The Whole World was Watching

from SFGate

Ulyssies Moore, 92, has waited his entire life for this election. "I never in my lifetime thought I would live long enough to see an African American become the president, even to be nominated by a major party," said the former World War II Buffalo soldier as he cast his vote Tuesday. "A soldier's eyes never cries, but my heart cried for joy when I cast my vote for Obama."

The world's heart cries for joy. What a moment.

Liking these odds

Betfair provides real-time betting odds (below). But first I have to get you smiling today, so watch this;

And MSNBC will have live results as they roll in;

"Maybe in Ohio"

Homer's back, voting in Springfield.

Poll analysis from fivethirtyeight.com

According to Nate Silver -

"With fewer than six hours until voting begins in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, the national polling picture has cleared up considerably. Barack Obama is on the verge of a victory, perhaps a decisive victory, in the race for the White House.

The national polls have all consolidated into a range of roughly Obama +7. That is right about where our model sees the race as well, giving Obama a 6.8 point advantage in its composite of state and national polling. Our model notes, however, that candidates with large leads in the polls have had some tendency to underperform marginally on election day, and so projects an Obama win of 6.0 points tomorrow.

Far more important, of course, is the race for 270 electors. It appears almost certain that Obama will capture all of the states won by John Kerry in 2008. Pennsylvania, while certainly having tightened somewhat over the course of the past two weeks, appears to be holding at a margin of about +8 for Obama, with very few remaining undecideds. Obama also appears almost certain to capture Iowa and New Mexico, which were won by Al Gore in 2000. Collectively, these states total 264 electoral votes, leaving Obama just 5 votes shy of a tie and 6 of a win.

Obama has any number of states to collect those 5 or 6 votes. In inverse order of difficulty, these include Colorado, Virginia, Nevada, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Missouri and Indiana. Obama is the signficant favorite in several of these states; winning any one of them may be fairly difficult for John McCain, but winning all of them at once, as John McCain probably must do, is nearly impossible.

McCain's chances, in essence, boil down to the polling being significantly wrong, for such reasons as a Bradley Effect or "Shy Tory" Effect, or extreme complacency among Democratic voters. Our model recognizes that the actual margins of error in polling are much larger than the purported ones, and that when polls are wrong, they are often wrong in the same direction.

However, even if these phenomenon are manifest to some extent, it is unlikely that they are worth a full 6-7 points for McCain. Moreover, there are at least as many reasons to think that the polls are understating Obama's support, because of such factors as the cellphone problem, his superior groundgame operation, and the substantial lead that he has built up among early voters.

McCain's chances of victory are estimated at 1.9 percent, their lowest total of the year."

For the Record

It is striking to consider, in this paradigm shifting election, that the dirty deeds of the GOP candidate have gotten so little coverage.

The sordid Keating 5 history got some coverage before and after the Obama campaign released a video on the subject at KeatingEconomics.com, but the story never got the traction it deserved, especially in the context of the economic meltdown.

Then there was the pesky revelation that McCain had Iran Contra ties.

And on October 24th, John Dinges revealed in the Huffington Post that;
“John McCain, who has harshly criticized the idea of sitting down with dictators without pre-conditions, appears to have done just that. In 1985, McCain traveled to Chile for a friendly meeting with Chile's military ruler, General Augusto Pinochet, one of the world's most notorious violators of human rights credited with killing more than 3,000 civilians and jailing tens of thousands of others.” (Spanish language version.)

Yet to be questioned (to my knowledge) is McCain’s “heroic duty” in Vietnam, where he participated in an air war that blanket bombed North Vietnam.

The Obama campaign apparently decided not to confront McCain's misdeeds, perhaps determining that it would hurt the campaign more than it helped. Considering the nearly flawless conduct of the Obama campaign, I can only guess they made the right call.

Still, it is troubling to think that a presidential candidate can avoid facing up to such a record.

Obama's Quiet Hero dies

Huffington Post links to live coverage of Obama talking about his grandmother.

Here's a page from the family "scrapbook";

Slate's Power Recap

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