The New York Times has a slideshow of various maps showing how the electoral results break down. The first map is notated “Only 22 percent of American counties voted more Republican than they did in 2004.” This one shows that 78 percent of American counties voted more Democratic than they did in 2004. I thought it was hyperbole when I read some pundits saying that the Republican party was on its way to becoming a regional, not a national, force in politics. But in this cycle at least, it seems it’s advantage: Democrats. We’ll see how we’re doing in about…

Over at Daily Kos: State of the Nation they’re having some fun with Presidential Seal imagery. And that’s how I’m hoping things turn out. It’s looking good for at the moment. We’re over at Jill’s house getting ready to watch Colbert and Stewart, the best political analysts American society has yet produced.

Here we go: the first of many towns, villages, municipalities, and counties heard from. Dixville Notch has spoken: It’s Obama in a landslide – CNN.com DIXVILLE NOTCH, New Hampshire (CNN) — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama emerged victorious in the first election returns of the 2008 presidential race, winning 15 of 21 votes cast in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire. [The town] is the first in the nation to vote in the primaries and Election Day. People in the isolated village in New Hampshire’s northeast corner voted just after midnight Tuesday. It was the first time since 1968 that the village…

McClatchy Washington Bureau | 11/03/2008 | Stevens juror left for horse race, not her father’s funeral WASHINGTON — Juror No. 4 in Sen. Ted Stevens’ federal corruption trial, otherwise known as Marian Hinnant, didn’t leave the trial to attend her father’s funeral in California, as she told the judge at the time. Instead, Hinnant had a plane ticket to see the Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita Park near Los Angeles and didn’t want to miss it, she told the judge Monday. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan had ordered her to court to find out why she’d left town and lost…

The narrative of this election moves me to tears sometimes, sometimes to open sobbing. No, I’m trying not to give in to the angstyness that’s sweeping the Democratic blogosphere. Now and then I just get blubby, because there’ve been a lot of really emotional highs and lows. A lot of news stories that make my moods swing constantly, like a weather vane pointing first east, then west. There’s no story more moving than the news that Madelyn Dunham, Sen. Barack Obama’s grandmother, has died. It seems like it was bad enough when Studs Terkel passed, but I had really hoped…

Earlier today/late last night, the news broke that Obama’s Kenyan aunt is living in this country illegally, having overstayed her visa after her request for asylum was denied. Talking Points Memo ruminates on the timing (suspiciously close to the election) and the source (suspiciously originating on a Rupert Murdoch-owned publication, then getting echo-chambered). TPMMuckraker | Talking Points Memo | The Anatomy of a Smear On the record, of course, the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, is telling reporters it can’t comment on any individual person’s immigration status. It would appear to be a…