I read these exit polls. Please explain why white med go for McCain.

I have my own ideas. One, he tells us he's a war hero and deserves to be President. I suspect McCain gets a large verteran's vote, just because he has a record. However, I am aware of the argument that McCain is actually very poor on veteran's issues. Does the veteran's issue persuade white men?

Are white men still persuaded by the strong Republican/ weak Democrat argument that Glenn G argued in his last book? Why would they be particularly receptive to this even when there are other groups that did not seem to pay any attention at all to it?

Are white men more impressed with older authority types and less in youth. Is age any factor at all for white men or anyone else?

Maybe there's a certain amount of inertia. They have voted for Republicans before, so they will vote for Republicans in the future. It saves them from thinking or being engaged in the elesction's arguments?

I am not sure what you are saying, Glenn. You point to how polls came out better for Dems this time than expected, and say that this evidence counts against the claim that Republicans fix elections.

I don't believe the results of this election , exit polling, or even evidence gathered about voting problems, or lack of them, proves that Repubs don't fix elections by suppressing votes.

One can imagine that there's been a lot of light shown on vote counting and the problems of electronic voting. They may not want to show their hand in these conditions. The fact that there are theoretical problems should be enough to justify a lot of money, time, and effort expended to make voting fair and first world.

I was under the impression that political observers were telling us that the two parties, Democrat and Republican, were more or less one party with two wings. The basis for this argument involved the fact that the large donors for both parties were pretty much the same corporations and business groups. The fact that there were small individual donors might give one party or the other a distinctive flavor, but the fact is, it's all one animal at the moment.

Now, when the politicians tell us they are going to become less partisan, they are saying that the policies of each party are becoming more and more similar because of the increasing influence of their big donors and the decreasing influence of the small "spicey" donations.

I suppose this is why there was very little disagreement about the wars. Both parties support them. This is why there is so little disagreement about torture, surveillance of the population, and the general gutting of the Constitutional framework of our democracy. All of these "reforms" are pushed by both parties because they are in the interest of their donor base.

If there have been any recent squabbles in Congress or between Congress and the President, mostly they have been generated by disagreements within the corporations. The disagreements have been about how to divide up the spoils of the country so that each group is able to rip off as much as possible.

These facts seem incontrovertible and not surprising.

You said this,

"...I intend to wait and judge Obama on the policies he pursues, not the administrators he appoints to carry out those policies."

One can hope that what people do can be an improvement over what one can expect by who they are....I was recently chastized for trying to point out the serious fractures within the broad coalition of voters and interest groups that supported Obama. I wanted to have people now try to come up with some workable resolutions to the ones they care about. I was told that it was too soon to worry about any of that because, as they said, Obama is not yet President. However, I think it will be late for Progressives to have input let alone influence if they wait until Obama starts revealing his policies.

For example, I expect the Obama people to go for the Clinton/Bush foreign policy choices. Let's see...if there's someone in a country we don't like, don't send in the marines, think carefully, and send in a cruise missle.

I understand that Obama voted for FISA and about that I expect him to not change his mind, nor pursue any Bush era miscreants. That will all be old news.

As for the economy...trillions of dollars will be owed and spoken for by the Bush administration efforts to "help the economy" though we will find, no doubt, that all of it will be useless spending to the American people. Obama will be unable to address any of that as "criminal" or even "unwise" because his own team will pretty much agree that corporate welfare needs to be done.

I suspect Glenn is correct in saying that Obama is a centrist and always has been. It was naive to believe that he would buck the system in any major way. However, he will have to because the system has become toxic to the people. The whole idea of opposing FDR as a "traitor to his class" was that some people thought it was more important to support the rich than figure out a way to help the whole country. Hasn't Glenn pointed out Obama is now putting together a team likely to support their class?