Excerpt from a good post over at Donkey Rising:

But there is a vast difference between a vibrant and compelling campaign that doesn’t quite make it over the top and a campaign that is fundamentally a failure. The Dems have had more then a few of the latter kind, but 2004 wasn’t one of them.

“But we did worse then we did in 2000” people say, “We’re going backward, not forward”.

Nonsense. The truth is that in presidential elections the Democrats have basically been a minority party since 1968, when George Wallace cut deeply into the Dems blue-collar support in Michigan and the other industrial states as well as the South. In 1972, when the Republicans played the “Real Majority” vs. the “Elitists” game against the Dems for the first time, Nixon got 60% of the vote to McGovern’s 37%. Carter won a narrow victory in 1976 but look at the record since then.

1980
Jimmy Carter
41%

vs. Reagan+Anderson
57%

1984
Walter Mondale
41%

vs. Reagan
59%

1988
Michael Dukakis
46%

vs. Bush Sr.
53%

1992
Bill Clinton
43%

vs Bush+Perot
56%

Democrats never got anywhere even close to 50% of the vote until Clinton’s reelection campaign in 1996 (Clinton 49%, Dole/Perot 49%) and Gore’s 2000 run (Gore 48%, Bush 48%).

But in both of these latter campaigns the Democrats were running as incumbents or former Vice-Presidents, not as challengers. 2004 was the first time a Democrat ran as a challenger in more then a decade and Kerry faced a President who had, at the outset, high approval ratings, the patriotic fervor of an apparently successful war behind him, the overt support of one of the major TV networks, and the most extensive grass-roots voter mobilization the Republican Party had ever fielded.

And yet Kerry and Edwards came closer to unseating their opponent and closer to winning 50% of the vote then had any Democratic challengers in the last three decades.

Update: This diary from DailyKos gives a full-length, very well explained analysis of where things stand in Ohio and Florida, in terms of the actual ongoing counting of existing ballots, the consequences of putative recounts, plus how central computer fraud could have occurred and whether or not we ought to think it did.

The long story short is: the diarist considers it very unlikely that a full counting of all provisional and rejected ballots in Ohio would yield enough Kerry votes to turn the total; at the same time, he acknowledges that the far deeper concern in both Ohio and Florida is "errors" in (or deliberate remote manipulation of) central vote-tabulating computers. Although there is as of yet (obviously) no concrete evidence of computer-based error or fraud in this election (such evidence is extremely difficult to obtain), it is a possibility with far more than enough actual precedent, in elections across the country, to warrant a full audit and investigation.

Actually, there is some evidence (though not much) of something awry. Check it out:

Franklin County, OH: Gahanna 1-B Precinct
638 TOTAL BALLOTS CAST

US Senator:
Fingerhut (D) - 167 votes
Voinovich (R) - 300 votes

US President:
Kerry (D) - 260 votes
Bush (R) - 4,258 votes

(for the source, follow the link to the diary)

Just a lone error, an outlier, a wayward precinct? We don't know.

From the democraticamerica listserv:

So far all the "evidence" of fraud has been anecdotal (see website links to fraud) but there is one group that is getting the hard evidence--and it's there--Blackboxvoting.org.

Blackbox voting needs to raise $50,000 to file freedom of info act requests for as quickly as possible to pay for records and the fees some states charge for them: We launched one major FOIA action last night, and have two more on the way, pell-mell. Now is the time. If you can't donate funds http://www.eservicescorp.com/form.aspx?fID=912, please donate time. E-mail to join the Cleanup Crew. crew@blackboxvoting.org

Black Box Voting (.ORG) is conducting the largest Freedom of Information action in history. At 8:30 p.m. Election Night, Black Box Voting blanketed the U.S. with the first in a series of public records requests, to obtain internal computer logs and other documents from 3,000 individual counties and townships. Networks called the election before anyone bothered to perform even the most rudimentary audit.
http://blackboxvoting.org

Sicker and sicker.

I'll reach out to everyone who shares our goals.
...

There is a certain attitude in the world by some that says, you know, it's a waste of time to try to promote free societies in parts of the world.
...

And I am glad people of faith voted in this election. I'm glad - I appreciate all people who voted. And I don't think you ought to read anything into the politics, the moment, about whether or not this nation will become a divided nation over religion. I think the great thing that unites us is the fact you can worship freely if you choose and if you - you don't have to worship. And if you're a Jew or a Christian or a Muslim, you're equally American.
...

It's one of the wonderful - it's like earning capital. You asked do I feel free. Let me put it to you this way. I earned capital in the campaign, political capital. And now I intend to spend it. It is my style. That's what happened after the 2000 election, I earned some capital. I've earned capital in this election. And I'm going to spend it for what I told the people I'd spend it on...
...

[On Iraq] It's their government; it's their country. We're there at their invitation. And but I think there's a recognition that these - some of these people have to - must be defeated. And so that's what they're thinking about.

I almost couldn't give less of a shit about who becomes "leader" of the Senate Dems, but why not Paul Sarbanes of Maryland?

a) Enough of this shit with Red-staters leading the Dems. Enough, I say.

b) Sarbanes has a solid record--voted against the Iraq war authorization, for instance.

c) He's not pretty, but he's tough, and can be an asshole when he needs to--a quality we're desperately lacking in. I saw him one time on C-Span facing off with Greenspan at some financial hearing. He introduced himself by basically telling Greenspan he had no plans to kiss his ass like everyone else had been doing.

d) No issues with out-of-state residences (which I understand have become an issue for, ahem, certain senators). He lives in MD, drives downtown to work. What could be simpler?

Greg Palast agrees:

Bush won Ohio by 136,483 votes. Typically in the United States, about 3 percent of votes cast are voided—known as “spoilage” in election jargon—because the ballots cast are inconclusive. Palast’s investigation suggests that if Ohio’s discarded ballots were counted, Kerry would have won the state. Today, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports there are a total of 247,672 votes not counted in Ohio, if you add the 92,672 discarded votes plus the 155,000 provisional ballots.

Read about it.

Dear "Red State" America,

Yes you, zombified drug-and-Jesus-addled masses bunkered in the corporate wasteland of what used to be a "heartland"--I want you people dead.

You heard me: dead.

Why? Because you've just voted for my death. By re-electing your Bully-Christ, you have made it more likely that I, a dweller in a major metropolitan city, will die in a terrorist attack. You have made it more likely that millions of Blue people in Blue cities across the nation will perish in toxic explosions set off by terrorist bombs. In essence, you have sacrificed us to indulge a pathetic little fantasy.

What fantasy? That you, out there in Shitville, might one day have the privilege of dying as a glorious crusading martyr in the Holy War Against Evil. But you won't. Get it? You won't.

Let's get this straight: you will die of cancer, your bodies ridden with metastatic tumors. You will die in the twisted wreckage of car crashes in lonely interstate highways. You will die of massive heart attacks and stroke, sunk in your couches in front of the television. You will die in dementia, without memory or personality, your brain a shriveled sponge. You will die blind, swollen, unable to breathe, speak or eat, tubes protruding from your windpipe and bowels. You will die, God willing, in your sleep. But you will never die in a terrorist attack.

Did you happen to notice that the World Trade Center was located in New York City? And that almost everyone who died in those buildings, and their families, lived in New York and New Jersey? Did you notice that New York and New Jersey--and Washington, D.C., and Maryland, and Pennsylvania, where Flight 93 went down, all voted for John Kerry? Did you notice that the residents of Boston, and Miami, and Chicago, and Detroit, and Minneapolis, and Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and Seattle, voted for John Kerry? Why do you think this was?

You had a chance to cast a vote that would have protected all of us by electing a man who would have waged a smarter war against terrorism at home and abroad. But instead you voted for a man who sold you a dream, a dream that you could wage war against terror in your heart, a war led by a bastardized Christ and his representative in the White House against bogeymen-infidels.

You chose a dream over my life. For that, I wish you death--the same death that is coming toward you, and has always been coming, and is still coming, and that your Bully-Christ can't protect you from.

You'll get what you deserve--that has never been a question. But the country could have gotten something better, and now it won't.

Fucking idiots.

Sincerely,

Blicero

Giuseppe Abote writes:

I'm not suggesting any kind of overhaul. I think we did fine this election. There was no revolution. There was no '84 Reagan landslide. The red states stayed red and the blues stayed blue. It came down to a relatively small number of votes in Ohio. We're not "screwed." There's no reason to think we can't take back Congressional seats in '06 or win the White House in '08 as we are.

What I am talking about is not policy but campaign strategy, and small matters of emphasis that could deliver better results. If you look at how poorly Bush fared among, say, white college-educated males compared to the last election, it's pretty clear that many secular segments of the Republicans were very uncomfortable with this shit. In fact, I know personally of Republicans who, although rabidly pro-Bush just a few months ago, ended up voting Kerry or not voting at all. They can be reached.

When Kerry emphasized stem cell research, we were reaching those secular moderate Republicans. But we didn't harvest enough issues like that in advance to pick enough of them off.

How you talk about these issues also matters. In the second debate a woman asked an insane question about why Kerry couldn't "respect life" and curtail stem cell research, and Kerry's response began with a long preamble about how he respected the woman's faith and conviction. In retrospect, this didn't work. How many Christian nationalist votes do you think Kerry won with that preamble? We will never, ever, ever win single-issue Christian voters and shouldn't try. But perhaps Kerry could have addressed this issue in a way that spoke directly to these very uncomfortable secular moderates and lured them to us.

The whole point, I say again, is to see very very clearly that you do not try to nominate some unreconstructed cracker in '08 in order to pander to insane "values." That is what the media are urging us to do. What you must do is separate secular moderates (who may be nominally religious, which is fine) from wild-eyed religious Christian nationalists. To believe in God and attend church and guide ones actions accordingly IS worthy of respect. To advocate "creation science" and gay marriage bans and the banning of stem cell research is absolute insanity worthy of ridicule.

One more thing: Do you realize that the Christian television personality Jack Van Impe, who hosts a "news" program with his wife, Rexella, in which the day's events are explained in light of Biblical prophecy, was retained as an advisor to Condoleeza Rice? How insane is that? National security decisions were made based on the counsel of a man who literally wants to bring about Armaggedon! And yet this was not a campaign issue at all. No one ever brought it up, for fear of turning off the "values" voters we would never, never, ever, ever have won anyway.

Well, the "John Kerry" and "Defend America, Defeat Bush" are going to have to come off at some point. What to replace them with?

[Note: some of these are meant to be put on my car, others on the cars of those who voted for Bush.]

"Fuck You."

"Fuck America."

"Hey America: Fuck You."

"America: Nation of Cowards."

"Although Nearly Every Aspect of My Life Has Proven a Catastrophic Disappointment, from My Marriage to My Family to My Job to My Hope for the Future, Everything that Once Brought Me Joy, or Seemed Like It Could--Every Last Ounce of Spirit, Imagination, Curiosity About Life Systematically Sucked Out of Me By a Corporate System that Has Reduced Me to a Dead-Eyed, Illiterate, Mindless-Entertainment-and-Poison-Consuming Drudge--Nonetheless I Get Really Fired Up by the Idea of Legislative Fag Bashing. Even If I Have to Get Shat On, Shot At, Robbed, Further Dehumanized, and Blown Up, and Also Suck on a Crucifix for a Few Hours a Week and Feign Self-Righteous Piety, Which Is Ultimately Pretty Boring, It's Still Worth It if I Can Stick It to the Gays. (And the Terrorists Too. Same Thing.)"

(can that fit on a bumper sticker?)

"I [heart] Osama."

"What Kind of Asshole Would Elect a Clearly Brain-Damaged Man as President? You, Sir? Well Then, You're an Asshole."

"Jesus Licks Osama's Asshole."

"Gays = the New Blacks; Terror = the New Christ."

"Where Else in the History of the World Has So Much Wealth, Privilege, and Freedom Been Conferred Upon a People Who Have Proven Themselves So Unworthy of Those Things (Who Have in Fact Proven Themselves to Be Little More than Frightened, Greedy Infants Throwing Tantrums in Their Own Shit) Than Here?"

"God Bless the Bush/Osama/Satan/Christ."

"If You Voted for Bush, Know that You Have Caused Christ to Be Forcibly Sodomized by the Devil. You Yourself Are a Christ-Sodomite-Terrorist."

"In Its Abject Fear of Invisible 'Terrorists,' America Expresses Its Not-Even-Very-Latent Desire for Terror."

"Fuck America, and You As Well."

"I [heart] Eating Shit."

"My Vote Indicates that I Mix Together Bush's Shit and Osama's Shit into a Single Turd, then Eat that Turd, All While Rejoicing in the Christ."

OK, enough for now.

I don't know what'll become of our little blog here, but while it's still here, I'm making this an open thread for our readers, such as they wish, to weigh in. Please leave remarks in the Comment window, and I'll post them up here.

Note: You'll have to excuse me if I'm not interested right now in the "mourning, picking ourselves up and moving forward" lines of thought. I'm interested in the "What the fuck, exactly, happened in last night's election?" line of thought.

Some topics:

1. Something Seriously Rotten in Ohio Thread

Can we put what happened last night in a little perspective?

a. The final projections for the popular vote either showed the race tied, or gave Bush a 2-3 point lead. He appears to have won the popular vote by about 3 points, so this isn't out of step with the predictions.

b. Several pundits were predicting that this time Bush would narrowly win the popular vote while losing the electoral vote.

c. The electoral vote seems to have come down to about 130,000 votes in Ohio. I don't have all the latest numbers on hand, but my impression is there are still several hundred thousand votes in Ohio that have not been counted yet. Now, maybe Kerry's advisers have parsed these numbers seven ways to sunset and saw no possibility for Kerry winning; or maybe, amid all the serious parsing of numbers, Kerry was pressured into conceding for all the reasons you might expect.

d. Court challenges in polling places across Ohio having the effect of turning away lines of voters. The fucking president of the corporations that makes the paper-trailless voting machines publicly promising to deliver the state for Bush, then "regretting" what he's said. I guess we'll hear more--hopefully a lot more--about this in the coming days.

e. Some of us--myself included--had been saying (mainly prior to the late-breaking wave of optimism for Kerry) that the chances for fraud and corruption inherent in Ohio and Florida--with the state election apparatus in the hands of GOP partisans hellbent on "delivering" for Bush; and especially with the black box voting, too widely reported on even to begin to summarize here--all but insured that Kerry would need to head in to the election with at least a 4 or 5 point lead in order to offset the fraud, vote-losing, vote-miscounting, etc. Well, Kerry apparently headed into the election leading by a point or two in Ohio and Florida; the exit polls showed Kerry winning those states by a single point; and you see for yourselves the outcome.

Check out this Kos diary: LIARS! All exit polls matched results except OH and FL.

A Kos reader comments:

Inspiration: Start a movement among all the supporting groups, all the 527's and public interest groups and volunteers and students and bloggers who put this fantastic presidential campaign together (we won! I promise you)and tell the Democratic Party: No more support until you find a way to guarantee real elections.

This we must do. Without honest elections, our democracy is OVER, and there is no use working on any other issue. I want to see Michael Moore and Bruce Springsteen and John Kerry and John Edwards dumping Diebold machines into Boston harbor. That's my vision.

Agreed.

2. Something Seriously Rotten in Florida Thread

Some commenters on the blogs are saying that this focus on the possible fraud in Ohio is misleading, because the real fraud was perpetrated in Florida, where the reversal from the exit polling has been even more striking. I don't have any information on this, but if you do, please pass it along.

From a Kos diarist:

So, we have 1.39 million new voters, and Kerry loses by 376,923 votes? Thus, he lost an overwhelming majoirty of them, or he lost an overwhelming majority of regular voters - much, much more than Gore lost.

We have 77,197 fewer third party votes, but Kerry loses the vast majority of these?

Exit polling numbers show that Kerry had more Hispanic and Cuban support than Gore did, and Kerry lost?

Most exit polls in Florida showed Kerry leading, yet he loses by a massive 5%?

3. Gay-Bashing Thread

A Kos diarist writes:

You can hear it in the media's codewords: this election did NOT turn on Iraq or the economy or security, it turned on "moral values", the politically correct code-word for theocratic values, i.e., placing one's religion above the laws of man. Exit polls show that "moral values" were the most common #1 concern among voters, and that among those who marked "moral values" as their primary concern, 80% voted for Bush.

A Kos reader comments:

<>

Kerry did not win the Latino vote by what he needed and you can bet this issue played a role. In my own ethnic religious community, everyone opposes gay marriage. discussing equal rights or whatever does not move them. the govt. is sanctioning gay unions and that is unbiblical to them. Black voters (which white liberals seem to contiually want to deny the reality of) voted for the gay marriage amendments in larger numbers than white voters. the country isn't ready for this yet. it will be in 10-20 years when people of my Generation X get in power, but not now. these are reactionary times. folks are scared by so manythings. gay folks are scape goats. my mother told me today that when she told her church members she was voting for Kerry, they all yelled at her and said she was a bad Christian and that Kerry supported gay unions and abortion. they said she had been brainwashed by her radical daughter (me). she said moral values includes the war, and Bush lied about taking us into war. the pastor of the church also warned people on which way to vote based on the gay marriage shit. we are not white southern fundamentalists. we are immigrants, people of color, and part of the Democratic base, and they are vehemently for gay marriage bans.

Giuseppe Abote writes:

The most important issue for the GOP voters was not terrorism or the economy but "moral values." Everything becomes crystal clear when you see that. Wasn't everything Bush did for four years a sop to the Christian nationalists? In light of this, I think the true motivation for the Iraq invasion is especially clear. It was a gift to the red states that not only had nothing to do with fighting al Qaeda terrorists, but also had nothing to do with foreign policy in general. The whole point was to place the Christian nationalist voter in the vital center of a bloody struggle dictated by God against the infidel. Whether it went well or poorly didn't matter.


Which is why I think it is perfectly OK for me to say that although, yes, clearly, the Republicans ran a program of voter intimidation that might have swung the state of Ohio, they won the election by a margin beyond that trickery. Why did they win? Because they took an absolutely insane portion of the populace and riled them into a frenzy with an insane idea and an insane leader whom they believed to be chosen by God. And they only won narrowly! Think of the acheivement we've pulled off! We very nearly defeated a man who is believed by 1/3 to 1/2 of the nation to be God's representative on Earth! Who'd have thunk it?

This is exactly what gives me hope for the future. There's been some gloom and doom assesments of the future of the Democratic party. They're "regional." They have to "talk values." Nonsense.

The Republican party is split into two halves: one half is secular and elite and cares mainly about money; the other half is the Christian nationalist movement. Who here believes that the secular half is comfortable with the bargain they've struck? How hard could it really be to pick off a significant chunk of that half?

But in order to do it, you have to see very clearly that the solution is not to "talk values" in red states but to choose wedge issues that separate secular centrist Republicans (almost want to say "David Brooks Republicans" here) from the troglodytes. Stem cell research was an example of this. I know it wasn't enough to swing the election, but it's an example of an issue that made the David Brooks types wonder if the Christian nationalists weren't totally insane.

4. Canada Thread

Some Canadian Kossacks welcome us...

5. Media Death-Echo-Chamber Thread

An AmCop reader writes:

Dear NBC/MSNBC:

I am absolutely OUTRAGED that you followed Fox's transparently partisan rush to prematurely call Ohio for Bush, when the state was clearly too close to call, given both the margin and the number of provisional ballots waiting to be counted. Did you learn absolutely nothing from the experience of the 2000 election? Was it eagerness to compete with your competitors at Fox in the ratings war? Or was it laziness and sloppy journalism?

Perhaps in the end, either later this morning or tomorrow or Thursday, Ohio will go to Bush. Even if that should ultimately happen, it will neither validate nor excuse your scramble to put it in Bush's column. We learned in 2000 how important perceptions can be in close or contested elections, and how much the media can shape those perceptions and create a sense of inevitability with real political consequences. Intentionally or unintentionally, you may have just created a hurdle that is impossible for John Kerry to clear, as it is very likely that the Republicans will point to the fact that Ohio was "called" for Bush by your reputable news organization in order to quash any attempts to have all of the provisional ballots counted or investigate irregularities.

You have done significant damage to your reputation with viewers across the country. I for one do not plan to what NBC or MSNBC for news again, and I will encourage all of my friends and family to do the same. This will also influence my decision to buy General Electric products in the future.

To their credit, ABC, CNN and CBS have resisted the Murdoch-initiated stampede and taken a cautious, journalistically-responsible approach. To your everlasting discredit, you have repeated the same mistake in 4 years, and done grave harm to our democratic process. It is simply inexcusable.

Shame on you.

A concerned citizen

Well, after a day of canvassing in Allentown, PA, two incidents stand out to me as possible indicators of which way the election will go.

In the first instance, I was ringing the doorbell of a house which, according to my clipboard, indicated an elderly woman as well as a middle-aged woman who was presumably her daughter. A rather detailed, inkjet-printed sign affixed to the front door explained that should I wish to contact the elderly occupant, I should ring the doorbell and then wait "patiently." (I did so; there was no answer.) If I wanted to contact the daughter, I should go to a separate entrance at the rear of the house--so I did. I found there a large dog chained on a porch. The dog, I admit, was barking strenuously--but it was not until I approached the porch that I realized the dog's chain was much, much longer than I had realized. So I found myself sprinting down the driveway with the mad dog literally gnashing at my legs, wondering when the fucking chain would end. It eventually did, and the dog's jaws became detached from my leg. I then cautiously re-approached the porch, where it was clear that a person was lurking. "Hello?" I cried. It was the aforementioned daughter; and without reference to the dog attack she stepped down to speak with me. I gave my standard spiel (we were contacting only identified Kerry supporters at this point); and she refused to say which way she planned on voting, as it was none of my business. So I left, covertly examining my calf for signs of skin breakage.

Up the street, I went to the next address. The woman I was supposed to contact was just pulling into her driveway. She had several children with her. This woman was not only voting for Kerry, but had already been volunteering for the campaign. I thanked her and left. In the street outside her house was a group of young children--six, seven, eight years old--playing football in the street. My canvassing partner and I asked them who they were voting for, indicating that they clearly looked to be 18 and of voting age. Four of the five children were Kerry supporters. So we started an impromptu cheer of "Kerry! Kerry! Kerry!" right in the middle of the street, with the children literally jumping and pumping their fists in joy. We then disbursed buttons to the children. We noted that the buttons we were carrying happened to be Spanish language buttons--"Unidos con Kerry"--but the children (who looked to be of at least three different ethnicities) accepted them gladly. One of them confirmed the propriety of the gift by noting: "I'm Spanish." The sole child who was a Bush supporter was clearly a few years older than the other children, so we chalked up his transgression to his obvious need to differentiate himself from his younger playmates.

So, there we have it: two stops, two outcomes: a dog chomping at your leg, or children cheering in the middle of an empty suburban street. I guess it all comes down to this distinction.

I hope come tomorrow night the children will be celebrating the salvation of their future from the encroaching forces of terrorist-sympathetic fascism, and the dog will have appropriately forgotten about the whole thing.

Please remember to vote.

In every election since 1936, if the Redskins have lost their final home game prior to the election, the incumbent has lost the election. Well, here we go:

Redskins Lose to Packers

OK, perhaps I overreacted about the Osama tape a little bit. Perhaps I owe an apology to certain friends who, out for nothing more than a pleasant pre-Halloween cavort last night, were instead subjected to rant declaring the Ultimate Triumph of the Bush-Osama-Devil-Christ in the form of Composite Deity, and my call for not only plagues of locusts, dust, frogs, snakes, cicadas, wasps, and so forth, but an apocalyptic flood of shit and fire to sweep over all America, bringing its citizens the Death they clearly craved.

Perhaps I spoke too soon.

I can now say that for the first time since Friday evening I feel good about Election Day again; in fact, I feel even better than I did before Friday evening. Here are a few things that have renewed my faith in the slight possibility that a majority of Americans might actually not want to die in glorious holy mushroom cloud:

The Washington Post daily tracking poll, updated early today, has the race tied at 48%. Yesterday's poll had Bush leading 49% to 48%, and Friday's poll had Bush up 50% to 47%. If I understand the rolling 3-day methodology correctly, at least two thirds of today's poll was conducted after the release of the Osama tape.

Even better: today's Fox News poll, conducted Friday and Saturday, has the race tied at 46%. Yesterday's poll had Bush leading 47% to 45%, and Friday's poll had Bush up 50% to 45%.

Even better: the 46% tie is in the oft-reported 3-way Likely Voter matchup. But in Fox's news' 2-way and 3-way Registered Voter matchups, Kerry leads by 2%; and in the 2-way Likely Voter matchup, Kerry leads by 1%.

Let me repeat this: in 3 out of 4 Fox News polling matchups released today, Kerry leads.

Now, this just warms my heart:

The Democracy Corps has a new poll, conducted Friday night and Saturday morning. While the full survey will be completed on Sunday, the half-sample of 500 interviews conducted after the release of the Bin Laden tape, show the race unchanged compared to a survey completed Thursday night. The partial survey shows Kerry at 48 percent and Bush at 47 percent. Like the survey conducted before, it shows the two parties with equal numbers of party identifiers.

The Saturday respondents (250 interviews) were asked the following question: "I'm going to read you a pair of statements about the release of Bin Laden's videotape. Please tell me which one comes closer to your view.

-- It makes me think that George Bush took his eye off the ball in Afghanistan and diverted resources to Iraq.

-- It underscores the importance of George Bush's approach to the war on terrorism.

By 10 points (46 to 36 percent), voters were more likely to think that Bush took his eye off the ball. (These results will be updated when the full survey is completed on Sunday.)

So, to repeat: let's suspend the shit-and-fire Flood, give the Bush-Osama-Devil-Christ Composite Deity a nice pretzel to choke on, and keep looking forward to a very, very happy result on Tuesday.