US elections

What went wrong for the Democrats, what to expect now, and why Obama isn’t done yet

Each of us has two countries: our own and America. When America has an election, it is as much the whole world’s, or nearly so, for America is our laboratory, the place where all our hopes and ideals about democracy are put on trial, and as such we all have a direct stake in the outcome — not just because of what it might mean for American foreign policy or Canada-US relations, but because we are all invested in the United States: intellectually, emotionally, spiritually.

Let’s see, you have an historic election taking place down south, the results of which will echo across the planet and will likely have an effect on the vast majority of your readership.

“Well, I think he’s very thin-skinned. I think that is what was clear to me in 2000. I actually regard him as a very unpleasant man, and I don’t say that lightly. There’s a lot of politicians who are sort of angry and slightly deranged. Al Gore, for example, when you see him campaign, certainly the last couple of years, seems to have pretty much flown the coop. And when I saw Al Gore at close quarters campaigning, one could recognize the sort of human side to him. McCain, I think, is a very different kettle of fish. I think he is someone who is very thin-skinned, very vain, and has a sort of cavalier attitude to big questions, particularly Constitutional questions. So I think he is someone who in fact, the more you know him, the less you warm to the idea of having him…I said rather, I said at one point, you know, he’d be our version of President Ahmadinejad, the crazy guy with his finger on the nuclear button. And I think there’s actually quite a bit of truth in that.”

Did anyone actually move from the United States to Canada in 2004 out of disgust with the Bush re-election? They may be moving home soon. I hear it’s a buyer’s market in real estate:

Just guess where this Obama ad is playing. No, guess. Go ahead and guess!!

CNN is giving one-quarter of its screen to the actual primary-night coverage and three-quarters to John King randomly doodling on the touch-screen. For, like, the last half-hour. Anderson Cooper and some talking head are doing the talking-head thing, tucked over on the left side of the screen, and King is randomly doing his Tom-Cruise-in-Minority-Report shtick, scrunching the map down with his thumb and forefinger, shifting county maps back and forth, scribbling with the Glowing Green Finger. On most of the screen. A month after CNN put the touch-screen on the map (and vice versa), they have now fetishized it past irrelevance and into annoyance.