You will see that I’m sticking my neck out and suggesting Barack Hussein Obama could be the next President of the United States. I thought about honouring Missouri’s reputation as a bell-weather and putting that in his column. Or, to put it another way, I think Obama will win at least one of Missouri, Indiana and North Carolina. Of those, I’m obviously more confident about taking a punt on NC. What do you guys think?
My friend Fraser Nelson waits until the last-minute before hopping aboard the Obama express and does so largely because he thinks Obama is likely to do some good in terms of how America is perceived around the world and, let’s be honest, because Obama’s election might make the sanctimonious left rethink, at least for a moment, some of their prejudices about the United States. Still, I also enjoyed his payoff: Finally, my Republican friends have been gushing about Tony Blair for years now – they didn’t have to live with his policies. I won’t have to live with Obama’s. So it’s time for some light revenge.
So, readers, how has your election day been so far? What are you seeing out there? Cool stuff? Depressing revelations? Reassuring experiences? You can email me here. Also, I’m pondering a marathon live-blog tonight. Good idea or not?
The results from Guam are in and seem to indicate good times for two parties. That’s to say the Democrats have turned things around in the Pacific, winning nearly 62% of the vote (did Howard Dean’s 50 State Strategy also include Guam?). More importantly, as Dave Weigel reveals, Bob Barr’s 97 votes constitute a “mini-surge” in support for the Libertarian Party. For the GOP, good news is harder to find. Even on Guam.
So this is where it all ends campers. That being the case it’s only seemly to see out this marathon campaign with another live blog and chat extravaganza. That being so, everything will kick off here around 6.30EST/11.30GMT. It will, hopefully, be, like fun. There’s history to be made, folks!
We’ll be live-blogging through the night here. A number worth noting from the exit polls is that 62 percent say the economy is their top issue, that’s very good news for the Obama campaign. Also consider the weights that McCain is running with–76 percent of voters think the country is on the wrong track and George W. Bush’s approval rating is 27 percent.
At the CNN party in Marylebone, Andrew Marr, James Purnell, Dame Sue Tinson, sundry BBC chieftains, Whitehall officials and Labour apparatchiks galore down cocktails, watch the huge screen, and dig in for a long night. The sense among centre-Left guests is one of superstitious apprehension. ‘It all looked safe in 2000,’ says one Blairite. ‘And then it all went wrong the next morning and we ended up with eight years of Bush.’ For the McCainites – a small band of brothers huddling in a corner – Palin looks like being the Fall Gal. But that won’t quite do. Conservatism in America has conspicuously failed to rise to the challenge of
This election has been a privilege to cover. A country where 90 percent of people think things are on the wrong track could have turned away from politics, lost faith in itself and its system of governance. But instead America has taken its democratic duty more seriously than ever this year. The latest predictions I’m hearing for turnout is 64 percent. This would exceed the 63 percent turnout in the 1960 Kennedy v. Nixon race and be the highest since 1908; this in a year where already a record number of people have donated to the candidates and where more people watched the convention speeches than ever before. Whatever the
The below is the memo sent to Barclays staff yesterday from John Varley, chief executive, explaining why he didn’t go for a taxpayer bailout. Remember, Barclays badly need British shareholders to approve this deal – so it will have been written with that in mind. This email is itself a comment on the times we are living – should a CEO of Barclays really need to explain why he preferred a private refinancing to part-nationalisation? It is evidently a response to the kicking he took mainly in the weekend press. We at Coffee House are right behind him. P.S. I love the understatement: “our ability to do what our shareholders
As an alternative to my earlier blog post, here’s Andrew Lansley’s take on Alan Johnson’s top-up announcement today – Pete Hoskin In his announcement today Alan Johnson sought to put right the awful spectre of patients being denied NHS care because they have accessed private treatment. It is a situation that was morally repugnant and needed to change months ago. But in so doing Labour have jumped out of that particular frying pan, and into the fire of forcing patients to pay for their care and creating a two-tier NHS. At the Labour Party conference Gordon Brown pledged to stop cancer patients from having to pay £7.10 for a prescription;
I’ve just been to a polling place here in DC to watch people cast their ballots. The lines are more manageable now than they were early in the morning when people were queuing for an hour-and-a-half to vote, despite the fact that Obama will win the District with 90 percent plus of the vote. There is something inspiring about watching people vote. One woman said to me, about the lines she faced this morning, that it was one of the most beautiful things she’d ever seen. Not to sound all gooey, but we take for granted that every adult has a right to vote and that power will transfer peacefully. It
A good spot by Ben Brogan over at his essential blog – here’s how Peter Mandelson described Gordon Brown to a group of journos earlier: “I see a man who is really in his stride. He has risen to this challenge. He has grasped the essentials of the crisis, he has understood it. People are crying for change, for leadership. The fact that we in Britain can now be universally recognised as advocates of change and have been recognised as advocating it for a long time … it’s worth its weight in gold.” As Brogan notes, it’s a little bit odd that Mandy should be pushing the “change” line quite
Today is a landmark day for the NHS. The widely-expected decision to allow top-up payments is a welcome move – for all the reasons outlined by my former colleague Helen Rainbow, of Reform, in a blog post for Centre Right last week. The key victory here is for patient choice. Whereas before, in some cases, a patient would have been forced to go private if they wanted the very best and most up-to-the-minute treatments, now they can access them within the NHS – provided, of course, that they stump up the extra cash. Sure, there’s an argument that we should expect the best treatment on the NHS anyway – given the amount
Barack Obama’s beaten John McCain in the early vote in Dixville Notch, NH. The margin of victory: 15-6. Time have the full story.
An incisive article on recent opinion polls in today’s Independent: “Labour’s rating rose from 26 per cent before the party conference season to 31 per cent after its gathering in Manchester in September. But its overall level of support did not climb any higher after the banks bailout last month, said John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, who looked at the results of nine surveys. The weighted average of the polls taken in October shows the Tories on 43 per cent (down one percentage point on September), Labour on 31 per cent (up four points), the Liberal Democrats on 16 per cent (down one point) and other parties
Barack Obama’s last rally of election eve filled the Prince William county fairground and some. Obama claimed there were 100,000 people there and considering the traffic on the road in that number seems plausible. The key question is how many of those 100,000 were Virginians rather than political tourists from DC and Maryland, Democratic strongholds. Obama wasn’t on fine form, his delivery was surprisingly lacklustre. But to the crowd it didn’t matter. They were there so they could tell their children they were there. The frantic ‘yes we can’ chants that greeted the beginning of Obama’s speech were gradually replaced with increasingly confident chants. This was a crowd that believes
Meanwhile, super-secret Democratic operative “Josh Lyman” emails this update from Ohio: Calls are being made to some of our voters in Toledo warning voters of long lines at the polls and if they wanted to vote over the phone by expressing their preference on the key pad they can.
Commenting on this post, a very astute reader makes these excellent points: Two more thoughts on timing 1) Obama is the luckiest loser in history. Had he won the House race vs. Bobby Rush in 02 he’d probably be lost in Jesse Jackson Jr’s shadow and relegated to a life of obscurity. 2) The key to Obama winning was Michigan and Forida being stripped [of their delegates]. Had they voted on or before February 5th he’d have been toast. Thank you Debbie Dingell. I don’t know about “life of obscurity” but, yes, it’s much more difficult to see how Obama could have launched a Presidential campaign after just two terms
A reminder tonight that – for all its sins – the BBC still produces some top drawer television. I have in mind the episode of Panorama which screened at 2030, on the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. For the most part balanced, informative and beautifully shot, it set out what our armed forces have accomplished so far, and the challenges they will face in the future. There were powerful ‘talking head’ contributions from Hamid Karzai and Brigadier Mark Carleton Smith. Whilst disturbing footage of the Taleban making – and detonating – roadside bombs was a stark reminder of the enemy that our troops, and the West, face. If there was a