There’s a lot of energy out in the blogosphere—and by anecdotal accounts, in the real world, too—from people who are dedicated to understanding this election, and especially from those who aren’t happy with the results. Bloggers are responding to the recent unpleasantness with humor, anger, righteous indignation, and incisive analysis. Every post I read is dead on, and each misses the mark. We’re still too close to the election, I think, to understand it properly, but we can start to grasp it. #

I’ve got some personal thoughts that I’m working up, myself. I think, however, that this is the last one of these round-ups I’ve got in me for a while. I’ll still post, but I’m going to do what I should have done a couple of days ago and take the advice of First Draft’s Athenae to step away for a few days. Some perspective will do me good. If I don’t get back to you for a while, Digby, First Draft, Fafblog and The Poor Man are doing some first-rate stuff. They’re well worth checking on a regular basis. #

Back soon. Enjoy: #

It was a close election #

• Kevin Drum flips the meme.
• Sisyphus Shrugged points to some solid Kerry constituencies and suggests that this election may be a one-off. Referring to the higher number of Republican votes he says, “This isn’t a trend. It’s a ceiling.”
• Bush won by the smallest margin since 1916. (First Draft) We want a divorce #

• C.B. Shapiro makes a modest proposal. (Boing Boing)
• Atrios provides some supporting evidence. (Since he’s gone on a blog holiday, you’ll have to hit the main site, then scroll to the Tax Fairness Act of 2005.)
• Ogged cites irreconcilable differences.
• Bug Greg Knauss is still trying to hold the family together. (Waxy) This could get ugly #

• Orcinus has noticed the rise in ugly rhetoric, the intolerance and hate.
• And there’s no reason to believe that things will be any less restrained in D.C. (Talking Points Memo) Panic #

• Ken Layne is freaked out by Rove’s re-election strategy. (Shrillblog)
• Localroger has a timely look at It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis, a warning to the US against creeping fascism. (Kuro5hin)
• Another Kuro5hin article opines the Failure of the American Experiment. A bit premature, but I was fascinated by the idea that our country works better when states rights are stronger, allowing citizens to gravitate to states where the laws are more suited to their beliefs. Don’t Panic #

• No need to panic, just dig in and work. (First Draft)
• The Democratic Leadership Council has a pretty clear-eyed assessment of what went wrong and how to start preparing for next time. You can get there from here. (New Donkey)
• We’ve been here before, and we’ll get by. (The Poor Man)
• Do Something. (The Talent Show)
• We don’t need to change course. We’ve just gotta feed the boilers. (Hullabaloo) See also, The Poor Man’s Hammer of Truth. It’s the the terror, stupid; or, the canard of “Moral Issues” #

• The Democrats did not lose this election on moral issues, Paul Freedman explains. (via Kevin Drum)
• We in the blogosphere may have missed that the real ground war was going on out of our view in the churches and meeting halls. (The Poor Man)
• MUST READ: You think the Middle East is going to be impressed by our cowboy swagger? Check this out, and tell me we’re going to win a fanatical war with these folks. These guys make Karl Rove look like Ghandi.
• If conservatives expect their candidates to deliver on the Moral Issues thing, they’re going to remain sorely disappointed. And they better not look too deeply at their candidates. (Hullabaloo)
• Digby’s guest blogger gives up the fight.

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Saturday, November 6th, 2004 @ 5:53 pm Politics Matters
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