[General Battuta]

Ohio went for Obama. It's pretty much over now.

[Goober5000]

You haven't been disgruntled by Bush's phenomenal performance?

oh snap!

Incidentally, the only conservative thing Bush ever did was the tax cut.  In fact I remember in the run-up to the 2002 elections, shortly after the farm bill had been passed, there was a heated discussion on a few talk shows about the 11 major "liberal" achievements that Bush had already either pushed through or failed to oppose.

[Nuclear1]

And Texas goes to McCain, that was probably his last big gain for the night.

[NGTM-1R]

Ohio went for Obama. It's pretty much over now.

That's what Dewey said.

[Aardwolf]

Dewey, of "Dewey Defeats Truman" fame?

[NGTM-1R]

Indeed.

[Nuclear1]

40 minutes, and I think Obama's probably going to have it.

(That's when the West Coast polls close.)

[Mongoose]

*sigh*...guess it's my turn to be disgruntled for four years.  Not that I didn't see it coming.

You haven't been disgruntled by Bush's phenomenal performance?

"Phenomenal" or not, I still preferred it to the alternative.  Not that I'm expecting anyone in this audience to join me in this view.

[Solatar]

*sigh*...guess it's my turn to be disgruntled for four years.  Not that I didn't see it coming.

You haven't been disgruntled by Bush's phenomenal performance?

"Phenomenal" or not, I still preferred it to the alternative.  Not that I'm expecting anyone in this audience to join me in this view.

I'll join you but I'll be the only one.

[Goober5000]

It's too bad; we were all warned about the Obama juggernaut back when it might have been possible to do something about it.

[Bob-san]

*sigh*...guess it's my turn to be disgruntled for four years.  Not that I didn't see it coming.

You haven't been disgruntled by Bush's phenomenal performance?

"Phenomenal" or not, I still preferred it to the alternative.  Not that I'm expecting anyone in this audience to join me in this view.

I'll join you but I'll be the only one.

I'll join you as well. McCain winning this year was pretty much a pipe dream. Hopefully the party pulls back together.

[NGTM-1R]

"Phenomenal" or not, I still preferred it to the alternative.  Not that I'm expecting anyone in this audience to join me in this view.

If you mean Kerry, sure.

[Polpolion]

Obama won.

[IceFire]

Looks good...now all he needs is 8 years to try and have a go at fixing the terrible shape that the US is in right now.

[Nuclear1]

Well.

...Huh.

[Kosh]

It's too bad; we were all warned about the Obama juggernaut back when it might have been possible to do something about it.

Like what? Bush ran the country into the ground. While the economic mess isn't his fault (the blame for that goes to Greenspan), running massive deficits, financially bleeding us white in Iraq, and alienating our allies for the sake of pointless military adventurism

This was someone else on a blog commenting about a recent article Robert Kagan wrote about the US still being number 1:

Dan, I'm afraid I can't agree with you on this. True, the majority of people who talk about US decline do so more out of hope than expectation, but the US quite clearly will not be the most politically or militarily dominant power on earth 30 years from now. This is not because of a US 'decline' but because of the rise of other states, China, India and a united Europe foremost among them. Even talk about being 'no. 1' begs the question - no.1 at what? The population and land area of the US is such that it may always expect to be a major power, and, barring some catastrophe, the level of economic development found in the US will always be among the top 10 nations on earth, but neither of these guarantees a top placing in anything.

Robert Kagan does not actually give good supporting evidence for what he says - the figures he gives do show an American which is in decline relative to the rest of the world, the US's military spending is now going mainly on covering the costs of two wars which do nothing to increase its long-term strength. He talks a lot about allies, contrasting those gained through recent conflicts (Iraq and Afghanistan) to those lost to Soviet influence during the seventies, but misses the point that these hapless allies do nothing to increase American strength, and in fact are as much a drag on US strength as the USSR's 'fraternal allies' were in the seventies and eighties.

At the end of the 1890s people in Britain were very much worried about their main competitors. Whilst Britain was at this stage still the world's most pre-eminent power they were confronted by two great challenges. On the European mainland they were faced by the Central Powers, and across the Atlantic the growing power of the United States. Their answer to this was to engage in wars which, whilst important at the time, are little remembered anywhere except in the countries in which they were fought ( such as South Africa and the Sudan), to create alliances of dubious virtue (such as the one with Japan), and to get mixed up in a dispute with the US over the Venezuelan borders. Twenty years later Britain found itself in a titanic war against the Central Powers in defence of its French allies with only minimal help from the Japanese and with the oft-snubbed Americans keeping a respectful distance until the Central Powers forced them into the fight. The United States seems to be equally frittering away its 'unipolar moment', whilst the loss of China to communism sparked a witch-hunt for the traitors that "lost China", the loss of Russia to dictatorship (as ephemeral as democracy was in Yeltsin's Russia) has happened without any great introspection as to whether policy-makers in the US could have done anything to prevent it. Saying that the last eight years have been disastrous for US-European relations would hardly be an exaggeration, put simply, a good half of Europe is convinced that there is a significant portion of the US establishment that sees them as quasi-enemies - and all of this damage done in the building of a coalition 'of the willing' which essentially gave the US nothing it did not already have. In short, the US has been offending those allies from which it had the most to gain through building strong relations, and this was done so that the US could gain a paltry handful of third-world dictatorial client-states. This is not a winning formula.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

EDIT: link to origin if anyone wants to put it in proper context

[KappaWing]

Can someone tell my why everyone was so obsessed with Ron Paul?

In the primaries, I was hoping Dennis Kucinich would make it. Quite a longshot it was.

If I were old enough to vote, I would have voted for Ralph Nader, as he most closely matches my views.

Obama victory. Yay. At least Palin is now far away from any significant role. I can't stand provincial populists.

[General Battuta]

Yay!

[Scuddie]

Well, the way I see it, it's better to have someone in office that you have no foundation for trust than it is to have someone in office that you already distrust.

I prefer NRDS over NBSI politics, thank you.

Unfortunately, the Republicans don't see it that way .


EDIT:  Ron Paul is an icon of the kind of integrity and wisdom that the republican party once stood for.  Could that be why?

[Ford Prefect]