Conservative columnist Rod Dreher, has an interesting column in today’s USA Today, where he defends the role of religious conservatives in the Republican Party. What’s interesting about the piece is how yet again, a religious conservative paints themselves as the victim and bashes anyone that complains about them as being a stooge of liberals.
But maybe [...]

I posted about this around the time we heard whispers about Hillary becoming Secretary of State, but I can’t help but post it again…

Is it me, or was this one of those moments during the campaign where the mood and momentum started to shift in Obama’s favor? Because right after this Obama won Iowa and [...]

Two CBS reporters, one who covered Obama and one who covered McCain, talk about it…

I do think one of the biggest reasons McCain started seeing more negative coverage in the last half of the campaign is he went negative and cut off press access, so the press were left to report on nothing but the [...]

In fact, it’s the widest margin ever for any non-incumbent who has won the POTUS.
Check out these numbers…

So maybe it really was a landslide?
Still, as Nate Silver points, if you slice this onion a different way and look at the votes as a % of the total registered voters, Reagan comes out on top…
By [...]

I just posted about this a few minutes ago, and then this update pops up…
Minnesota’s Canvassing Board voted unanimously to reject Franken’s request to include thousands of absentee ballots that are not included in the recount in the Minnesota senate race between the Democratic challenger and Republican incumbent Norm Coleman.
The Canvassing Board, which oversees the [...]

The plot thickens…
The state’s five member Canvassing Board, which oversees the recount, is meeting to decide how to deal with thousands of absentee ballots that are not included in the recount. Franken’s campaign says the ballots were wrongly rejected, and that about 6,400 ballots were wrongly disqualified. Coleman’s team says the board doesn’t have the [...]

A few weeks ago, I got an invite to join a group on Facebook called Progressive Republicans. The group was described as “…Republicans interested in social justice, civil rights and a clean environment as well as a small government and strong national defense.” I was curious about it and the person behind the group. [...]

Sarah Palin is headed to Georgia to campaign for Saxby Chambliss:
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin will make multiple campaign appearances on behalf of Sen. Saxby Chambliss next week in Georgia, serving as the political closer for the GOP senator who is battling to win a second term.
This is Palin’s first campaign [...]

With more than 3/4ths of the precincts counted, it looks like Franken will fall short, barring some wild turn around in how these votes are shaking out.
Still, FiveThirtyEight thinks there’s a chance…
The Star Tribune now puts Coleman’s lead at 180 votes, and the Secretary of State, 167 votes. (The Star Tribune’s tally appears to [...]

Dan Gilgoff at Politico writes that very little has changed in the evangelical political world:
Evangelicals are still much more concerned with so-called wedge issues than any other demographic group. A Barna Group poll found that 40 percent of evangelicals chose their presidential candidate based on his position on “moral issues,” compared with 9 percent of [...]

If you had any doubts that the internet has created a new public financing system, this story should put those to rest.
From Wash Post:
In an exclusive interview with The Post, members of the vaunted Triple O, Obama’s online operation, broke down the numbers: 3 million donors made a total of 6.5 million donations online adding [...]

Will Obama be able to pass a bold, new agenda to save the economy after Bush’s last 100 days?
David Gregory and company discuss…

If he can bring people together and convince them that his agenda represents the best way, then yes he can. But it’s going to be tough as Republicans try to save any vestige [...]

I’m following the Minnesota recount pretty closely because we could potentially have the makings of a super majority on our hands if Franken wins the recount and Jim Martin is able to beat Saxby Chambliss in Georgia.
In any event, after the first day Franken had cut Coleman’s lead from 215 to 172. And today Coleman [...]

The Hardball panel dissects the weirdness going on up in Minnesota.

Long story short, whoever wins has the best lawyers…much like Florida in 2000.

As I noted last night, the Minnesota recount is under way and Al Franken made up some serious ground in the first day.
Still, why is he contesting the above ballot?
More from StarTribune:
The bubble beside Norm Coleman’s name appeared to have both an X and a squiggle in it, but the Al Franken campaign wants [...]

So says political seer Nate Silver.
Apparently, he snapped up 43 net votes today to cut Coleman’s lead from 215 to 172. And in this first day of counting, right around 15% of the ballots have been counted, so Silver speculates that if this trend continues, Franken would gain 278 votes and beat Coleman by just [...]

Well, my home state definitely took its sweet damn time announcing this, but now it’s finally official that we picked Mac, which means we’ve picked the loser for only the 2nd time in the past 100 years.
Here’s more…
The narrow McCain Missouri victory, by just 3,902 votes out of 2,888,000 cast, means that Missouri sided [...]

Barack Obama beat John McCain in the capitol of very-Republican Utah:
Updated election results released Tuesday show that Salt Lake County voters favored Barack Obama over John McCain — but just barely — marking the first time in decades that a Democratic presidential hopeful won the state’s most populous county.
With the addition of more than 29,000 [...]

Three weeks after Election Day, Minnesota is finally getting around to figuring out who their next Senator will be:
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) – The largest-ever recount in Minnesota history has more than just voters in the state biting their nails.
An army of election workers was to begin a statewide recount Wednesday of more than 2.9 [...]

The Democrats picked up a seventh Senate seat last night when final results from Alaska showed Mark Begich defeating long-time Senator Ted Stevens:
Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens lost his job to Mark Begich on Tuesday, putting an end to the era of “Uncle Ted” as the dominant force in Alaska politics.
Begich, the Democratic mayor of Anchorage, [...]