Hoot!

li8:10: I'm taking a stab at live-blogging the elections. I know the electorate hangs on my every word, but the only reason I'm doing this is because it might be interesting to have a real-time meltdown recorded on this site.

So far nothing interesting has happened, except for the buzz that Lieberman has ended up in a close race. I like Ned Lamont and threw a little donation his way, but this hasn't been a race that I've cared a lot about because, despite being a bit of a douche and frequently wrong, Lieberman takes his job seriously and wants to do the right thing. He's sad and dysfunctional but I can't hate him.

Also, CNN appears to be staffed wholly by fucknuts. Friends and I sat next to Jeff Greenfield and his son at a Yankees-Tigers game last August. He was very nice and his son seemed normal, so I won't bash him. The rest of that network deserves to be torn asunder. Reluctantly, I'm watching MSNBC.

You, sir, were a courteous baseball spectator.

8:27: Hoot! Rick Santorum just lost in Pennsylvania. You know him as the guy who thinks that gays are like dogfuckers; our Baghdad Bureau Chief once heckled him in a softball game for being a fetus-handler and made his staffers cry; I mostly associate him with denying evolution. Thank God he's gone.

Haha -- Howard Fineman just said, "Santorum is a thinker."

8:34: hoot ... MSNBC calls Bob Menendez the winner in New Jersey. Menendez doesn't do anything for me but I have a friend who's driven himself crazy working on this race. I assume he can go back to drinking again.

8:41: Hoot! Sherrod Brown is called the winner in Ohio. I'd like to thank Flop and our commentors Crunk Raconteur and Tommy O for their homestate not fucking everything up for once.

8:57: Oh, for fuck's sake.

MSNBC has devolved into Joe fucking Scarborough trying to insist that he "plays it down the middle" and that he was slandered by Howard Dean. Fuck you, Scarborough, and fuck MSNBC for wasting this valuable airtime with this preening bullshit. Who gives a damn.

This has gone on for about three minutes now. At least. Now Chris Matthews is sucking Scarborough's cock.

You need to shut the fuck up with your insecurities.

9:11: Lieberman wins in Connecticut. Oh well. Now that Santorum is gone, somebody needs to be the national scold.

9:17: Hoot! The Democrat wins in Maryland, interrupting Joe Scarborough's inane blather about his forebearers' political inclinations.

9:20: Damn, Nancy Pelosi is one terrible public speaker. Hearing her give an inspirational speech is like going to a wax museum with Stephen Hawking.

9:27: Hoot! The Democrat wins in Rhode Island. Poor Lincoln Chafee. He seems like a nice man. The Democrats are halfway there -- three down and three to go. (I switched to CNN from MSNBC because Chris Matthews was talking about how he doesn't understand how a nice Republican loses an election.)

9:39: Flop here, taking over the live-blogging action for a while. I don't share his sympathy for Lieberman. Oh, I'm sure he's nice and means well, but cry me a fucking river. Let him serve on the board of a local charity then, and not spend the next two years serving as the White House's Useful Idiot. Also, I'm very happy that Strickland and Brown won in Ohio, thus keeping me from being forced to purchase one of these. I'd like to hear some House results from southern Ohio, though. Mean Jean could be sent packing tonight, along with her partner in Looks-Like-the-Carpool-Mom-Who-Yelled-At-Her-Kids-Right-In-Front-of-You-itude, Katherine Harris.

9:58: Four races left for control of the Senate. Missouri, Montana, Tennessee and Virginia. Democrats need to win all four to inoculate themselves against a party switch by Joe Lieberman. The House is coming along nicely, with some pickups coming in Indiana and Kentucky. Man, it sure is weird watching an election and not feeling like the bottom is going to fall out at any second.

10:05: CNN talking 2008 presidential election here. Which reminds me. Earlier this afternoon, I saw Rudy Giuliani on MSNBC. He noted that Abraham Lincoln, like Bush, faced a difficult war. Then he told the story of meeting a WWII veteran who fought at the battle of the bulge and reminded him that not everyone thought World War II was going great all the time, too. I think that sound bite belongs in the Great Moments in Fuckstickery pantheon. Back to the matter at hand, I've just been handed a bulletin (via IM from Crunk Raconteur) that Nick Lampson is leading in his bid to take over Tom DeLay's former district. Fun.

MSNBC's pundits are psychotic demented psycho clumsy motherfuckers. And they'll put a hook in your bum leg.

10:15: Hoot! Charlie Bass (R) just lost in New Hampshire, meaning Dems have picked up four of the 15 seats they need, after gaining two in Indiana, and one in Kentucky earlier tonight.

10:41: Hoot! Bob Ney's seat in Ohio has been won by a Democrat named Zack Space, whose campaign signs I can only hope were "Space, bitches! Space." Also, another Indiana seat flipped. So it's now six down, nine to go. Also, I heard something about Heath Shuler _ The Washington Post appears to have him winning, but you know how soft they are on the Redskins.

10:53: Hoot! Let's go ahead and give this one to Shuler. Also, some other Democrats have won elsewhere, I think in Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Seven to go. This is literally happening so fast I can't keep up. I think I'll just hoot incessantly until the Dems are over the top. Hoooooooot!

10:59: We interrupt this hootathon to note that the Northern Illinois-Toledo game is coming down to a spectacular and surreal finish. The whole game's been played in a thick fog, and now the Huskies are on the Rockets' 10 inside a minute, trailing 17-13. Phil Horvath just threw a fade pattern, and I had no idea if it was caught or not. Fun stuff.

11:02: Hoot! Two more pickups, in Pennsylvania (again) and Florida (the Foley seat). Holy crap.

11:06: Hoot! Down goes Sweeney in New York. Now when he shows up to frat parties, it'll just be weird and kind of creepy, not hilarious because it's a Congressman. Four to go, I think. Hard to keep up.

11:11: This is what a landslide looks like. A nationwide repudiation of the worst president we've seen in our lifetimes. Most news services are saying the Democrats have seized control of the house. There's no reason to doubt it. The Democrats are probably going to keep rolling up wins throughout the night, as well they should. This is a nation thoroughly sick of the bullshit it's been spoon-fed for six years.

11:15: Hooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot!

11:26: Cole Slaw Blog's Washington Desk reports a tip that the only parts of Virginia not to report yet are Charlottesville and parts of Arlington. Both those places should break pretty heavily for Webb, so that's encouraging, but he's got about 7,000 votes to make up. I'm concerned. Also, the Michigan "Civil Rights" Initiative seems to be doing well, and this makes me feel kind of ill.

11:33: CrimeNotes again, resuming control of the reins. Flop's observations are much too sane and serious for my taste because --

HOLY SHIT WHAT'S HAPPENING IN VIRGINIA DOWN WITH GEORGE ALLEN I THINK I JUST HAD A SEIZURE

There is now just a 5,000-vote margin. I am hitting constant refresh on this site while a friend on IM is literally counting precinct by precinct and doing research to see how these places broke in 2004. I am chainsmoking and hopping.

11:35: In a race closely watched by no one but me ... Democrats sweep the University of Michigan regents' election! It's enough to make one repeat, "Yeah, baby," in a heavy Long Island accent that unsucessfully mimicks an Austin Powers quote.

11:40: A moment of severe bile for Chris Matthews:

Matthews, no one cares if you personally are sad because you personally like Republican congressional candidates who lose. Maybe if you were praising their statesmanship I could swallow it. That is not your style. You are speaking about your warm personal feelings and talking about how you don't understand how such people could lose elections. The people stuck voting for these douches don't know them personally, the way you do. They don't talk to them on their shows for hours and have the luxury of knowing whether they like puppies and caramel. That is what you care about. So go eat some caramel and shut up, dude.

Also, Ken Mehlman is gay. I don't mean that pejoratively. It just needs to be said.

12:10 a.m.: If Claire McCaskill loses, I'm going to try to bite off my own face.

Win or lose, I will always love you.

12:34 a.m.: Hey, Harold Ford just lost.

Oh well.

12:37 a.m.: God. Damn. George Allen -- better known through his screenname World B. Racistselfloathingsisterpuncher -- just gave a short speech saying that he's going to sleep and looking forward to the recount.

12:40 a.m.: Hootness! MSNBC reports that there are 30,000 votes in Democratic stronghold Fairfax County that haven't been counted.

12:42 a.m.: Oh my fucking hootness! McCaskill has just pulled even, per CNN!

12:53 a.m.: I wish this were a joke, but CNN is reporting from a roomful of bloggers in DC. The network just cut away from the studio to go to a collection of pasty dudes with glasses, one of whom looks 15, for their macro-analysis of the evening. The adjectives "liberal" and "conservative" are being thrown like George Allen punches at macaca convention.

CNN, you need to bring me and Flop on board. The cutaways would be much more visually dynamic, and we're definitely better-looking than the douchelords you just showed. Our segment would probably include the following:

• Liberal use of projectiles.
• Conservative use of silly string.
• A libertarian approach to punching in the shoulder.
• Breaking news in the form of real-time bruises.
• A moderate approach to yelling.
• Staying the course in all things monkey-clap dance party.
  

1:03 a.m.: Someone just IM'd me to say that MSNBC reported McCaskill up by 13,000 votes. Unfortunately, I was watching CNN, where they were talking about James Carville's cell phone calls.

1:16 a.m.: I'm going to try to sign off now and go to bed. There is work to be done and bills to be paid, so I should get some sleep.

But I'll probably post something as soon as John Tester wins.

1:55: It's Flop. Jim Webb has declared victory, although a recount seems in the cards. Claire McCaskill is speaking now on MSNBC, I think also declaring victory. She's also got a slight lead. CrimeNotes wishes he were watching. If Webb, McCaskill and Tester all win, Lieberman becomes a swing vote for leadership elections and of course on legislation. He said he'll caucus with Dems, but I'll believe that when I see it. If it comes down to him, you have to think the White House will be showering him with flowers, candy and caramels (maybe he'll share some with Chris Matthews, who right now is upset that McCaskill and Webb haven't waited for their opponents to concede). Boo fucking hoo.

2:06: Hoot! Claire McCaskill just won, according to the AP. Matthews will probably bitch about this still, although all the talking heads on MSNB are waxing poetic about elections.

2:09: Talent apparently conceded. And Chris Matthews said he did nothing wrong. How about being a Republican and supporting George W. Bush? How about opposing stem-cell research? Nah. He did nothing that Chris Matthews found objectionable. Our nation's guardians of discourse pretty much suck.

2:13: Brian Williams denounces robocalls that keep calling back as "the godfather of dirty business" without noting which party paid for all the calls that behaved in that manner. Typical.

2:57: Allow me a moment of self-interested happiness. Ohio voted to ban smoking in almost all public places, including bars and restaurants. This means no more coming home from the bar and throwing my clothes in the washing machine when I'm home visiting my family and friends. I should also note that they rejected a similar-sounding "ban" which would have actually enshrined the right to smoke in bars, restaurants and bowling alleys (hey, it's Ohio) into the state constitution. The ban that was approved is state law, but not part of the constitution, I think.

3:29: An operative in one of CSB's far-flung bureaus IMs to inform me that Pat Buchanan was saying that Lincoln didn't change his outlook on the war because he had a bad election in 1862. (Note that this is the second Republican to compare Bush to Lincoln today.) Chris Matthews' reply to Buchanan: "Let's not pretend you were on Lincoln's side in that war." It works on so many levels. See what you kids who go to be at responsible hours miss?

3:54: OK, looks like I was wrong earlier about those Ohio house races. Chabot won and Mean Jean Schmidt appears to have done so as well, But challenger Victoria Wulsin isn't conceding yet.

4:42: Man, it's time for bed. I'd say something about how it'll be nice to wake up on a post-election Wednesday not feeling sick to my stomach, but in 2000 I felt fine until I turned on the radio in my car to hear who won. And who knows what bullshit will happen while I sleep. Tester is up in Montana, where there's a delay in the vote reporting, while Virginia is super close, but Webb also leads. That one could become scorched earth if it's down to another recount to decide control of one branch of government. Looks like they have most of the rest of the month to count absentees and provisionals.

4:54: One last thing. Arizona _ Arizona! _ became the first state to defeat an amendment that would ban gay marriage. I didn't think any state outside of Massachusetts or someplace would actually do that. Certainly not Arizona. Definitely another small victory for freedom on a pretty amazing night. So much for Karl Rove's genius. He just got outwitted by the American electorate. Hoots to you all, America.