From glAMcookie's link, this
Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz to PEOPLE: "My parents met working for [Obama's running mate on one of his early campaigns]. If it weren't for Joe Biden, I would not exist as a human being. ... I am proud to be a part of history in the making."
Is intriguing to me. Are his folks from Delaware, I wonder???
Wonkette, on Nate Silver: So… Which Pollsters Live, Which Will Be Killed?
First, we must devote a section to your absolute favorite pretend boyfriend of late, the most famous person in the history of Internetting, the Messiah of Baseball Stastistics, the pale nerd (read: blogger) who manages to keep getting teevee invites, THE NEW PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Mr. Nate Silver of the FiveThirtyEight math site. He is not a pollster. But he likes polls, a lot.
Nate Silver taught numbers how to fuck. His final prediction was 349 electoral votes for Obama and a 6.1 percentage point win in the popular vote. At the moment, both of those numbers are exactly correct. Nate Silver lives. Oh but wait! The final tally will likely throw North Carolina in Obama’s column, giving him 364 electoral votes in the end. Hmm… Nate Silver dies.
I was impressed by how right Nate was.
Trust the baseball geek, save the world.
Lisah- Pete Wentz's mom and dad met in Washington, DC as legislative aides.
It is explained here along with an adorable picture of him as a toddler with Joe Biden and his mom [link]
thanks, Sophia! That's just adorable.
Todd Alcott thinks we should all get puppies:
I called Sam (7) and Kit (5) into "the big room" to watch Obama's historic speech. [...] When Obama opened by saying that, now that he's president-elect, his daughters will "get the puppy," Kit's ears perked up. Obama's daughters get a puppy? Does that mean that she also gets a puppy?
And so "getting a puppy" became the joke in the room for the rest of the speech. When Obama thanked David Plouffe for the astonishing job he did on what was perhaps the best-run campaign in history, I added "David, you get a puppy." When he spoke of the 106-year-old woman from Alabama who had witnessed a hundred years of American history, I expected him to add "You get a very special puppy." When he acknowledged that this victory belongs to the hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Grant Park, someone else chimed in: "You all get puppies." A number of folks in the room were substantial Obama donors, and soon they were all asking about if they would get puppies.
[link]
It sounds like our boyfriend 538 had a collective inkling about Indiana, even, but predicted based on the polls.
"A blast from the past", or, "amazing how much can change in four years":
Realignment
Fred Barnes, circa November 22, 2004, in "Realignment, Now More Than Ever":
KARL ROVE SAID LAST YEAR that the question of realignment--whether Republicans have at last become the majority party--would be decided by the election of 2004. And it has. [...] Rove says that under Bush a "rolling realignment" favoring Republicans continues, and he's right. So Republican hegemony in America is now expected to last for years, maybe decades. [...]
What hasn't emerged is the much-touted "emerging Democratic majority." It remains a theory of liberal analysts John Judis and Ruy Teixeira, based on their take on voting patterns of women, urban professionals, and Hispanics. The theory faltered in 2002 and even more this year. [...]
Rove, leery of claiming too much for Republicans, said on Meet the Press on November 7 that "there are no permanent majorities in American politics." This is true, but some last longer than others. Burnham, however, sees little chance of change for years. For Republicans to slip into minority status again, he says, it would take a monumental party split like that in 1912 or "a colossal increase in the pain level" of Americans as happened with the Great Depression. Neither is likely.
BTW, thanks Sue, Fred Pete and Jesse for your birthday wishes!
(Olbermaan) How's that plan working out, Sparky?(/Olbermann)