JAMES CARVILLE — member of the reality-based community:

“If this is an election that we couldn’t win . . .” Mr. Carville said, his voice trailing off, as he sat next to Mr. Shrum and Mr. Greenberg. “The purpose of a political party is to win elections, and we’re not doing that.

“I think we have to come to grips with the fact that we are an opposition party right now and not a particularly effective one. I’m out of denial. Reality has hit.”

Even as they sought to put much of the blame of Mr. Kerry’s loss on external events, Mr. Carville and Mr. Shrum acknowledged at least implicitly what had been a continuing criticism of Mr. Kerry, that he never presented an overarching view of what his presidency might be like.

I’ve been saying that for months. I guess I’ve been a reality-based blogger all along.

SLASHDOT has an interesting thread on videoblogging. Especially if you’re into Linux and videoblogging.

HEY, MAYBE BUSH AND RUMSFELD KNOW WHAT THEY’RE DOING:

A John F. Kennedy School of Government researcher has cast doubt on the widely held belief that terrorism stems from poverty, finding instead that terrorist violence is related to a nation’s level of political freedom.

Associate Professor of Public Policy Alberto Abadie examined data on terrorism and variables such as wealth, political freedom, geography, and ethnic fractionalization for nations that have been targets of terrorist attacks.

Interesting.

BILL STUNTZ: “The conventional wisdom holds that America is and always has been divided between North and South. Actually, there is a bigger and deeper divide: between East and West. The West is winning, hands down.”

DARFUR UPDATE: From StrategyPage:

Troops have closed most of the roads in southern Darfur, and apparently are trying to force more refugees to return home. Another UN investigation team has arrived, and has twelve days determine if genocide took place. The government apparently plans to stonewall this group, then depend on its allies on the UN Security Council to halt any move to condemn the Sudanese government for mass murder. While about 70,000 people have died in Darfur so far, the death toll will climb much higher if food aid is continually slowed down, or halted for tribes forced back to their burned out villages.

This doesn’t sound very promising.

MY ADVICE TO THE DEMOCRATS: Don’t take this advice!

UPDATE: This advice, though, is better.

THE ELECTIONS ARE OVER — but that’s no reason not to blog about health care! And this week’s Grand Rounds, featuring health care blogging by health care workers, is up. Check it out.

TAKING THE ELECTION HARD: I’m watching Meet the Press rerun on CNBC, and Maureen Dowd looks absolutely terrible. It’s like she’s aged ten years since I last saw her. Her manner is subdued, and bitter, too. I guess that explains her post-election writing. It’s striking to see a pundit taking the election so hard — most actual Democratic politicians seem to be maintaining more personal distance.

UPDATE: Reader Wendy Cook emails:

I was watching C-Span last night, which was airing yet another post-election symposium of media pundits — Jonathan Alter, Pat Buchanan, ABC’s Carole Simpson among others. At one point a visibly angry Simpson held up a map of red states alongside a map of slave states from the 1860s. See, she said, present-day red states are the same states that were pro-slavery! (As an Ohio native, you can imagine my confusion). Her point was the argument of “letting the states decide” issues scares her. She then went on to castigate Bush because “despite everything he says” she’s convinced he’s simply going to roll back entitlements.

I’m sure ABC News would like to thank Ms. Simpson for so effectively representing their objectivity and professionalism. And after watching several of these C-Span things, I think their true, diabolical intent may not be to analyze the election, but in fact to reveal the whininess, pettiness and rank bias of our nation’s best-known journalists.

I didn’t see that, but I’ve seen similar displays, and the same Confederacy-based arguments, elsewhere. It’s certainly revealing.

THE BELMONT CLUB has more on events in Fallujah. And here’s a critical guide to the media coverage.

SPECTER UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt is sticking by his guns.

BORDERS HAS BEEN TRANSFORMED: I noticed the same thing when I was there on Saturday.

JOHN PERRY BARLOW writes on “magnanimous defeat.” (Via The Galactic Patrol).

UPDATE: In a sort-of-related matter, reader John Vecchione emails: “You have not commented on the secession meme that is all over the place this week. . . . its all over the internet(s) and you should comment on it.”

It seems too obviously idiotic to merit comment. But I think that the answer is to be found in this post.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More thoughts here.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Whatever else you do, read this.

MORE: This page on the south isn’t likely to win over many red-state votes. What’s funny is that it’s registered to a guy from Wisconsin, which nearly went red itself.

REASONED DISCOURSE IN ACADEMIA: Indeed.

CHE GUEVARA ain’t got nothin’ on us.

I’VE BEEN VERY HAPPY WITH MY TOSHIBA DIGITAL CAMERA, which has taken pictures like these, these, and these. But now, via Steve’s Digicams, I read that Toshiba has gotten out of the digital camera business. Too bad.

A CBS CORRESPONDENT THINKS BLOGGERS AREN’T CAREFUL ENOUGH ABOUT THEIR FACTS: Yeah, you read that right. In other, surely unrelated, news:

Players involved in the notorious 60 Minutes II story, reported by Dan Rather, which employed dubious documents regarding President Bush’s National Guard service, may have been rooting for a John Kerry victory.

No, it wasn’t that old bugaboo liberal media bias as much as it was a bias toward saving their own skins. The report from an internal investigation into the documents mess was purposely being held until after the election.

Pre-election, the feeling in some quarters at CBS was that if Kerry triumphed, fallout from the investigation would be relatively minimal. . . . But now, faced with four more years of President Bush, executives at CBS parent Viacom could take a harder line on the executives involved.

Apparently, someone at CBS believes in preemption.

WILLIAM SJOSTROM: “The cynic in me is amused by it, but the normal person hidden inside finds it depressing. After every election, there is an outpouring of hysteria from the intellectuals, and it is embarrassing. This time is no exception.”

ANN ALTHOUSE needs your advice.

Personally, I think she’s missed an obvious choice. But at least she’s not acting as if she were German. Or maybe American women are as macho as German men. . . .

JUST GOT HOME from my brother’s. Back blogging soon. Meanwhile, read Michael Barone’s take on the elections.

And my new TechCentralStation column on politics and the web is up.

INDEED.

VIRGINIA POSTREL has some new stuff, including “a win-win development that’s ripe for demogogic denunciation” and advice for the Democrats. The latter is hardly in short supply these days, but hers is good.

UPDATE: Bob Herbert’s isn’t.

MY EARLIER post about red and blue distinctions based on a passage from Neal Stephenson has belatedly reminded me of this post from a couple of years ago.

BLOGGERS AND EXIT POLLS — some thoughts in the Wall St. Journal:

Cue the handwringing from any number of media pundits, but not us. The reaction to this whole controversy is so 1997 — a predictable volley of off-target shots by chin-waggers who either haven’t figured out that the world’s changed or refuse to admit that it has.

In trying to diagnose what went awry on Election Day, many of bloggers’ critics seemed to be saying the Internet was at it again, and this time that creepy cesspool of comic-book geeks and pornographers was spitting out bad election data. But it’s not as if Matt Drudge and Ana Marie Cox were making up numbers while sitting at home in their PJs. The numbers they and other bloggers posted came from the National Election Pool, an organization owned by the big networks and the Associated Press. NEP’s numbers go to those outfits and to other media organizations that pay boatloads of money to get a peek. The numbers weren’t some Internet invention, but data generated at the request of the mainstream media.

And it wasn’t just wild-eyed bloggers who saw them and believed them, with or without the necessary caveats. The joy on James Carville’s face was obvious — and according to numerous reports, so was the gloom in President Bush’s camp. The problem is that those numbers were terribly misleading, not that bloggers had them. And yet, somehow, we find ourselves in a referendum on blogs. If talk-show hosts had been reading the exit-poll numbers into their mikes, would we be knee-deep in worries about this crazy new technology called radio?

Read the whole thing. (It’s a free link.) And, by the way, the WSJ has also got Tyler Cowen and John Irons econoblogging. Great idea.

JAMES WOLCOTT RE-ELECTS BUSH! No, really. Here’s the analysis. First, Wolcott calls down killer hurricanes on America: “I root for hurricanes. When, courtesy of the Weather Channel, I see one forming in the ocean off the coast of Africa, I find myself longing for it to become big and strong–Mother Nature’s fist of fury, Gaia’s stern rebuke.” Faith moves mountains: Gaia hears Wolcott’s fervent prayers, and Florida gets a pounding unmatched in recent decades.

And look what happens next:

Last month, American employers added 337,000 new jobs, the largest increase in seven months.

The biggest single engine for job creation was the hurricanes.
Part of the pick-up in jobs was down to the worst hurricane seasons for many years. About 71,000 new construction jobs had been added – the most since March 2000.

Kathleen Utgoff, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, said this “reflected rebuilding and clean-up activity in the south-east following the four hurricanes that struck the US in August and September”.

The result: Bush carries Florida handily. No doubt the thank-you note from Karl Rove is in the mail! And Pat Robertson must be burning with jealousy at Wolcott’s display of faith-based efficacy.

INADEQUATE TERROR PREPARATIONS? Troubling thoughts in light of Beslan.

UPDATE: Reader Dan Duffy emails:

That article about whether the police are ready for a school siege sent a chill down my spine. Let me tell you why.

Just a few weeks ago, I went shooting with the state police SWAT team. During a break, I asked the team commander what plans or procedures they had developed to deal with a school siege scenario. His response shocked me.

He said that such a situation would be a ‘terrible mess’ and there was nothing you could do about it. I was stunned. Surely, I asked, you have given the scenario some thought in light of what happened in Russia? The answer was no, there had been no planning, no discussions, no nothing.

I almost blew a gasket. I asked how it could be possible that professionals had not considered this risk in this day and age. He lamely replied that the FBI would have to respond with their (HRT) Hostage Rescue Team. I pointed out that it would take a minimum of five hours for a team to get to the state. . . .

Glenn, please stay on this story, it is hugely important. I haven’t provided more details because these cops are my friends.

And they shouldn’t get in trouble for this report. But they, and others, should get on the ball.