Romney Concedes Florida

Now it's REALLY over. The Romney campaign has conceded Florida to President Obama. While the state is still counting ballots, there aren't enough left to overturn the result. We were oh so close on our election prediction, but Obama ended up the winner in a Florida. Final electoral tally: President Obama 332, Willard =cough=203 (bwahahahaha!).

The Not-President's Transition

Wonkette has a hilarious item about a web page that Willard "Not-President" Romney's team launched for his "transition" to the Presidency. [pause, please] BWAHAHAHA!!

From their polling to their baseless confidence, the delusion among Not-President Romney's team was so pervasive and deep that they had the arrogance to assume he'd be elected and needed to start recruiting people for his administration before the election. Check out the advisory at the bottom of the job application instructions, noting that financial disclosure is required for most positions (ed. -- except Not-President Romney, of course). [pause, please] BWAHAHAHA!!

(photo: "Well done, staff.")

"Avalanche on Bullshit Mountain"

Jon Stewart looks at the humiliation of Fux News (a.k.a, "Bullshit Mountain News") during their "coverage" of Tuesday's election. In the end, they can't bring themselves to believe their eyes. As Stewart asks rhetorically, "Are you lying to yourself, or to the millions of viewers? 'Cause you're lying."

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BONUS: Andrew Sullivan has a great piece on the delusional, rejectionist right, led by the blowhards at Fox, talk radio, and the Internet toobs. As long as these people have a megaphone, it will be hard for "Rethuglicans" to devolve back into "Republicans."

Payback's A Beotch Quote of the Day

"The billionaire donors I hear are livid. There is some holy hell to pay. Karl Rove has a lot of explaining to do … I don't know how you tell your donors that we spent $390 million and got nothing."-- anonymous Rethuglican operative, as quoted in the Huffington Post.

Oooo, we're loving it. The prospect of Karl "Turdblossom" Rove and other right wing bag men being called to account for their MASSIVE failure is a truly wonderful byproduct of Tuesday's election.

Best Photoshop Evah

The original:

New and improved:

(Photoshop by Twolf; h/t Rising Hegemon)

Post-Election Cartoon - Plutocrat Fail Edition

(click to enlarge)

As we noted earlier, one of the pleasures of last night's victory was knowing that hundreds of millions of dollars of plutocrat money was wasted in the effort to defeat President Obama and Democratic candidates. What did your millions buy you, Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson? Much of the plutocrats' money went to voter suppression efforts and/ or to mendacious ads from Crossroads GPS, the Karl "Turdblossom" Rove operation. So it was particularly gratifying when self-deployed air bag Rove was seen on Fox "News" last night, vainly battling the intrusion of reality into his right-wing bubble, in full-blown denial of Obama's victory in Ohio. Sweet!

(Cartoon: Clay Bennett, via gocomics.com)

Beautiful Day Mid-Week Song

The title says it all. A new day, new hope for progress, a new beginning.

Victory and Defeat

The Senate

It was so good to see the American people give victories to Sen.-elect Elizabeth Warren (MA), Sen. Sherrod Brown (OH), Sen.-elect Joe Donnelly (IN), Sen. Claire McCaskill (MO), Sen.-elect Tammy Baldwin (WI), and Sen.-elect Tim Kaine (VA). The Senate, which six months ago was in danger of switching to the Rethuglicans, remains solidly in Democratic hands (Dems Sen. Jon Tester and Heidi Heitkamp are leading won in Montana and North Dakota, respectively but their races haven't been called yet). Senate Minority Leader and unintentional turtle impersonator Mitch "Missy" McConnell will have to establish a new top priority for his flock in the Senate, other than defeating President Obama, who won't be running again.

Watching Neanderthals like Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin (MO) and Richard "Rapist's Gift to Women" Mourdock (IN) go down in their respective red states was wonderful, and should send the clearest possible message to tea baggers. Add them to the Senate seats they've thrown away in the last election, with Sharron Angle in Nevada, Christine O'Donnell in Delaware, and Ken Buck in Colorado.

The House

Democratic hopes of regaining the House were always a long shot, but they did chip away at the Rethuglican majority by picking up eight seats. Some of the brightest spots were the defeat of tea bagger favorite and hot head Joe "Deadbeat Dad" Walsh (IL) by Iraq war veteran Tammy Duckworth, and lunatic wing nut Allen "Commies in Congress" West (FL) by Patrick Murphy. Progressive firebrand Alan Grayson returns to Congress after a two-year break. Sadly, uber wingers Michelle "Minnesota Loon" Bachmann and Steve "The Lying" King were reelected, with Bachmann narrowly escaping defeat.

Overall assessments

If you want to read a powerful assessment of where the Rethugs went off track, read Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine. At the outset of Obama's first term, they decided to oppose everything that Obama supported. They wanted to make the economy fail so that Obama and Dems would be blamed. They lost the bet big time.

Similarly, E.J. Dionne weighs in on the failed strategy of Rethuglican obstruction and where Obama was able to better represent the positions of the middle class.

FOUR MORE YEARS, FOUR MORE YEARS

When the voters in Ohio put President Obama over the top last night, all that remained was to see the extent of his victory. As of now, the President won every state that he won in 2008, with the exception of Indiana and North Carolina; Florida's votes are being counted this morning. The President won the popular vote, which along with his decisive electoral vote win made the election an unambiguous victory. The polls that were so widely disparaged by the Rethugs turned out to be right (hat tip to the NYT's Nate Silver and Princeton Election Consortium for calling it right).

One of the great victories was the defeat of special interest money. The right wing plutocrats were convinced that the Citizens' United decision would ensure that the one percent could buy future elections with negative ads. They were wrong and lost huge sums of money. Another great victory was the decisive rejection of extreme tea bagger candidates and their reactionary views on women's' rights and their no-compromise stands. Will they learn a lesson? Zealots don't learn from experience, they make excuses, and they'll have many this time. Finally, this will be an election about changing demographics: the Latino vote went overwhelming to Obama, after the Rethug right doubled down on their bigoted "self-deportation" talk.

In defeat, Willard "Mittens" Romney can be consoled in the fact that when he returned to his more moderate instincts late in the campaign, voters responded positively. Sadly, he never had his "Sister Souljah" moment with the radical base of his party, where he could have said to them "no, that's not the right thing to do." He is due credit for a gracious concession speech, in which he asked for everyone to pray for the President and to work to bridge the divide; we'll see if his words motivate his party's base in any way to do that.

YESSS!

President Obama wins reelection. Ohio put him over 270 at roughly 11:15 Eastern time.

More Hackwhackery tomorrow; tonight we're celebrating!

Election Day Cartoon

(click to enlarge)

(Clay Bennett, via gocomics.com)

Fearless Hackwhackers Election Prediction

President Obama wins re-election with 303 electoral votes to Willard's 235. Obama wins Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, but loses Florida in a drawn-out, challenge-plagued recount (that doesn't affect the outcome anyway). We hope we're erring on the conservative side (the only time we're ever on the "conservative side" is when we're erring).

Christie's Snub of Willard

A few days ago, the campaign of soon-to-be-defeated Willard "I'll Say Anything" Romney leaked the story that New Jersey Gov. and future Weight Watchers spokesman Chris Christie was rejected as weird Willard's running mate in favor of Ayn Rand disciple and malarky man Rep. Paul "Lyin'" Ryan.

Last night, Christie delivered some payback when he rejected a request by weird Willard to appear with him at an evening rally in Pennsylvania. That'll leave a mark. Whether this means that Christie assumes there won't be a President Romney, or that Christie has written off trying to run for President in a deranged right wing party (or both) remains to be seen. We're just glad he's not throwing his weight behind letting Rethug politics weigh on him influence him.

Voter Suppression, Rethug Style, Cont'd.

It's no surprise that the Rethugs are pulling out all the stops in trying to pre-select who votes in this election and who won't. Historically, large turnouts favor Democrats, and this year the turnout by minority groups will be critical for President Obama's reelection chances. One of the traditions among African American voters is the "souls to the polls" movement: the Sunday before the election, black churches get their parishioners to the polls.

In Florida, for example, a state that's no stranger to election shenanigans by Rethugs, Rethug Gov. Rick "Voldemort" Scott has deliberately restricted voting days and hours in order to drive down the Democratic vote, specifically blocking voting on Sunday. While it may have seemed smart to the Rethug political apparatus to play with the elections this year, the long lines at polling stations -- with some people waiting as much as 8 hours to vote -- indicate that their plan may have energized people instead. Instead of turning away at the sight of long lines, the vast majority have stuck it out and cast their ballots. We hope the next time Gov. Voldemort is up for reelection, the voters remember him for the needless hours upon hours they spent standing in line to exercise the basic right to vote.

(photo: This is actually how Gov. Voldemort looks)

Politicrap from Politico

From Politico editors Jim VandeHei and John Harris, the continuing Rethuglican narrative trying to de-legitimatize Barack Obama is taking shape:

"If President Barack Obama wins, he will be the popular choice of Hispanics, African-Americans, single women and highly educated urban whites. That's what the polling has consistently shown in the final days of the campaign. It looks more likely than not that he will lose independents, and it's possible he will get a lower percentage of white voters than George W. Bush got of Hispanic voters in 2000.

"A broad mandate this is not."

Hmmm. In other words, ballots come in demographically-coded colors. If you don't have enough of the white-male coded ones, you're not legit! Nice!

But it shouldn't surprise anyone that the "Tiger Beat on the Potomac" boyz are among the first to try to discredit a probable Obama victory tomorrow. VandeHei is married to a former staffer for Rethuglican hit-man ex-Rep. Tom DeLay (Felon-TX) -- although he worked at one time in Democratic Sen. Herb Kohl's office -- and Harris is an occasional collaborator with Hackwhackers' Wanker Emeritus Mark Halperin (son of Rethug sinecure Morton Halperin). Presumably the boyz hadn't been getting their calls returned from Democratic spinners quickly enough, so Politico has developed into a reliable source of inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom wired heavily Rethuglican.

On a related note: in the pudnitz' arsenal of upcoming excuses for noted white boy Willard "I Like To Fire People" Romney's expected loss: Hurricane Sandy! Also: Massive voter fraud! Also: Nerds! But a broad mandate? Nah!