First Time For Everything

From the Omaha World-Herald:

For the first time ever, a blue circle will appear in Nebraska on national electoral maps.

Democrat Barack Obama won the Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District on Friday, scooping up one of the state's five electoral votes.

In the process, he made history and shone the spotlight on Nebraska's unusual electoral college system. * * *

And Nate over at fivethirtyeight.com continues to give us hope that notorious criminal Ted Stevens may actually get fewer votes than Begich when all the counting is over:

Although Ted Stevens currently holds a lead of approximately 3,200 votes in ballots counted to date in Alaska's senate contest, there is good reason to believe that the ballots yet to be counted -- the vast majority of which are early and absentee ballots -- will allow Mark Begich to mitigate his disadvantage with Stevens and quite possibly pull ahead of him.

The reasoning behind this is simple: some early ballots have been processed, and among those ballots Begich substantially leads Stevens. A tally of Alaska's 40 house districts as taken from Alaska's Division of Elections webpage suggests that Begich has won about 61% of the early ballots counted so far, as compared with 48% of ballots cast on Election Day itself. * * *

And here is a good op/ed by Hugh Bailey with regard to the election of Obama. Bailey effectively sums up the challenge now facing the GOP:

McCain won the vote among white people -- a not insubstantial percentage of the electorate. But it's also a shrinking percentage, a trend that's only going to gain speed in coming years.

The only age range that supported McCain was 65 and older. For obvious reasons, that's a tough group to base your future around.

Things are looking pretty bad right now for the Republicans, and there can be no doubt that Bush has crippled the GOP. But the political climate can change awfully fast. A mere four years ago, Republicans were saying stuff like this:

[Tom]DeLay himself drew the line sharply the day after the 2004 elections. "The Republican Party is a permanent majority for the future of this country," DeLay declared. "We're going to be able to lead this country in the direction we've been dreaming of for years."

Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform and a leading figure in both the DeLay and Bush political operations, chose more colorful post-election language to describe the future. "Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with the Republicans," he told Richard Leiby of The Post. "Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant. But when they've been 'fixed,' then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful."

Democrats can now laugh at what DeLay and Norquist said four years ago, but those statements should also be viewed as a warning.