You can tell that an election's going to be interesting when the networks don't call a winner 2.5 seconds after the polls close. CNN would only say that their exit polls show Edwards result as "surprisingly strong" and that Dean will finish a "distant, distant third". Fox was more specific, showing exit polling with Kerry getting 39%, Edwards 34% and Dean 18%, which is indeed much tighter than was expected after the last polls.
So as far as we know right now, at around 9:15pm, there's not going to be anything for Dean to cling to in Wisconsin. He should shut it down, now, and not risk alienating the rest of the party.
CNN is now showing 1% of the vote counted Edwards 40 / Kerry 39 / Dean 16 -- that seems unlikely to hold up.
9:53 CNN and MSNBC projecting Kerry as the winner, but the counted votes (23%) have both Kerry and Edwards at 38%, with Edwards ahead by a hundred votes or so.
BTW, Wolfie keeps saying it's "almost a third of the vote" -- apparently he doesn't know that 1/3 is 33%.
11:30 With 85% in, Kerry 39% / Edwards 35% / Dean 18%. CNN is reporting signs that Dean is preparing to shut things down. This puts us pretty much where I hoped we'd be, and it's a win-win situation. Kerry gets to claim a win, while Edwards gets momentum from a suprisingly strong finish. Dean will drop out (or fall away, which is pretty much the same thing), leaving lots of media attention on Kerry v. Edwards for the next two weeks. That's two more weeks of two candidates slamming George Bush, two more weeks of talking about Democratic policies and programs, two more weeks to remind people how bad things are right now, two more weeks in which Kerry gets field tested as a candidate. Edwards seems, from what I've seen tonight, to be commited to running against Kerry without slagging him off,which means he won't be doing Karl Rove's work for him, and he preserves the possibility of Kerry/Edwards.
This, it seems to me, really is the best of all possible worlds right now.
11;50 BTW, I realized in the middle of an e-mail discussion this afternoon with Kevin Hayden (of The American Street) that's there's really no reason for Kerry to announce his vice presidential preference early. Presumably, one selects a running mate for what that person brings to the ticket. Geographical balance is often cited, or the ability to win particular "battleground" states for their votes in the Electoral College, but they also provide additional ammunition to fight a particular battle. Clark, for instance, would give Kerry even more juice to argue national security issues against Bush, whereas Edwards provides more on economic issues. So, if the choice was just between these two guys (and we know that it isn't, nor should it be), which one you pick rather commits the campaign to focus on that issue.
Problem is what if the economy starts taking off, and Kerry has announced Edwards as his choice for v.p.? What if, miracle of miracle, the situation in Iraq starts getting better, and Bush can pull out troops and hand over the country without starting a civil war, but Kerry has commited to Clark? In either situation, Kerry is screwed. He's set the course of the campaign too early and can't react to events as swiftly as he should be able to. So either Kerry should name someone who doesn't commit the campaign in quite the same way, or he should just wait and ignore the nabobs of the media who salivate at getting an early v.p. choice.
(To be fair, I was an early proponent of Dean/Clark, and of Dean announcing that pairing early, because I felt the strategic and tactical advantages it would provide were too great to lose. But that was an entirely different situation, and my feeling is Kerry really has nothing to gain by waiting until the convention and making his choice based on the situation that prevails closer to Election Day.)
(Kevin, incidentally, cites a good reason why Kerry is unlikely to pick Edwards: choosing a guy who's younger, more handsome, and a better speaker only accentuates that Kerry is older, odd looking and a boring speaker, and people start to wonder if the ticket shouldn't be the other way around.)
absolutist
aggresive
anti-Constitutional
anti-intellectual
arrogant
authoritarian
blame-placers
blameworthy
blinkered
buckpassers
calculating
class warriors
clueless
compassionless
con artists
conniving
conscienceless
conspiratorial
corrupt
craven
criminal
crooked
culpable
damaging
dangerous
deadly
debased
deceitful
delusional
despotic
destructive
devious
disconnected
dishonorable
dishonest
disingenuous
disrespectful
dogmatic
doomed
fanatical
fantasists
felonious
hateful
heinous
hostile to science
hypocritical
ideologues
ignorant
immoral
incompetent
indifferent
inflexible
insensitive
insincere
irrational
isolated
kleptocratic
lacking in empathy
lacking in public spirit
liars
mendacious
misleading
mistrustful
non-rational
not candid
not "reality-based"
not trustworthy
oblivious
oligarchic
opportunistic
out of control
pernicious
perverse
philistine
plutocratic
prevaricating
propagandists
rapacious
relentless
reprehensible
rigid
scandalous
schemers
selfish
secretive
shameless
sleazy
tricky
unAmerican
uncaring
uncivil
uncompromising
unconstitutional
undemocratic
unethical
unpopular
unprincipled
unrealistic
unreliable
unrepresentative
unscientific
unscrupulous
unsympathetic
venal
vile
virtueless
warmongers
wicked
without integrity
wrong-headed
Thanks to: Breeze, Chuck, Ivan Raikov, Kaiju, Kathy, Roger, Shirley, S.M. Dixon
recently seen
i've got a little list...
Elliott Abrams
Steven Abrams (Kansas BofE)
David Addington
Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson
Roger Ailes (FNC)
John Ashcroft
Bob Bennett
William Bennett
Joe Biden
John Bolton
Alan Bonsell (Dover BofE)
Pat Buchanan
Bill Buckingham (Dover BofE)
George W. Bush
Saxby Chambliss
Bruce Chapman (DI)
Dick Cheney
Lynne Cheney
Richard Cohen
The Coors Family
Ann Coulter
Michael Crichton
Lanny Davis
Tom DeLay
William A. Dembski
James Dobson
Leonard Downie (WaPo)
Dinesh D’Souza
Gregg Easterbrook
Jerry Falwell
Douglas Feith
Arthur Finkelstein
Bill Frist
George Gilder
Newt Gingrich
John Gibson (FNC)
Alberto Gonzalez
Rudolph Giuliani
Sean Hannity
Katherine Harris
Fred Hiatt (WaPo)
Christopher Hitchens
David Horowitz
Don Imus
James F. Inhofe
Jesse Jackson
Philip E. Johnson
Daryn Kagan
Joe Klein
Phil Kline
Ron Klink
William Kristol
Ken Lay
Joe Lieberman
Rush Limbaugh
Trent Lott
Frank Luntz
"American Fundamentalists"
by Joel Pelletier
(click on image for more info)
Chris Matthews
Mitch McConnell
Stephen C. Meyer (DI)
Judith Miller (ex-NYT)
Zell Miller
Tom Monaghan
Sun Myung Moon
Roy Moore
Dick Morris
Rupert Murdoch
Ralph Nader
John Negroponte
Grover Norquist
Robert Novak
Ted Olson
Elspeth Reeve (TNR)
Bill O'Reilly
Martin Peretz (TNR)
Richard Perle
Ramesh Ponnuru
Ralph Reed
Pat Robertson
Karl Rove
Tim Russert
Rick Santorum
Richard Mellon Scaife
Antonin Scalia
Joe Scarborough
Susan Schmidt (WaPo)
Bill Schneider
Al Sharpton
Ron Silver
John Solomon (WaPo)
Margaret Spellings
Kenneth Starr
Randall Terry
Clarence Thomas
Richard Thompson (TMLC)
Donald Trump
Richard Viguere
Donald Wildmon
Paul Wolfowitz
Bob Woodward (WaPo)
John Yoo
guest-blogging
All the fine sites I've
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recent listening
influences
John Adams
Laurie Anderson
Aphex Twin
Isaac Asimov
Fred Astaire
J.G. Ballard
The Beatles
Busby Berkeley
John Cage
"Catch-22"
Raymond Chandler
Arthur C. Clarke
Elvis Costello
Richard Dawkins
Daniel C. Dennett
Philip K. Dick
Kevin Drum
Brian Eno
Fela
Firesign Theatre
Eliot Gelwan
William Gibson
Philip Glass
David Gordon
Stephen Jay Gould
Dashiell Hammett
"The Harder They Come"
Robert Heinlein
Joseph Heller
Frank Herbert
Douglas Hofstadter
Bill James
Gene Kelly
Stanley Kubrick
Jefferson Airplane
Ursula K. LeGuin
The Marx Brothers
John McPhee
Harry Partch
Michael C. Penta
Monty Python
Orbital
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
"The Prisoner"
"The Red Shoes"
Steve Reich
Terry Riley
Oliver Sacks
Erik Satie
"Singin' in the Rain"
Stephen Sondheim
The Specials
Morton Subotnick
Talking Heads/David Byrne
Tangerine Dream
Hunter S. Thompson
J.R.R. Tolkien
"2001: A Space Odyssey"
Kurt Vonnegut
Yes
Bullshit, trolling, unthinking knee-jerk dogmatism and the drivel of idiots will be ruthlessly deleted and the posters banned.
Entertaining, interesting, intelligent, informed and informative comments will always be welcome, even when I disagree with them.
I am the sole judge of which of these qualities pertains.
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the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
If you read unfutz at least once a week, without fail, your teeth will be whiter and your love life more satisfying.
If you read it daily, I will come to your house, kiss you on the forehead, bathe your feet, and cook pancakes for you, with yummy syrup and everything.
(You might want to keep a watch on me, though, just to avoid the syrup ending up on your feet and the pancakes on your forehead.)
Finally, on a more mundane level, since I don't believe that anyone actually reads this stuff, I make this offer: I'll give five bucks to the first person who contacts me and asks for it -- and, believe me, right now five bucks might as well be five hundred, so this is no trivial offer.
