Election Commentary: 175-70

Watching all this election hoopla on the cable network channels--CNN, MSNBC, FOX--has an aire of excitement to it. I favor CNN based soley on the fact that its jumbo televisions are the jumboest. I'm using my statistics from www.nytimes.com which has a sleek and cool interactive map that breaks the country down by county.

So the first hour and a half of election coverage much has been pretty uneventful: SC, OK, ARK, KY, GA going McCain and any state northeast of PA plus MI and MN going Obama.

The most interesting story lines thus far are, in no particular order:

1. The projection by many prognosticators of PA going Blue. D-PA Governor Ed Rendell projected nearly a half-million vote lead for Obama when all is said and done. Despite McCain's recent efforts to make the state a lynchpin for his campaign, it looks like Philadelphia and its suburbs made their voting clout felt in the state. Additiontionaly some groups that helped Obama: Hillaryophytes voted in impressive support of Obama (81%), despite the majority still upset about the primaries [and their certainty Obama will be assasinated] and 64% of union workers voted for Obama.

2. The senate races are nice little side story to the presidential race. The projections put Democrats breaking the 60 margin for an anti-filibuster Congress. One specific story, only because I'm here in NC: D-Kay Hagen defeated the incumbent R-Elizabeth Dole--probably due to Dole accusing Hagen of being a "Godless" heathenistic athiest.

3. Where will IN and VA go (leaning McCain)? And what about those troublesome states of OH and and FLA fall (leaning Obama)? Particularly with respect to OH and FLA, these two states will be keys to an Obama landslide or to a tighter race than most thought.

4. One of the news networks has mentioned people have already begun to file lawsuits after going to polls. Given the past two elections, maybe we should get used to these post-election lawsuits. Not very good for the nation's confidence in this country's election system.

5. Why isn't voting on a Saturday or Sunday? Absurd. And are these electionic voting machines really worth all the hassle? Do they make the process significantly easier compared to the potential costs and problems with these machines? How difficult is it for a committee to count ballots that we resort to sometimes faulty and sometimes tampered machines?

6. With an unprecedented number of voters this year, expect every campaign from here on out to follow the "Obama Campaign Plan," which has been almost flawless. Of course, however, it helps when you have the financing to run ads and put ground forces in nearly every state (which is an interesting topic in itself--what is it?: the money/ads/clout-->popularity or popularity-->money/ads/clout).

7. Texas is up for grabs! Wow. The people within those Texan cities there must really hate their former governor.

8. Finally--with a Democratically controlled Congress and Obama in the White House there is an enormous opportunity for this country to take a different path and get this nation back on track. But, equally, if not more, if this Congress and president-elect fail, there may be very, very serious repercussions. Not only politically, but as far as loss of confidence in our institutions, in our country, and in ourselves.