...I think you're reading way too much into Obama's victory.

If the economy had not been imploding, making the majority feeling so financially vulnerable, his chances of winning would have been greatly diminished.

Now, don't get me wrong -- I'm glad that he beat the senile McCain and Miss Alaska; but to assign to this election some sort of "victory of the American spirit" is delusional. It's all about the economy, stupid.

LBJ won an astonishing 61.1% of the popular vote -- 9% more than Obama -- and a mere 4 years later, we got stuck with Tricky Dick.

So put down the bong and just be glad that we've got the next four years to try to undo the damage wrought by Bush. And don't ever be so naïve as to think that America has finally seen the light. Under the right set of circumstances, the majority will be just as happy to goose-step.

Greetings once again, my old friend.

re: It remains to be seen whether it will bleed to death or suffer irreversible crippling from other wounds inflicted by the corporatist Bushite radical right.

I'm afraid that while we've finally elected a good Captain, he's taking the helm of Titanic.

Check out this financial newsletter, which lays out the economic state of affairs fairly accurately:

Hayman Advisors

This deflationary bust will take MANY YEARS and MANY BANKRUPTCIES to play out. We are but one year into the mother of all credit crunches and two years into a housing decline. Don’t be seduced by anyone telling you that “all will be fine” anytime soon.

http://tinyurl.com/6gz5hn

In my opinion, they're optimists.

...is that you have an inadequate lover.

;)

You've got to hand it to the various right wing gasbags: They've beaten all the odds by being wrong every single time they've opened their pie-holes.

Heckuva job, y'all.

Elections are all on the state and local level. Insofar as the Presidential election, each state is only selecting its electors, who then vote in the Electoral College.

Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution applies.

The Federal Election Commission's role is strictly to administer and enforce the Federal Election Campaign Act, which governs the financing of federal elections.

The Federal Government has no power to tell states how to conduct an election. It can enforce the Voting Rights Act, but cannot dictate how ballots are constructed, etc.

Regarding Congressional elections, Article 1 Section 4 of the Contitution applies.

When the House Democratic majority passed a military appropriations bill slated for Iraq, a clause that would have prohibited an attack on Iran without a vote in Congress was deleted at the instigation of Emanuel and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. When Rep. John Murtha presaged the popular rebellion against the Iraq war by coming out against it in no uncertain terms, Emanuel urged Pelosi to refrain from endorsing his call for withdrawal, arguing that it would hurt the Democrats politically.

http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13728

Let's hope Rahm is there merely to carry out Obama's agenda, and not to shape it.

It isn't. In fact, it's pretty dumb.

This is written by the same knucklehead who tried to justify America's murderous criminal enterprise in Vietnam in his book, 'Vietnam the Necessary War'.

'nuff said.

In the euphoria surrounding the final nail in the coffin of the Bush Horror, as it will be henceforth known, too many Democrats are falling for the belief that this election represents some sort of cosmic political shift, when in reality it all boils down to the economy. Absent the economy tanking, it would've been a dead heat. Even as it is, with two failed wars, the egregious abuses of executive power, the abrogation of treaties and blithe rejection of long-standing international law, the Bill of Rights in tatters and the abject failure of the Moron-in-Chief and his political party in just about every matter foreign and domestic, 48% of voters would still have been quite happy to let it all continue -- with Palin a heartbeat away from the nuclear trigger, to boot. This sobering fact alone should scare the bejesus out of all of us, you betchya.

While the Democrats may enjoy an edge in voter registration, it is the infamous independent/swing voter who determines elections. This time around, because of the dire state of economic affairs, the Democrats prevailed. But given a different set of circumstances, the swingers could just as easily move to the other side.

And, I can assure you, the right wing gasbags are hard at work doing everything they possibly can to undermine Obama and assassinate his character. If these people have proven one thing, it's that the more hard evidence that proves that they're dead wrong, the more they believe they're right. Already, I have read rants on financial blogs blaming the incipient depression on Obama. It's like, to them, Bush and the last 8 horrible years never even existed. In the same way that Clinton was their perpetual whipping post for all of their own mistakes, it's now Obama's turn.

We're not dealing with sane people here, ya know. They're the same ones who derided the "reality-based community", remember?