1. Anybody else feel really quite deflated that it's all over?
2. Currently it looks like Obama got just over 64 million votes to Mccain's 56.5 million. Impressive, yes, but didn't you get the feeling from the coverage both in the run-up and during that McCain would be more adrift than that? At times it seemed impossible to imagine that anyone apart from a few rednecks in Alabama would vote for him.
3. A similar feeling re turn-out. it seems to have been around 64%. Considering the hype of the huge numbers voting and massive queues, this seems a pretty ordinary figure to me. How would they cope if they had a genuinely really high turn-out of, say, 80%?
4. Anybody understand what it means to be a 'registered Democrat/Republican'? Don't think it means you're a member of the Party. In its familiarity but unfathomability it's a bit like mysterious talk of being a 'sophomore' or 'in 9th grade'.
5. Thank goodness that la Palin continues to be the gift that keeps on giving. Firstly, there was the excellent prank call* in the run up to polling, and now we have the Republican infighting starting, leading to these excellent spilt beans on Fox News (via the Daily Kos, which in common with many left-leaning blogs is very sweet in not quite believing that it didn't all go wrong at the eleventh hour):
Reporter: I wish I could have told you more at the time but all of it was put off the record until after the election. There was great concern in the McCain campaign that Sarah Palin lack the degree of knowledgeability necessary to be a running mate, a vice president, and a heartbeat away from the presidency. We’re told by folks that she didn’t know what countries that were in NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, that being the Canada, the US, and Mexico. We’re told she didn’t understand that Africa was a continent rather than a country just in itself...
Textbook, absolutely textbook.
*During the prank call she told 'Sarkozy', in response to a comment about how she would make an excellent President, 'Maybe in eight years.' Sarah, honey, I'm not sure the world can wait that long...
Update: an interesting take on turnout here (h/t Andrew Sullivan).
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2 comments:
RE item 2 - A bit of lateral thinking last week by an expert in neuro-marketing suggested that voting in a church or school hall provides a pro-republican impetus to susceptible voters.
1. Actually relieved it’s over. Obviously it was a great result and there was really no more they could say about either of the campaign.
2. I think there are two reasons. First the campaigns fight for electoral votes, not the popular. So the fact that Obama smashed the required 270 votes, and won States that George Bush held onto comfortably in 2004, means it was pretty impressive. Second, the media reporting was pretty biased giving the impression that everyone other than a few it religious nuts were voting Obama which was clearly nonsense.
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