Krugman:

What I mean by that is that for the past 14 years America’s political life has been largely dominated by, well, monsters. Monsters like Tom DeLay, who suggested that the shootings at Columbine happened because schools teach students the theory of evolution. Monsters like Karl Rove, who declared that liberals wanted to offer “therapy and understanding” to terrorists. Monsters like Dick Cheney, who saw 9/11 as an opportunity to start torturing people.

And in our national discourse, we pretended that these monsters were reasonable, respectable people. To point out that the monsters were, in fact, monsters, was “shrill.”

52% - 46% in the popular vote, nearly seven million votes ahead. In the electoral college, 349-173, with North Carolina still up in the air.

No margin of error this time around, no questions about Ohio, no fucking dimpled chads.

This is from a recent profile of Seymour Hersh:

[H]e is hopeful that Obama will pull it off, and if he does, for Hersh this will be a starting gun. ‘You cannot believe how many people have told me to call them on 20 January [the date of the next president’s inauguration],’ he says, with relish. ‘[They say:] “You wanna know about abuses and violations? Call me then.”

In a just world, his role in bringing Sarah Palin to the national stage would be a millstone around William Kristol’s neck, sinking at last whatever remains of his credibility as a commentator. And the justice would be poetic — Kristol is, of course, the son of Irving Kristol, but he first came to national prominence as “Dan Quayle’s brain.” A lightweight brought him in — wouldn’t it be nice to see a lightweight usher him out …

We’ve regarded our leaders with dread and anxiety for so long, it has come to seem like the normal state of things. It has become a chronic pain, so much a part of our lives that we only really notice it when it subsides — and suddenly the relief is so overwhelming it becomes a tangible thing.

After eight years of an administration whose actions have run the gamut from stupid to venal, we will have a rational president who believes in things like, say, science. Who can string a succession of words together into a coherent sentence.

I confess, if McCain had won, my despair for this country would have been absolute. Instead, the cloud we’ve all been living under for so very long begins to lift, this morning.

The Republicans tried to win with hate and fear and division, and instead they failed. Spectacularly, definitively, repudiated in a landslide. And you know what I hope, at this moment? That Joe the Plumber becomes a widely-used symbol for all that has been wrong with America. That tv commentators invoke his name as shorthand for the politics of stupidity — “Maybe Joe the Plumber thinks we need to put all the Danish-Americans in internment camps, but no rational person agrees!” — and a heartfelt chuckle is had by all, and no more need be said, so universal is the understanding.

I very much want that to be the legacy of Joe the Plumber.

Off to the wilderness with them all. I have no doubt they’ll claw their way back eventually, but at the very least we’ve bought ourselves some breathing room, some time to try to repair the damage they’ve done to the very foundations of this country.

and it hurts. Apparently not dreaming.

Been down so long, it’s hard to know how to react. But the sense of relief, that Sarah Palin will not be an elderly man’s heartbeat from the Oval Office, is palpable.

As is the sense that we’re in an entirely new game all of the sudden.

Hard to argue now that the majority of the population aren’t “real Americans” …

Yes.

America, you’ve restored my faith in you.

“Will I Am, I want to thank you for being with us via hologram tonight.”

How do these decisions get made? Was there really no one at CNN who had ever seen the first Star Wars movie? Did no one think, hmm, I wonder if this will make us the laughingstock of one of the most important evenings in American history?

The Fox News roundtable is discussing whether America is now a “center-left” country.

… shorter every cable pundit: “Not that he’s won yet, but what kind of president do you think Obama will be?”

I know where I’ll be tuning in to watch the election returns :

It’s election night, and CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer is in New York talking to an Obama campaign strategist in Chicago.

But instead of the split screen or window TV viewers might typically see during live remote interviews, the Obama spokesperson will be projected as a three-dimensional hologram, making it appear as if he or she is in the Manhattan studio with Blitzer. The network plans to conduct similar holographic interviews with representatives from the McCain campaign in Phoenix.

Thank goodness for that. If CNN didn’t provide some flashy special effects, we might get bored.

UPDATE : Hahahaha. It’s as dumb as I expected it to be :

Okay, maybe I won’t be watching CNN all night. I dunno if I can stand them interrupting their campaign coverage to gush over their new toys.