“END THE OCCUPATION OF IRAQ.” So reads a large chalking on Bascom Hill, visible from my UW Law School window. I’ve often wondered at the lack of peace rallies in Madison, Wisconsin. If Iraq is like Vietnam to a lot of people, why haven’t we seen anti-war demonstrations? Well, somebody is trying to get one going today at 1 p.m. in Library Mall. Presumably, it’s an attempt to channel the energy left over from the Kerry defeat in the presidential election. I’ll stop by the rally and report back later.

UPDATE: That’s 1 p.m. on Saturday, so I’ll have to get back to you later than I’d thought. Sorry. I hope I haven’t been misunderstanding things all day. I did not get enough sleep. Did you?

MEDIA BIAS IN CALLING THE STATES? Generic Confusion notes: “All close Kerry states are listed as Kerry pickups. All close Bush states are listed as undecided.”

Yes, why is Wisconsin called for Kerry already? Only 99.3% of the vote is in with 1,466,963 (49.3%) for Bush and 1,480,256 (49.8%) for Kerry. I did notice on TV this morning that Fox hadn’t called Wisconsin yet. The NYT also hasn’t called Wisconsin. There is a .5 percentage point difference in Wisconsin with .7% of the vote still to count. In Ohio, which is getting so much attention, the percent counted is listed as 100 and Bush has 51.0% over Kerry’s 48.5%. That’s a 2.5% point lead. How can anyone call Wisconsin before Ohio and expect to escape charges of bias?

UPDATE: An emailer offers this justification for calling Wisconsin and not Ohio:

I would suggest 16,000 votes in Wisconsin is a big margin. Wisconsin differs from Ohio in two major respects — it has a long history of running clean and relatively undisputed elections, with a pretty strong non-partisan tint to them (meaning, the people in the municipal government trenches actually running the thing). We’ve had little of the election-day disputes that have marred states like Florida (Ohio isn’t notorious in this respect, but it does have a lot of big- and medium-sized cities ((Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Youngstown, Akron-Canton)) where election-day activity is controlled by strong party/organizational/union/mafia elements. We don’t have much of that here (some in Milwaukee, probably more so in Kenosha).

Secondly, Ohio has provisional ballots, with lots of time (relatively speaking) after the election allocated to count them. Now, I don’t think the provisional ballots will make the difference in Ohio, but there are still a lot of uncounted ballots out there, which is what the Kerry folks are hanging on to. No so here in Wisconsin — your ballot (provisional or otherwise) is in by the end of the day Tuesday, or it’s not counted. Wisconsin is very lenient regarding voter registration, relative to other states, but very tight about provisional ballots.

Thirdly, Kerry’s margin here is roughly three times Gore’s margin in ’00, when he won by 5,700 votes. And that produced no recount; see this (particularly the quote near the end from a GOP official saying 5,700 votes is a “big hill to climb.”).

SPEAKING OF THE GRACEFUL ACCEPTANCE OF LOSS … Senator Kerry, how about a concession speech? Remember how good Al Gore looked in 2000, when he finally gave his concession speech? Gore had reason to drag out the vote counting, given how close things were, and we survived that ordeal. But when he conceded he had a beautiful, eloquent dignity. I was sorry when Angry Al Gore emerged in the 2004 campaign season and dispelled that fine image he had left us with at the end of the 2000 struggle. Senator Kerry, for your own legacy, you should give a beautiful, dignified concession speech this morning. You have many supporters, and you can help them recover from the loss and accept the reality of the situation in a positive spirit. You do not have the cause that Gore had to drag out the post-election counting. What good can that do? Please use the opportunity that you have today to help Americans pull together and move beyond the long, harsh argument we’ve just had with each other.

DEALING WITH THE PAIN. My UW colleague, socprof Jeremy Freese asks “is the gravity of the situation really well-served by a graphic that makes the two candidates look like they are shooting eye beams at each other?” and generally displays pain on his always cool blog. Here in Madison, I’m surrounded by overwhelming numbers of people who voted against the President and must be horrified at the prospect of four more years. I was just saying yesterday afternoon, as I was reading the exit polls that so favored Kerry, that it might be better for the national psyche, at least, if Kerry won, that it would be much harder for Kerry supporters to tolerate more Bush than for Bush supporters to accept giving the other party a chance for a while. But, despite some lingering denial among Kerry supporters (including some MSM outlets), that is not to be. Those of us who are happy with the outcome would do well to resist gloating. There is a lot of pain out there, and perhaps setting an example of graceful winning can help inspire some graceful acceptance of loss.

FOX CALLS ALASKA FOR BUSH, putting Bush at 269, and Kerry with only, at best, the possibility of a tie, which would lead only to a loss in the House. So can we say Bush has won? I see Drudge is running his rotating siren and saying “Bush Wins.” I’m surprised. I had entirely prepared myself for a Kerry win earlier this evening.

“REALITY IS HERE, and I think we’ve got to give the President and his team a lot of credit. … They’ve won it.” So said James Carville just now on CNN.

FOXNEWS CALLS OHIO FOR BUSH. That leaves him 3 votes short of the needed total.

“FIRST RED STATE TO GO BLUE,” says Brit Hume announcing that FoxNews is calling New Hampshire for Kerry. (In other words, NH is the first state won by Bush in 2000 to go for Kerry.)

CNN JUST CALLED FLORIDA FOR BUSH.

DID YOUNG PEOPLE TURN OUT IN GREAT NUMBERS? NBC is reporting that, for all the efforts at bringing young people to the polls, the percentage of 18-29 year old voters is exactly the same as it was in 2000 (17%). And the number of voters in the 30 to 44 year old group has actually declined, going from 33% to 28%. Voters 45 and older made up 54% of the electorate. Even more interesting, NBC shows voters aged 18-29 split evenly (49 to 49%) on the question whether they approved of going to war in Iraq. Of course, this is from exit polls, and the exit polls reported earlier in the day seemed to have leaned excessively toward Kerry. So who knows?

IS MSM REFRAINING FROM CALLING STATES FOR BUSH that they would call for Kerry if the numbers were running the other way? Am I the only one who feels that way? Or is it only that the exit polls leaned for Kerry in Florida and Ohio and other places, so the actual, counted numbers aren’t enough.

MAINSTREAM MEDIA BLOGGING. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel was running a blog, and at 9 it declared itself “all blogged out” and told readers to go to the main page or go watch television. What the hell kind of blogging is that? Anyway, they did leave us with some final Wisconsin exit poll numbers:

53% of those voting in the state were women, 47% men; 28% came from union households, 72% non-union households; 36% had college degrees, 64% did not.

… 38% identified themselves as Republican, 35% Democrat, 27% independent. From another view: 31% said they were conservative, 20% liberal and 49% moderate.

Some 54% approved of the job Bush has done as president, 46% disapproved; 56% said the nation is safer from terrorism than four years ago, 42% said it is less safe.

The top issues for voters: Moral values (for 21%) and terrorism (20%), followed closely by economy/jobs (19%) and Iraq (18%).

That reads as good for Bush to me. The MSJ blog just signs off with a shrug. MSM blogs don’t really seem to be real blogs to me. They seem to be presentations of reportable information set in a blog format, but just too devoid of personality and spirit to amount to actual blogs. They’re just pseudoblogs, blogoids.

UPDATE: (From Glenn) Reader Stephen Butler emails: “Perhaps they would find it easier to blog past 9 if they put on some pajamas.” Heh.

YES, I’M STILL HERE, STILL PAYING ATTENTION. I haven’t posted in a long while, as long whiles are measured on election day. But I am sitting here taking in the news, reading a few websites and watching a few news channels on TV. The TV pundits are making me nervous. I’m not going to name names — not yet at least — but some of the partisan pundits come on and play a heavy-handed mind game, gloating “you lose!” in so many words. I wish I could think of something to say that might be helpful, but I’m looking at the same things you are, and what is going to happen is going to happen. We bloggers aren’t playing a role shaping any opinion anymore. The current game is just about shaping how people feel about what has happened as we slowly learn of it. That’s the sort of thing that doesn’t interest me at all. I’d prefer if everyone could make it through the night without feeling too bad and emerge the next day with a reasonably optimistic attitude about the future.

RED STATE/BLUE STATE WINE RECOMMENDATIONS for election night, from Prof. Bainbridge. So you can toast your victory or drown your sorrows, as the case may be.

BACK FROM VOTING. I finished my morning class, caught up on some email and blogging and headed out to the First Congregational Church that is my polling place. I pulled right into a space in the tiny church parking lot, went in, and walked right up to the table and got my ballot. One person was ahead of me in line. I was out of there in less than five minutes. The women working at the poll assured me they had been busy up until that point, and I did try to pick a good afternoon time window, but there was no leftover-from-lunch-hour, backed-up line. There was a group of people behind the four officials supervising them in some way. And there was another large group of people sitting at a big table on the other side of the room. The various poll watcher types in the room greatly outnumbered the voters. There was a big table of cookies and muffins and that sort of thing, but there was no time to get hungry, as I breezed right in and out of there.

IS ANYONE STILL UNDECIDED? My colleague Gordon Smith is! And he’s already gone to his polling place! He writes:

This morning I dropped by my local polling place at 6:30 am, intending to vote. While I knew that John Kerry would not get my vote …

Read the whole post to see why.

… I still did not know whether I could vote for George Bush. My plan was to look at the ballot and follow my gut. When I filled out the registration, I noticed that I had been given a red pen. “Deficits,” I thought. (I will be so happy when this election is over, and my dendrites stop firing election messages.) The line was already 30 people long, and it wasn’t moving. As it turned out, the polls wouldn’t open until 7 am. Crud! I had an early meeting at the office, and I couldn’t wait that long.

So I will be voting this afternoon, probably in an hour or two. And I am still undecided, not between the two candidates, but between George Bush and my protest vote. I still remember my complaints about George Bush, and I do not hold out much hope for change. That’s the thing about George Bush: he sticks to his guns. Though I wish he were a different president, he is not the evil man often portrayed by his opponents. But is he good enough that I should help him to win Wisconsin?

UPDATE: Gordon takes comments over there, so feel free to write out some advice, both for him and for the general public.

VOTING IN MONONA, WISCONSIN. An emailer sends thi:

Just voted in Monona. The atmosphere was something I’d never experienced here before. My husband and I had to walk past two elderly members of the odious group MoveOn.org who had set up a table in front of the Community Center. The lobby was crowded with tables full of baked goods for various local organizations. They reported brisk business since 7AM.

We didn’t have to wait in line but the place was the busiest I’ve ever seen in 26 years of voting. When we went to pick up our number, I noticed about four somber-looking women spread out amongst the poll workers sitting and taking notes on yellow legal pads. They didn’t have any identifying buttons like the rest of the poll workers and I suspect they were some sort of observers.

When the poll workers verified my address out loud, I was bothered that they were able to hear that information. It was disconcerting to watch them take notes during both our transactions with the polling volunteer. If they are observers, they should have to wear a badge identifying what organization that they represent.

The line to register new voters was about 10 deep at 9:30.

UPDATE: An emailer offers this (possibly nerve-calming) explanation:

What your correspondent was probably seeing was something of the Get Out The Vote effort in Wisconsin. Here in the Chicago area, the lists of
registered voters are public information. Who has or has not voted is
also public information. The people checking off names probably have a
list of people they believe will vote for their guy (developed through a
series of phone calls, door to door knocking, looking at what party
ballot was pulled during the primary, etc…) so that they can focus on
getting their people to the polls who haven’t done so already.

As the day progresses, other GOTV workers will follow up by calling the
identified supporters who haven’t voted yet. If they are really good,
they’ll offer a ride to the poll as well so that they can vote.

In short–what was seen there was probably pretty innocuous. It appears
to just be a well run precinct organization.

GEORGE W. BUSH 17,264. JOHN KERRY 9,540. Not that it counts, but the polls are closed in Guam. My emailer says “I believe Guam has voted for the winner in every election for the past 20 plus years.”

BAD BEHAVIOR DIRECTED AT BOTH SIDES. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that [t]he tires of at least 30 cars and vans rented by the Republican Party to carry voters to the polls were slashed, Milwaukee police said this morning.” From the other side, “two people were blocking the [Kerry campaign office] parking lot exit, preventing Kerry supporters from leaving the parking lot and screaming and spitting on cars.” And yes, I’m suspicious that the second, but not the first, incident is a dirty trick.

UPDATE: Bracketed phrase added above for clarity.

I’m STEELING MYSELF FOR THE EMAIL to come from that “Revolution Will Be Posted” NYT Op-Ed piece of mine. Here’s an example, typical in its anger but better written than most (and containing a touch of the humor that is normally missing from the tsk-ing from the left):

Perfesser,
I’m glad I’m not the only person from Madison who’s a fag-hatin’, charisma- lovin’, country-invadin’, process-evisceratin’, nature-despoilin’ revolutionary! Go Bush, twelve more years! So, those of us who grew to appreciate the notion that government might mean a certain level of rationalism in its decision-making have shed that ashen chrysalis to appreciate the need for raw autocracy. God help us, indeed. May you be disenfranchised. If you can’t perceive that Bush is a cult, not a political figure, whose revolution is unapologetically crypto-fascist, then you need to relinquish your position of influence and return to your lonely typewriter. Sadly, [Name Withheld]

Presumably the “position of influence” this person (a UW alumnus) refers to is law professor and not blogger, though both roles do entail contact with a “typewriter.” (My keyboard must be a very needy partner indeed if it’s “lonely,” since I can barely keep my hands off it.) Anyway, how could I not have known that academia is for Bush-haters only? By the way, I love the closing “Sadly” — it’s so … Tom Daschle.

UPDATE: Another emailer makes the kind of logic-and-language point I love: “How can anyone be ‘unapologetically crypto-fascist’? Doesn’t ‘crypto-‘ mean ‘hidden’?” Well, the original emailer only wanted “a certain level of rationalism.”

ANOTHER EMAILER: That second emailer also wrote that on his blog.

A VIEW FROM THE GROUND IN NEW HAMPSHIRE. A Dartmouth student is live-blogging the election in a key battleground. Not unlike the scene here in Madison.

YET ANOTHER NYT PIECE ABOUT BLOGGERS AND POLITICS. I guess we’re going to be getting a lot more of these articles, as the history of the election is written. Mainstream newspapers all seem to say the same thing, to start over in the same place every time, and to repeat the same boilerplate. “Web logs, or blogs …” … oh, no, here we go again! They’ve come into their own this political season, they are intensely partisan, they’re good for fact-checking, etc. How about some new angles? I’d like to see some articles about blogs that are not tied to a particular political agenda but that are surprising, full of variety, and fun to read.

IS THIS A NEWSPAPER TALKING ABOUT BLOGS, or a blogger talking about newspapers: “Despite their partisan nature, they became a source of information for many political aficionados”?

D0N’T MISS THE BLOGGERS ON THE NYT OP-ED PAGE. They asked us what we thought was “the most important event or moment of the campaign” and we made stuff up.

UPDATE: Let me add a crushingly leaden update. “[W]e made stuff up” was a joke — a snark, as it were — tweaking MSM for thinking bloggers are unreliable. So please no more email scolding me for lying in the NYT and for “never giving Kerry a chance.” Try reading my blog. You can trace the story of my contemplating the two candidates. The record is there, time-stamped on my blog. Jeez!

A BLOGGISH REPORT ON BUSH AND KERRY IN MILWAUKEE TODAY. Stand in the Trenches almost made it to the big Bush rally in Milwaukee, but then her son threw up in the car and she had to go home. But she writes that she had a cool discussion about politics in the car on the drive over. And she got to listen to the radio reports:

[A] radio news report at noon said that there were over 11,000 people at the Bush rally. Immediately after that report, they went to a reporter at the outdoor rally for Kerry, where Bon Jovi was going to perform before Kerry’s appearance. The reporter said, and this is a direct quote, “There are literally hundreds of people here in this two-block area.” Now, it’s true, it was drizzly, and it was an outdoor rally… but “hundreds” of people is all he could manage, even with Bon Jovi? Wow.

UPDATE: Another emailer writes:

I was in Milwaukee this weekend, and I noticed a distinct lack of Bush volunteers on every corner inviting people to Bush’s rally today–but every corner up and down Wisconsin and Wells featured one or more Kerry volunteer with information.