vote for consideration, supporters fell short of the required 60 vote majority to move the package forward.
Photo: McCain's Vice Presidential running mate Sarah Palin gave birth to Trig Paxson Van Palin, a Down Syndrome baby, on April 18.
