It's an Obama Nation!

Credit where credit's due: the tenacious one appears to have predicted EVERY state correctly. NC and MO are still tight enough that they could flip. But for now, I'm money, baby. When all is said and done, I think #3's prediction of a 7 point pop vote spread will hold up (vs. my 8), but I got closer on the low % vote for third parties. Also, a pretty good record on Senate pics. Franken behind, but there will be a recount, I assume. And who could have guessed that Alaska would send back convicted felon Ted Stevens? Oh well. Good thing Palin stuck by him.

A couple of other points. First, how can we talk about this as a "post-racial" election when the dividing line was basically the confederacy? McCain won the "southern" parts of the country. Obama won the non-south and the parts of the south that are no longer so "south": northern Virginia, Yankee Florida, etc. NC was encouraging, though. That's a "new south" for you. The real meaning is that, thanks to that carpetbagger Bush, the "southern" politics that took over much of the rest of the nation in 1968 no longer has much of a hold outside the south.

Second, there's a lot of talk about whether this is a "center-right" country, despite evidence of a Dem sweep of Congress and White House. Steve Benen lamented the punditocracy's indifference to counter-evidence on this claim. But what he doesn't really get is this: for conservatives, this is not a claim based on empiricism but is instead made on identity politics. It has to do with how they've defined "American" in distinction from "European" (damned socialists!). Our being a right-leaning nation is a non-falsifiable claim, and it is one that mainstream journalists have largely internalized. That will not change any time soon.