Behind the Ad: Sarah Palin isn't going away, and that's a good thing

By Richard K. Barry

(Another installment in our extensive "Behind the Ad" series.)

Who: Sarah Palin.

Where: Sarah PAC website.

What's going on: In an ad called "Loaded for Bear," Palin makes it clear that she expects to play a role in the 2014 election. It's a slick piece, splicing together all sorts of comments to give the impression that Palin is still a massive force in American politics.

My sense is that it's over for the former Gov. of Alaska. Even Fox News gave her the heave-ho, reasoning that her 15 minutes were up.

The truth is that party nominations are frequently won by energizing smaller numbers of the party faithful. Palin is good at that. Her fans will certainly point to her early support for Republicans Ted Cruz of Texas and Deb Fischer of Nebraska, both of whom won their Senate races.

My guess is that her efforts will help to blow up the Republican party real good, like it needs the help (with apologies to the spirit of John Candy and Joe Flaherty).

The GOP is losing the culture war

By Richard K. Barry

It is sometimes hard to understand where the GOP thinks it stands these days. On the one hand, they put out a 100 page document explaining how they screwed up in 2012 and what needs to change. On the other hand, they seem to think they were right on the facts but were unable to press the right emotional buttons to get the electorate to come along.

This is how Reince Preibus, RNC Chair, put it:

We're not losing the issues on the math. We're not losing the issues on spending, and debt, and jobs, and the economy. Those are total winners for us.

What we found in the election is that while we're winning those arguments on spending and math, we're losing this sort of emotional, cultural vote out there in presidential elections.

What I find so richly ironic is that it was the Republicans who cared not at all for facts in 2012, but rather ran their entire campaign on emotional appeals to the darker side of human nature, whether racism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, fear of the less well-off, or just a generalized fear of the other.

Republicans lost because Americans saw through their sad attempt at emotional manipulation. The man with the odd name is right about one thing: The GOP is losing the emotional, cultural battle. Damn good thing, too.

 

The cost of democracy

By Richard K. Barry

An organization called MapLight has published the average amount it cost in the 2012 campaign to run for the House or Senate:

• House members, on average, each raised $1,689,580, an average of $2,315 every day during the 2012 cycle.

• Senators, on average, each raised $10,476,451, an average of $14,351 every day during the 2012 cycle.

According to The Week, Maine Sen. Angus King got away the cheapest, raising about $3 million in campaign contributions:

Progressive icon and Wall Street critic Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) raised $42.5 million, by far the highest total of any 2012 winner, in her bid to unseat Republican Scott Brown. That sum was more than twice the amount raised by all but two other victorious candidates in Senate or House races, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio), who raised about $26 and $22 million, respectively.

Read more »

What happens when Republicans lose

By Michael J.W. Stickings

From the Times:

Though it has been 45 days since voters emphatically reaffirmed their faith in Mr. Obama, the time since then has shown the president's power to be severely constrained by a Republican opposition that is bitter about its losses, unmoved by Mr. Obama's victory and unwilling to compromise on social policy, economics or foreign affairs.

For more on how House Republicans forget/ignore/disregard the past, including 2004, see Angry Bear. Otherwise, here's what's going on:

-- When Republicans lose an election, they pout like bratty little children when you tell them no, the country be damned; when Democrats lose an election, they cave in to Republican demands and think that the only way to win ever again is to embrace Republican policies.

-- When Republicans win an election, they seek to impose their far-right ideological will on the entire country even on issues they didn't campaign on; when Democrats win an election, they sell out their progressive base and reach out to Republicans in hopes of securing bipartisan (i.e., Republican-friendly) consensus.

Read more »

Still worried about Kerry

By Frank Moraes 

Jonathan Bernstein at The Plum Line blog encourages us, "Don't Worry Too Much About John Kerry's Senate Seat." I not exactly worried about this, but I have been opposed to it. Of course, that was when Kerry was going to be moving to the Pentagon. Moving to State seems like a better deal, but I still think it is a questionable idea.

Bernstein argues mostly that Scott Brown isn't that big a threat. First, he says that Brown is not the favorite to win the special election next summer. But as reported yesterday by his own paper, "Scott Brown Would Win Special Election Today." That's just a poll nine months out, of course. But exit polling of the 6 November election showed that the people still liked Brown by a lot; they just liked Warren more. So Brown has at least a decent chance to take Kerry's seat.

Bernstein says not to worry because the seat comes up for re-election in 2014. So the Democrats would have a second chance to defeat Brown. This strikes me as a very weak argument. If Brown wins the special election, he will almost certainly win the off-year election.

Read more »

Familiarity breeds support, at least in politics

By Richard K. Barry

Bloomberg reported yesterday that 90% of House members and 91% of U.S. Senators who sought reelection in 2012 were successful. This is a better return rate than was achieved in 2010 when 85% of House members and 84% of senators seeking reelection were able to win back their seats.

We all know that incumbency is a very powerful thing. It's just funny when approval ratings for our national institutions are so low, we still send the same folks back to their old jobs. 

I guess that means Americans may not like other people's representatives, but they like their own just fine. 

The biggest "missed story" of the 2012 campaign?

By Richard K. Barry

Hey guys, you're not the only ones paying attention.

I'm really not sure how to read this story, which, before I weigh in, I should explain. Dan Froomkin at Huffington Post references a couple of guys who have been around the political scene for some time thusly:

Post-mortems of contemporary election coverage typically include regrets about horserace journalism, he-said-she-said stenography, and the lack of enlightening stories about the issues.

But according to longtime political observers Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, campaign coverage in 2012 was a particularly calamitous failure, almost entirely missing the single biggest story of the race: Namely, the radical right-wing, off-the-rails lurch of the Republican Party, both in terms of its agenda and its relationship to the truth.

Mann and Ornstein are two longtime centrist Washington fixtures who earlier this year dramatically rejected the strictures of false equivalency that bind so much of the capital's media elite and publicly concluded that GOP leaders have become "ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition."

With all due respect to Mann and Ornstein, I don't think many critical-thinking observers missed the drift of the conservative movement. Yes, some mainstream news outlets did truck in the whole false equivalency thing, but a lot a people screamed about it and criticized, for example, CNN for exploring right-wing idiocies on things like climate change and evolution as if these really were credible alternative views. 

Read more »

Hillary Watch 2016

By Richard K. Barry

My guess is that a lot of people will be trying to read the tea leaves when it comes to whether Hillary Clinton will or won't go for it in 2016.

The latest is a report by Politicker that Ms. Clinton took it upon herself to send hand-signed notes to Democratic candidates who fell short in their congressional races:

For example, Nate Shinagawa, who narrowly lost his challenge to GOP Rep. Tom Reed in Western New York, received a missive from Ms. Clinton two days after his defeat. In her letter, Ms. Clinton offered some supportive words and encouragement for Mr. Shinagawa's future political endeavors.

"You should be proud of your campaign and the dialogue you had with voters about the values we hold dear as Democrats," Ms. Clinton wrote. "Thank you for accepting the challenge of seeking public office and for your commitment to creating a better future for the American people."

Several sources have said that this is something new for Hillary Clinton, saying that as far as they knew she had not sent similar letters in the past.

Read more »

Discord among the Astroturf

By Mustang Bobby

Former Rep. Dick Armey is bailing on the Tea Party group he helped start:

Armey, the former House majority leader who helped develop and promote the GOP's Contract with America in the 1990s, tendered his resignation in an memo sent to Matt Kibbe, president and CEO of FreedomWorks, on November 30. Mother Jones obtained the email on Monday, and Armey has confirmed he sent it. The tone of the memo suggests that this was not an amicable separation.

[...]

In the email, Armey indicated that he wants nothing to do with FreedomWorks anymore. He asked that all user names, passwords, and security-related data created in his name be emailed to him by the close of business on December 4. He even insisted that FreedomWorks -- "effective immediately" -- was "prohibited" from using a booklet he authored. Was Armey's resignation a reaction to the recent election results? "Obviously I was not happy with the election results," he says. "We might've gotten better results if we had gone in a different direction. But it isn't that I got my nose out of line because we should've done better."

Armey declined to specify his disagreements with FreedomWorks. Asked if they were ideological or tactical, he replies, "They were matters of principle. It's how you do business as opposed to what you do. But I don't want to be the guy to create problems."

I don't know if this is a sign of a larger trend among the nutsery or just an internal difference at FreedomWorks, but it's not altogether unexpected after losing an election that they portrayed as the Most Important Election in the history of the world. They've been working on destroying the Democrats and Barack Obama for so long and not only did he get re-elected, the Democrats actually gained seats in the House and Senate.

They also spent a certifiable shitload of money to get nothing. Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate, spent more than $150 million of his own money, first in support of Newt Gingrich, then on other races, and crapped out. In Ohio, Josh Mandel spent about $23 a vote to lose to Sherrod Brown. So there has to be a lot of pissed-off people on the right, and it's natural that they start eating their own.

You want fries with that?

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

The sound of heads exploding on Wall Street

By Richard K. Barry

It is being reported that Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren, the arch-nemesis of big banks everywhere, is likely to be named to the Senate Banking Committee. 

According to The Boston Globe:

The appointment has not been formally announced by Senate leaders and will not be final until an official vote on assignments by the members. The pending appointment was described to the Globe by aides who requested anonymity because Senate Majority Leader Reid has not made a formal announcement.

You will recall that after Warren helped create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as part of the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory act, Senate Republicans threatened to block her appointment to head the agency. This led to her successful bid for a Senate seat all her own.

And now she's on the Senate Banking Committee.

Bwahahahaha!!!

Comeuppance

By Mustang Bobby

Back during the presidential campaign, I noted that one of the good things that could come out of it if President Obama was re-elected would be that folks like Karl Rove and Grover Norquist were beaten badly enough that they went home crying to their mamas. I was being metaphorical, but in a way it seems to be happening, at least to Mr. Norquist and his anti-tax pledge that held thrall over the Republicans:

Sixteen Republican incumbent Republicans and one incumbent senator who signed the pledge lost re-election, and a total of 56 House members or candidates and 24 senators or candidates lost. As a result, a growing number are abandoning the pledge.

The latest to join the trend is Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), one of the better-known sycophants in the party. He was preceded by Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), although there is doubt that he is any more likely to break with the pledge than he was in the past when it suited him to say it in order to get on TV.

What may be slowly dawning on these folks is that it might not be such a good idea any more to be bound to a man who dreamed up his no-new-taxes pledge when he was in middle school and who still uses the word "poopyhead" in his conversations.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

The biggest threat all along was Jon Huntsman. Thankfully, Republicans were too stupid to nominate him.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

After decades of trying, the Manchus finally crossed the Great Wall in 1644, taking Beijing and establishing the Qing Dynasty. They had an easier time of it than Huntsman in the Republican Party.

The WSJ's Washington Wire is reporting that early on the Obama campaign was worried about one really appealing Republican in particular: 

Jon Huntsman is the former Utah governor who took a moderate stance in a GOP field that leaned to the right. He didn't get very far in the Republican nomination fight, but team Obama viewed him as a serious candidate who could pose real problems in a general election. 

"We were honest about our concerns about Huntsman," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said at a Politico breakfast event Tuesday. "I think Huntsman would have been a very tough candidate."

As for the president, he liked Mr. Huntsman enough to appoint him ambassador to China in 2009. Mr. Messina, who was working in the White House at the time, said he helped Mr. Huntsman win Senate confirmation.

"As someone who helped manage his confirmation for Chinese ambassador, he's a good guy," Mr. Messina said. "We looked at his profile in a general election and thought he would have been" a formidable candidate.

Absolutely. In fact, I wrote a post way back in June 2011 called "Huntsman the Formidable."

Don't get me wrong, I never thought it was going to be him. The Republican Party is just too extreme right now, too ideologically absolutist, to go with someone like Huntsman.

This is the party, after all, that tossed aside conservative-but-not-conservative-enough Dick Lugar in Indiana, who would have been a shoe-in for re-election, and ended up with Dick "pregnancies from rape are a gift from God" Mourdock, who lost badly in what this year was a solidly red state, a race that was his to lose. A party that was so uncomfortable with Mitt Romney that it flirted seriously with the embarrassing likes of Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum before finally settling, reluctantly, on the guy who would end up losing. It was not going to get behind a guy, however conservative, who refused to kowtow to the far right, who exposed Republican ignorance, who was just too sane and civil for the current Republican zeitgeist.

Not in 2012. Absolutely not. He just had way too many strikes against him, as I noted here:

Not that Republicans will ever nominate him, mind you. They're too stupid to know what's good for them, and Huntsman just isn't the right sort of Republican for 2012, what with the party getting ever more extreme, particularly with the rise of the Tea Party, and old-school establishment figures, not to mention moderates, or those who just aren't conservative enough for the extremists, even those with a single questionable mark on their record, being purged from its ranks by the right-wing Bolsheviks who run the show.

I wrote a post way back in January 2011 called "If I were Obama, I'd be worried about Huntsman." In retrospect, I was wrong. Obama had nothing to be worried about. Huntsman was never really a threat.

I was actually talking up the Huntsman thing even earlier, with a post in May 2009 called "Huntsman 2012?" What did I say then? "Huntsman may make us all a little queasy, but, thankfully, Republicans are just too stupid to know what's good for them."

He was undeniably formidable, as I wrote in June 2011:

[T]here's no denying he's an awfully impressive man. I might even go so far as to say he could very well be Reagan 2.0, or if not that, given how transformative Reagan was for movement conservatism, at least a leading Republican in the Reagan mold. He just seems to have it all, even the somewhat more tolerant and even liberal positions on some social issues that show him to be a man of the times, not a man against the times, a conservative who is open to progress and change while remaining committed to his fundamental beliefs. Perhaps he could be zeitgeist conservative, the forward-looking proponent of conservatism at a time of massive global change.

Alas:

But not likely, not in today's Republican Party, which would likely rather expel him that have him as its leader.

Yes, Republicans really are too stupid to know what's good for them. Which is good for us, but not good for Huntsman, who will have to wait until 2016, or forever, to make his mark in a party that has abandoned him and all those like him.

 

Do you get what I'm saying?

 

Republicans. Stupid. Huntsman. Never.

Allen West, meet dustbin of history

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It says a lot about Allen West's character (or lack thereof) that he refuses to accept defeat. But the facts are the facts:

Florida Rep. Allen West's reelection prospects grew dimmer Sunday, as a recount of early ballots showed him falling further behind his Democratic opponent.

Democrat Patrick Murphy, a 29-year-old construction company executive, gained 242 votes after the St. Lucie County Supervisor of Elections completed its re-tabulation, increasing his lead to more than 2,100 votes over West, a tea party hero. Murphy's lead is just outside the 0.5 percent margin that would trigger an automatic district-wide recount under Florida law.

West won a legal battle Friday when the office's canvassing board decided to re-tally all early votes that had been cast. The Republican had argued that those votes had been accidentally double-counted on election night and provided a winning margin to Murphy.

Obviously, West and his campaign were just full of shit. And it's rather hilarious that he's now even further behind.

As Doug Mataconis writes at Outside the Beltway: "The odds of West being able to make up this margin in a recount are infinitesimal at this point, and his advisers would most assuredly know that. At this point, the ball in his court. Do the honorable thing and accept defeat, or continue to fight a battle that he will ultimately lose."

I would just note that honor isn't exactly one of West's strengths. He's one of the most despicable people in politics.

Good riddance.

Republican Power is White Power

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Jon Chait wrote an excellent post the other day on the emerging (or emerged, if you want to be more optimistic about it) Democratic majority. I recommend the whole thing, but this in particular stuck out to me:

What is going on is a change, rooted mainly in demographics, that is making the traditional conservative formula obsolete. The New Deal established a positive role for the federal government in taming the excesses of the market, and the consensus was strong enough that even Republican presidents didn't challenge it. But the politics of the New Deal began to fall apart in the mid-sixties over race, when middle-class whites began to see the Democratic agenda as transferring resources from people like themselves to undeserving blacks. The political strength of conservatism, which is not the same thing as its intellectual merits, has been its sublimated cultural appeal to white America. Starting in the mid-sixties, American politics entered a three-decade-long period of conservative dominance.

The pendulum has been swinging back, in part because "Bill Clinton helped Democrats to undercut the appeal of white backlash politics by repudiating racially tinged liberal positions on crime and welfare," essentially making the Democratic Party "safe" for soft racists again, but also because white America generally has been moving leftward along with the rest of the country.

But it's pretty clear that racial (and racist) politics is still a significant driving force in the Republican Party. Just look at what's been going on this week, with Romney blaming Obama's "gifts" to minorities (among others) and Ryan blaming urban (dog-whistle-speak for minorities) voters for their defeat. (And, much lower down the GOP hierarchy, the chairman of Maine's Republican Party talking about those "dozens, dozens of black people who came in and voted on Election Day.") And who can forget Bill O'Reilly on election night lamenting the demise of the white establishment?

One could go on and on. (Jon Stewart got into it last night, nothing that the perceived threat to whites, and specifically to the white establishment, Mr. O'Reilly, used to be the Irish.)

There has been a lot of discussion of demographics since the election, including changes to the ethnic composition of the country likely to help the Democrats going forward. But the other side of that, as has been clear for some time, is that the Republican Party is increasingly the party of white America, and more specifically of white rural America, a party stuck in the past, a dominantly white past, and completely at odds with where the country is headed. Yes, the country seems to be getting more and more liberal (e.g., on marriage equality), but it's also becoming less and less white. And that portends utter disaster for the GOP, which is why some, like Bobby Jindal, are rejecting Romney's ridiculous (and racist) explanation and seeking to move the party in a different direction.

But any such effort will take time, if it ever succeeds at all. The Republican Party is still the party of the Southern Strategy, after all, and racism pervades not just the ranks of the party's elected officials but the highest ranks of movement conservatism. Indeed, as Conor Friedersdorf wrote shortly after the election, Republicans must choose between Rush Limbaugh and minority voters.

What will they choose? Your guess is as good as mine. 

The wrong reasons

By Mustang Bobby

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), also the losing vice presidential candidate with Mitt Romney, gave an interview to a local station in Wisconsin and summed up why they lost:

"I think the surprise was some of the turnout, some of the turnout especially in urban areas, which gave President Obama the big margin to win this race," said Ryan to local station WISC-TV in his first post-election interview... Ryan, though, said that the election was not a referendum on his budget proposals and ideas on reforming entitlement programs.

"I don't think we lost it on those budget issues, especially on Medicare — we clearly didn't lose it on those issues," he said.

Nice dog-whistle there with the "urban areas" comment; we'd have won if all those minorities — y'know, the folks whose votes we were trying to suppress — hadn't turned up.

And yes, Romney-Ryan did lose on the budget issues, because a combined 60% of those polled at the exits said they wanted to see tax rates increased on the rich or for everyone.

Mr. Ryan hedged his bets in the election and also ran for his seat in Wisconsin and won, so he'll be around for a while. I suspect the next time we'll hear from him is when he takes a little trip to Iowa about a year from now. 

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Church is out: The demise of the religious right

By Mustang Bobby

One result of the election that goes beyond just counting the votes:

Christian conservatives, for more than two decades a pivotal force in American politics, are grappling with Election Day results that repudiated their influence and suggested that the cultural tide — especially on gay issues — has shifted against them.

[...]

"Millions of American evangelicals are absolutely shocked by not just the presidential election, but by the entire avalanche of results that came in," R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Louisville, Ky., said in an interview. "It's not that our message — we think abortion is wrong, we think same-sex marriage is wrong — didn't get out. It did get out.

"It's that the entire moral landscape has changed," he said. "An increasingly secularized America understands our positions, and has rejected them."

Yes, and it's about time, too.

I don't have a problem with religion and religious folk having a point of view about morals. I don't even object to them having lobbyists in Washington or state capitals to make their points to people in power. What I do not like is having religion turned into political power and Biblical tenets written into law, especially when they're used to oppress one particular group of citizens.

So if America is rejecting the "moral landscape" as it has been constructed by those that would break down the barrier between church and state, turn back the clock on women, and deny the basic rights of citizenship to the gay community, that's a good thing.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Kerry to the Pentagon, Rice to Foggy Bottom?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

WaPo:

President Obama is considering asking Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) to serve as his next defense secretary, part of an extensive rearrangement of his national security team that will include a permanent replacement for former CIA director David H. Petraeus.

Although Kerry is thought to covet the job of secretary of state, senior administration officials familiar with the transition planning said that nomination will almost certainly go to Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

I have enormous respect for Senator Kerry and would love to see him get a senior post in the Obama Administration. He'd be a fine SecDef. (And Rice would a fine successor to Hillary.)

But I have two big concerns:

First, Democrats would lose a key voice in the Senate, particularly on foreign and military policy. Then again, he's almost 69 years old. How much longer does he want to serve as a senator? Maybe four years at the Pentagon -- with the Afghan War drawing to a close, the U.S. continuing to face nebulous threats around the world (and requiring new strategies for dealing witht them), and the military in need of major reform -- would allow him to leave a greater mark.

Second, Democrats could lose Kerry's seat in the Senate, reducing their majority. Because while Scott Brown, still a credible figure (or at least still a big name) even after his big loss to Elizabeth Warren last week, may run for the Republicans, it's not clear who the Democrats have even in solidly Democratic Massachusetts to compete for the seat in a snap election. Sure, they'd find someone, but what if that someone turned out to be as incompetent as Martha Coakley (who ran a terrible campaign and lost to Brown in 2010)? Other than Kerry, the biggest Democratic figure in the state is Gov. Deval Patrick, who proved to be something of a superstar this year supporting Obama's re-election (particularly his outstanding speech at the DNC), and he's already in his second term (having won re-election in 2010), but he's already signalled he'd rather stay where he is. But maybe. Because if not, Scott Brown might very well be a senator again.

So basically I'm fine with Kerry leaving the Senate for the Pentagon, but I'd be a lot happier about it if the Democrats found a strong candidate to replace him.

Poor minorities must wait to vote

By Frank Moraes

The following graph comes from Up With Chris Hayes of data from the AFL-CIO. Part of this is just that America is a racist country. But another big part of this is the result of Republican efforts to stop Democratic-leaning voters. It is disgusting.

A riddle for Karl Rove

By Comrade Misfit

Q: What do you call the candidate who gets 270 electoral votes?

A: The winner.

Rove, you may recall, formed a Super PAC, American Crossroads, and collected well north of $300 million to help the Republicans retake the White House.*

President Obama won 332 electoral votes to Romney's 206. A 126-vote margin is not exactly chump-change results. Obama won the popular vote both times as well, something that Rove's candidate didn't do in 2000. Obama won more electoral votes than George W. Bush did in either of his elections. Going into the election, the only state that Romney won that was not seen as being firmly in his camp was North Carolina. But nobody really regarded North Carolina as one of the swing states this time. Obama won all of the swing states that were in play, to the point that he could have lost Ohio and Florida and still won.

I won't get into how everyone on the Republican side drank the Kool-Aid and ignored what the polling data was telling them. It is what one would expect from a party that prizes gut feelings and belief over hard numbers.

Rove's excuse for blowing close to $400 million boils down to this: It could have been worse.

How much worse? Obama shelled Romney. The Democrats, in spite of Rove's Super PAC, lost one Senate seat they held and picked up two they didn't. And Republican Super PAC spending so irritated the independent who won in Maine, Angus King, that he'll probably caucus with the majority.

In what reality does one take almost $400 million from people, deliver absolutely nothing in return, and not end up dead in the trunk of an old Crown Victoria on its way to the crusher?
____________________________________________
* Presumably he paid himself a really good salary for his efforts.

(Cross-posted at Just an Earth-Bound Misfit, I.)

At last: The end of Romney and West in Florida

By Mustang Bobby

From The Miami Herald:

President Barack Obama was declared the winner of Florida's 29 electoral votes Saturday, ending a four-day count with a razor-thin margin that narrowly avoided an automatic recount that would have brought back memories of 2000.

No matter the outcome, Obama had already clinched re-election and now has 332 electoral votes to Romney's 206.

The Florida Secretary of State's Office said that with almost 100 percent of the vote counted, Obama led Republican challenger Mitt Romney 50 percent to 49.1 percent, a difference of about 74,000 votes.

Karl Rove is running down the hall demanding to see proof.

Speaking of not giving up...

Firebrand GOP Rep. Allen West, whose made-for-TV rhetoric made him a prized voice of extreme conservatives, has been ousted by political newcomer Patrick Murphy, according to the state's vote count Saturday, but the incumbent was not planning to concede.

In complete but unofficial numbers, Murphy held a 2,442-vote lead in the District 18 race. His 50.4 percent of the vote was above the threshold for a recount, but West's campaign said they would press forward.

"We're simply not going to just walk away from the race until we see that the numbers add up," West campaign manager Tim Edson said.

Thirty years from now, I expect we'll find Mr. West holed up on some island in the Keys, still refusing to give up.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)