This isn’t writing, it’s typing.

Best post-election quote

"This party is stronger than it’s ever been. We’re in the best financial shape. We now have, unlike four years ago, millions and millions of new supporters of this party. We’re debt-free for the first time ever and we’re beginning to build towards 2008."
—DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe

That's right, Terry old boy. And don't you let anybody tell you different.

UPDATE: David Wissing picked up on this one too: "Boy I hope the Demcorats never fire this guy. There were always rumors that McAuliffe is a Karl Rove mole in the Democratic party. Based on the pathetic performances by the Democrats over the past four years, does anyone have proof that he isn’t?" Who knows? But it is like McAuliffe has a death wish or something.

Arafat death watch

Okay, I know I screwed up on the whole bin Laden thing. But I'm going to try to make it up to you with Arafat.

The latest poop I have says he's still got a pulse. In fact, according to Reuters, he's not even in a coma. (Of course, according to Reuters, he's not a terrorist either, even if he did whack a couple of American diplomats back in 1973, as Powerline's The Big Trunk has reported.)

I'll keep checking on this, but I'm not keeping an all-night vigil or anything. So, if you wake up at 3 am feeling really anxious to know if Mr. Whiskers has finally kicked it, you might try looking here. Or here.

I'm inclined to agree with Vodkapundit that it would be nice to picture the murderous old thug getting word of Dubya's unredefeatedness before he draws his last.

Either way, though, I look forward to SNL's Weekend Update soon being able to report: "Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat is still dead …."

No good economic news for W.

Newly-unredefeated President George W. Bush got some apparent good news from the Labor Department yesterday. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

The nation added a higher-than-expected 337,000 jobs in October, boosted by fast growth in the service and construction sectors, the Labor Department reported Friday….

"I think it was really a barn-buster [sic]," Sung Won Sohn, chief economist at Wells Fargo, said of the increase in jobs. "It really reflects an improving economy. The uncertainties are diminishing, businesses have confidence and are hiring people, and consumers are moving out of a soft patch and moving to firmer ground."

Barnburner or "barn-buster," the news would effectively negate the "Herbert Hoover" criticism leveled at the President by his former opponents, John Kerry and John Edwards, as INDC Journal and blogger David Wissing both correctly point out. Most economists tend to agree:

"It looks like the job situation is improving and that this will support consumer spending going into the holidays and offset some of the drag caused by high oil prices this year," said economist Gary Thayer of A.G. Edwards & Sons Inc. in St, Louis, Mo.

"A very strong month, with things pretty well spread," said HSBC economist Ian Morris.

"This report is really telling us the economic expansion is solidly in place," said Anthony Chan, senior economist with JPMorgan Fleming Asset Management. "For those naysayers who were expecting recession next year, this certainly defies those expectations."

"It very much confirms the presence of a full-fledged recovery for the labor market (and) bodes well for household purchasing power as the holiday shopping season rapidly approaches," said John Lonski, chief economist at Moody's Investors Service.

"The soft-patch of activity from the early summer is now officially over," says Stephen Gallagher, chief economist, SG Corporate & Investment Banking.

"The employment picture is completely changed with this report," say three more economists from Bear Stearns. "Payroll employment is once again rising at a pace above 200,000, which should be sufficient to bring the unemployment rate down further over the next few months. We think perceptions of the strength of the economy will be revised up in the wake of this report."

Even so, you can always count on the Democratic-media complex to find a cloud in the silver lining. Here's The New York Times (second, third and fourth paragraphs of a story by Eduardo Porter):

Economists cautioned, however, that a short burst of strong growth did not necessarily mean that hiring would continue at such a vigorous pace. [Italics mine.] Since the economic recovery began in late 2001, a couple of encouraging spurts in employment have quickly fizzled out.

"This is the kind of job report you want to see at this stage of an economic recovery," said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington. "But we've been here before. Whether this will be a persistent trend is hard to know." [NOTE: The Washington Post, in a June 19, 2004, article by Paul Farhi, described Bernstein as "one of several economists allied with the Kerry campaign."]

With the election over, the new report had little political consequence, but both parties cited it anyway. Democrats pointed out that there were still 371,000 fewer nonfarm payroll jobs than there were when President Bush took office nearly four years ago.

Here's The Los Angeles Times (fourth and fifth paragraphs of an article by Joel Havemann):

Only time will tell, though, whether the labor market is really gaining steam—or whether bigger job gains will prove ephemeral, as they have before. [Italics mine.]

"We saw similarly strong job growth in the early spring, but it faltered over the summer," said Lawrence Mishel, president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute. "We will see over the next several months whether the labor market has finally established a firm recovery." [NOTE: Fellow EPIer Mischel has co-authored articles with Bernstein and worked with him as part of Kerry's team of economic advisors.]

And here's The Washington Post (sixth and seventh paragraph of a story by Nell Henderson, which attributes the spike in job growth largely to hurricane clean-up efforts in the Southeast):

However, some analysts cautioned that the pace of hiring is likely to slow after the hurricane effects fade. [Italics mine.]

"While we are encouraged by this latest spurt, we seriously question its sustainability," said Richard A. Yamarone, director of economic research at Argus Research Co. "Businesses are making do with their existing workforces and really don't need the added expense of labor, especially amid soaring energy and raw-materials prices. Many businesses have decided that the skyrocketing cost of health care and medical benefits are simply too much to handle and have decided to eliminate positions."

Recently, a systematic study of newspaper headlines (available as a free download from the linked page) by Kevin Hasset and John R. Lott of the American Enterprise Institute showed an overwhelming tendency in the mainstream media to over-report bad economic news and under-report good economic news under President Bush, as contrasted to an opposite tendency under President Clinton. The study, of course, has been attacked by liberals for focusing on headlines rather than on the stories themselves.

Yet, even when you drill down, the result is the same: In the mainstream media, there can be no good economic news for President Bush.

Imaginary catblogging again

I'm catblogging again.

But only because Bush won—and I know a lot of Democrats are pretty down in the dumps about it.

Of course, it's not a real cat, since I don't have one. It's an imaginary cat this time around too, made up entirely of pixels. Or maybe exit polls.

Anyway, it does look rather patriotic sitting there in front of Old Glory. Maybe it'll remind some of my Democrat friends of their old buddy Socks.

I think of this as my small contribution to national unity.

Have a good weekend, Democrats.

UPDATE: I see Kevin Drum has been doing some post-election catblogging too: "I know I said I wasn't going to bring back regular catblogging, but we could all use some cheering up today, couldn't we? And cats always seem to take political news so serenely. We could learn something from them." (He seems to be using real cats, though.) Vodkapundit, meanwhile, alleges "cats are for sissies." I'm inclined to agree that real Americans have dogs (I have three), but I guess I'm willing to risk a little catblogging embarrassment in the cause of national unity.

Clark County update

Remember The Guardian's misguided letter-writing campaign to the residents of Clark County, Ohio? USA Today reports that it generated a lively flow of correspondence … in the opposite direction:

Among the letters and e-mails that deluged the Manchester offices of The Guardian were comments such as these:

"Real Americans aren't interested in your pansy-ass, tea-sipping opinions."

"We don't need weenie-spined Limeys meddling in our presidential election."

"If you want to save the world, begin with your own worthless corner of it."

Well, the election returns are now  in—and we can see that the voting went in an unexpected direction too.

In 2000, Al Gore won Clark County by 324 votes. In fact, his margin would have been larger had it not been for Ralph Nader's 1,347 votes the same day.

This year—thanks in no small measure to Guardian readers—Clark went to
George W. Bush by a margin of 1,600 votes. What's more, Clark ened up being the only county of the 115 Ohio counties Al Gore won in 2000 that John Kerry didn't recapture in 2004.

Guardian pen pals also did their British best to help Republicans get out the vote. Turnout was double that of four years ago—and the President garnered almost as many votes (34,444) as were cast for Bush and Gore combined in 2004.

Surely the Looney Left can find some connection that can help them pass this off as a Karl Rove dirty trick.

UPDATE: Captain Ed has some amusing thoughts on Clark County—as well as Emma Brockes rant in The Guardian on the post-election depression of the British left.

So what about those exit polls?

What was it that skewed the exit polls so thoroughly as to predict a Kerry victory—even in states Bush ultimately won by decisive margins, such as Florida and Ohio? Michael Barone advances a provocative, though highly plausible, theory in U. S. News & World Report:

My own suspicion is that some Democrats—at the command level, or somewhere below—had an election-day project of slamming the results. New Hampshire, Minnesota and Pennsylvania initial exit poll results had huge margins for Kerry—much larger percentages than he won in any pre-election poll. If somebody had slipped some Democratic operative the list of exit poll sites—40 to 50 sites in each critical state—he or she could have slipped several hundred operatives into the polling places to take the exit poll ballots and vote for Kerry. The results would have shown Kerry much farther ahead than he actually was and, broadcast through drugdereport.com and other sources, could have heartened Kerry supporters during the afternoon and disheartened Bush supporters. When I was active in Democratic politics, in 1964-80, it would have occurred to us to do no such thing. But Democrats these days are so filled with a sense of grievance and with a feeling of justification for employing any dirty tactics to win, that this is not unthinkable. If people can game the exit polls, there's not much point to having exit polls any more.

Let's hope some enterprising investigative journalist takes Barone's theory and runs with it.

Not surprisingly, the discrepancy between the exit poll results and the final vote tallies is causing the Looney Left to look, not for problems in the exit polling, but election fraud by the Bush campaign:

This may offer a plausible motive for MoveOn.org, ACT et al. to have gamed the exit polls: To give Kerry voters a myth of victory to cling to after the election, much as Al Gore's victory in the popular vote did in 2000.

An analysis of the original AP exit polling, which showed Kerry with a tighter margin and leading in myriad states, raises serious questions about the authenticity of the popular vote in several key states.…

Since the actual outcome of the votes have been called, AP has changed nearly all of their exit polling to tighten the margin. A reason has not been given.

The analysis, first conducted by a poster [sic] at the popular Democratic Underground, suggests possible voter fraud in states that do not have electronic voting receipts, and those that limit the media’s access to polls.

There's more in this vein, of course, including wild speculation that Walden O'Dell, CEO of Diebold (a maker of voting systems used in Ohio and elsewhere) may have somehow rigged the devices to create a Bush victory.

The post concludes that " the odds of President Bush having gained an advantage from every exit poll in swing states is an extremely improbable coincidence." Hmmm … I could have sworn it was Kerry who gained the advantage, but clearly we're into the same area of logic that assumes Karl Rove leaked the forged National Guard memos to 60 Minutes.

Such is life in the so-called "reality-based community."

UPDATE: Captain Ed has an excellent post on the exit polling debacle. But this sure isn't going to help quiet the conspiratorialists.

He's ba-a-ack!

You knew Michael Moore couldn't keep his mouth shut for very long. He's got a new post on his web site to comfort the afflicted (and with his followers it can only be described as an affliction). Here are Mr. Moore's "17 reasons not to slit your wrists":

1. It is against the law for George W. Bush to run for president again.

2. Bush's victory was the NARROWEST win for a sitting president since Woodrow Wilson in 1916.

3. The only age group in which the majority voted for Kerry was young adults (Kerry: 54%, Bush: 44%), proving once again that your parents are always wrong and you should never listen to them.

4. In spite of Bush's win, the majority of Americans still think the country is headed in the wrong direction (56%), think the war wasn't worth fighting (51%), and don’t approve of the job George W. Bush is doing (52%). (Note to foreigners: Don't try to figure this one out. It's an American thing, like Pop Tarts.)

5. The Republicans will not have a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate. If the Democrats do their job, Bush won't be able to pack the Supreme Court with right-wing ideologues. Did I say "if the Democrats do their job?" Um, maybe better to scratch this one.

6. Michigan voted for Kerry! So did the entire Northeast, the birthplace of our democracy. So did 6 of the 8 Great Lakes States. And the whole West Coast! Plus Hawaii. Ok, that's a start. We've got most of the fresh water, all of Broadway, and Mt. St. Helens. We can dehydrate them or bury them in lava. And no more show tunes!

7. Once again we are reminded that the buckeye is a nut, and not just any old nut—a poisonous nut. A great nation was felled by a poisonous nut. May Ohio State pay dearly this Saturday when it faces Michigan.

8. 88% of Bush's support came from white voters. In 50 years, America will no longer have a white majority. Hey, 50 years isn't such a long time! If you're ten years old and reading this, your golden years will be truly golden and you will be well cared for in your old age.

9. Gays, thanks to the ballot measures passed on Tuesday, cannot get married in 11 new states. Thank God. Just think of all those wedding gifts we won't have to buy now.

10. Five more African Americans were elected as members of Congress, including the return of Cynthia McKinney of Georgia. It's always good to have more blacks in there fighting for us and doing the job our candidates can't.

11. The CEO of Coors was defeated for Senate in Colorado. Drink up!

12. Admit it: We like the Bush twins and we don't want them to go away.

13. At the state legislative level, Democrats picked up a net of at least 3 chambers in Tuesday's elections. Of the 98 partisan-controlled state legislative chambers (house/assembly and senate), Democrats went into the 2004 elections in control of 44 chambers, Republicans controlled 53 chambers, and 1 chamber was tied. After Tuesday, Democrats now control 47 chambers, Republicans control 49 chambers, 1 chamber is tied and 1 chamber (Montana House) is still undecided.

14. Bush is now a lame duck president. He will have no greater moment than the one he's having this week. It's all downhill for him from here on out—and, more significantly, he's just not going to want to do all the hard work that will be expected of him. It'll be like everyone's last month in 12th grade— you've already made it, so it's party time! Perhaps he'll treat the next four years like a permanent Friday, spending even more time at the ranch or in Kennebunkport. And why shouldn't he? He's already proved his point, avenged his father and kicked our ass.

15. Should Bush decide to show up to work and take this country down a very dark road, it is also just as likely that either of the following two scenarios will happen: a) Now that he doesn't ever need to pander to the Christian conservatives again to get elected, someone may whisper in his ear that he should spend these last four years building "a legacy" so that history will render a kinder verdict on him and thus he will not push for too aggressive a right-wing agenda; or b) He will become so cocky and arrogant—and thus, reckless—that he will commit a blunder of such major proportions that even his own party will have to remove him from office.

16. There are nearly 300 million Americans—200 million of them of voting age. We only lost by three and a half million! That's not a landslide—it means we're almost there. Imagine losing by 20 million. If you had 58 yards to go before you reached the goal line and then you barreled down 55 of those yards, would you stop on the three yard line, pick up the ball and go home crying—especially when you get to start the next down on the three yard line? Of course not! Buck up! Have hope! More sports analogies are coming!!!

17. Finally and most importantly, over 55 million Americans voted for the candidate dubbed "The #1 Liberal in the Senate." That's more than the total number of voters who voted for either Reagan, Bush I, Clinton or Gore. Again, more people voted for Kerry than Reagan. If the media are looking for a trend it should be this—that so many Americans were, for the first time since Kennedy, willing to vote for an out-and-out liberal. The country has always been filled with evangelicals—that is not news. What IS news is that so many people have shifted toward a Massachusetts liberal. In fact, that's BIG news. Which means, don't expect the mainstream media, the ones who brought you the Iraq War, to ever report the real truth about November 2, 2004. In fact, it's better that they don't. We'll need the element of surprise in 2008.

But, really Mikey, are these 17 reasons enough to stand between you and the fate for which we know you and your pathetic army of believers so desperately long?

UPDATE: Powerline has a new competition based on the above: "Michael Moore has compiled a list of 17 reasons providing consolation against suicidal despair for himself and his Koolaid-drinking followers. We think it would be a public service to compile a compelling response that would encourage Moore to rethink his position. Please send us your best arguments and we'll see if we can persuade Moore to walk the walk." Hey, it's worth a shot.

Hunting for answers

Shell-shocked Democrats trying to understand how their great exit poll victory could have ended in such a stunning defeat might want to talk to pollster Frank Luntz. He's got a great op-ed in today's Washington Times about the reason for Bush's big win:

So how does a president with a national job approval rating below 50 percent, an economy that lost more than a million jobs over his four years in office, a war that has cost more than a thousand American lives and counting, and a national mood that is downright sour still secure more than enough votes to win re-election?

The answer? Credibility. The president had it. John Kerry did not.

The components of the Bush victory and Kerry defeat all boil down to a single candidate attribute that the president had in abundance but was AWOL from the Kerry campaign: "says what he means and means what he says." In every state and national survey we conducted in 2004, no desired presidential attribute ever scored higher, and nowhere was Mr. Bush stronger and Mr. Kerry weaker. In every focus group I moderated, voters would plead for candidates who spoke from the heart and not from some speechwriter's notes

What Luntz suggests is that voters have an uncanny ability to spot a phony (much like my fourteen-year-old).  Did  Kerry really believe his was going to fool any sportsmen with that Thursday morning hunting trip in Ohio?

The battle of the bulge has ended

Remember the huge flap over the mystery bulge in the back of President Bush's jacket during the first debate? Well, it's a mystery no longer, according to an item in The Hill:

Sources in the Secret Service told The Hill that Bush was wearing a bulletproof vest, as he does most of the time when appearing in public. The president’s handlers did not want to admit as much during the campaign, for fear of disclosing information related to his personal security while he was on the campaign trail.

The suspicion that Bush was, indeed, wearing something under his coat was given further credence by Dr. Robert M. Nelson, a senior research scientist for NASA and Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and an international authority on image analysis, who conducted tests while working at home on his own computers.

“I am willing to stake my scientific reputation to the statement that Bush was wearing something under his jacket during the debate,” Nelson told Salon.com. “This is not about a bad suit. And there’s no way the bulge can be described as a wrinkled shirt.”

Now it can be told.

Dems in denial

A day after their candidate's stunning triumph in the exit polls was overturned by actual balloting, Democrats want to believe that it's just a river in Egypt after all.

An article in The Hill—a newspaper for Congressional types—describes the mindset:

Democrats, both on and off Capitol Hill, rallied around their House leader, expressing confidence that Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) would conduct a thorough review of how the party communicates its message, selects its candidates and deploys its resources.

Pelosi, however, seemed to indicate that House Democrats would not drastically alter their strategy, although she promised an “after-action review” of how her team prosecuted a plan she insisted would return them to the majority.

Yesterday, she spoke with her colleagues on a conference call, sharing her own assessment that the national race was lost on “cultural issues,” and listened to her lawmakers’ own explanations.

"Cultural issues?" harrumphed the Typowife when I read her this. "Like most voters wanting to remain American instead of becoming French?" She makes a valid point. To blue-staters like Pelosi, those of us in flyover country aren't bright enough to understand "issue issues," like the crying need for nationalized health care or to raise the minimum wage. We're just mouth-breathing, Bible-thumping homophobes looking for some way to overturn Roe v. Wade, punish the evil flag-burners and put prayer back into the schools. There's no reasoning with us. I mean, really, what's the point? After all, some 59 million of us were stupid enough to vote for a drooling idiot like Dubya.

In an interview with National Public Radio (the unofficial voice of blue-state America), Pelosi explained how the Democrats would focus the spotlight on the Republicans' "extreme right-wing" agenda and expose their efforts to "demagogue the issues."

So, the issue really isn't with the Democrats, it's with those demagogic Republicans: “The spotlight is on them, and, quite frankly, I think the table is set for the next election,” Pelosi said in another interview with The Hill.

At a press conference yesterday, both Pelosi and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Chairman Robert Matsui (Calif.) acknowledged that the election results were not what they had hoped for. But they said their goal had not been unrealistic.

“We were on a tough playing field,” Pelosi said. “There is no question that we did not get the wind, the uplift that we expected.”

For most of this election cycle, Pelosi said that a “national breeze” of discontentment with Republican leadership would sweep her party to victory. That “breeze” failed to materialize, and Democratic candidates were forced to battle a countervailing trend of Republican dominance, especially in states that the president won.

“Had the breeze occurred, we would have been in a position to do that,” Matsui said of taking back the House.

One definition of insanity (as Albert Einstein allegedly remarked) is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. Yet that seems to be exactly what Pelosi & Co. are proposing. All the Democrats have to do is keep pointing out how extreme the Republican agenda is and, eventually, the "national breeze" will lift the Dems' sails. What she and others in her party don't seem to understand is that it's their own extremism that's keeping them out of the action. You can't put bombthrowers like Michael Moore in the presidential box at your convention, or let George Soros drop millions into your campaign, or outsource your get-out-the-vote effort to Howard Dean-wing groups like MoveOn.org, or, for that matter, nominate as your party's presidential candidate the most liberal member of the Senate, without running the risk of being seen as—to borrow President Bush's memorable phrase—sitting on the "far left bank" of the political mainstream.

Unless they make up their minds to take a more centrist approach, the only breeze the Dems feel will be their own hot air.

UPDATE: Captain Ed echoes and amplifies my thoughts above: "Pelosi's leadership has been the ruin of her party. She has helped perpetuate the poisonous atmosphere in DC, and her ungracious comments today as well as her knee-jerk reaction to blame everyone but herself for her failure will not appeal to a campaign-weary American electorate. The Democrats need to quit demanding bipartisanship and start exhibiting it, and they need real leaders willing to work across the aisle rather than spit across it. If the Democrats want to compete in 2006, they need to jettison the Pelosis, McAuliffes, and Carvilles of their party now."