Today's Election-in-Process Talking Points

About Barack Obama:

1. If he gets above 50.1 percent it will be the highest dem pct since LBJ.
2. If he gets 54% it will be the highest pct for any non-incumbent candidate of either party since 1952.
3. If he simply comes in first, with any total, it will be four pop vote wins for dems in the past five cycles.
4. He should amass more votes than any other candidate ever, including reagan's 1984 standard.
5. He will be the winning candidate with the highest share of his votes coming from non-whites... and probably the candidate with the highest non-white share of all time.
6. By this evening 3/4 of American Jews will have voted for a guy whose middle name is Hussein: if we cannot use this lever for good in the Middle East, we do not deserve to be a superpower.

About John McCain:

1. We simply do not know what kind of president John McCain would make--it could be good, it could be very bad.
2. We do know what kind of president Sarah Palin would make--and we all should be eager to keep her as far away from the presidential line of succession as possible.
3. Yes, John McCain ran a dirty campaign. But it was a less dirty campaign than any Republican has run since... well, since the memory of man runneth (with the possible exception of Ford 1976). The difference this year was that--for some reason--this year a fraction of the mainstream press called them on it rather than ignoring it entirely.
4. The Republican candidates this year were all one or more of: (i) ideologically-blinded, (ii) incompetent, or (iii) risk-loving for its own sake and hence erratic. John McCain was (iii)--which makes him the best of the Republicans on offer this year.