Let's face it, precious few of us last night, in the deep dark recesses of our mind, didn't expect some last minute turnaround in the vote that saved Republicans in tight races.
With Burns closing in on Tester, you thought there'd suddenly be a big shift to the red man, didn't you? You thought Allen would suddenly 'find' 10,000 votes, didn't you?
I know I did.
I know, after 2000 and 2004, I expected any close race to suddenly and unexpectedly swing red, and I expected we'd take weeks going through individual county returns, finding irregularities everywhere.
But that never happened. Why? Here's my take.
1. Local races are harder to hack, no matter who's counting votes.
If it's Kerry vs Bush, you can hide 30,000 Bush votes in Cuyahoga County or Miami-Dade and nobody will notice until after the count is certified. But if it's the guy that owns the butcher shop on Main Street vs the lawyer from the next town, where are you going to hide that sudden influx of 10 or 20 thousand ghost votes? You can't do it without setting off major alarms.
2. They set off their November Surprise two days early.
when the robo-call fakery started happening, the press were essentially away from the desk. But though starting the fraudulent call scheme on a Saturday might have saved the frauds from press exposure, that didn't account for the power of bloggers with a head of steam, working furiously to get the word out and show the Repukes for the scumbags they are.
Now, if they'd have started the robo-calls Monday night... well.
3. A wave of corruption. And stuff.
You can explain away an Abramoff. You can explain away a Duke Cunningham. You can explain away a bridge to nowhere. You can explain away no-bid contracts in Iraq. But you can't explain away Abramoff AND the Dukester AND the bridge AND Halliburton AND Foley AND Diebold AND Iraq AND... you get the point.
4. State-based initiatives on the ballot.
This is the trick that Rove pulled in 2004 to get the wingnuts out - put 'gay marriage' on every ballot. Only this time the Dems got wise - we put 'raise the minimum wage' on ballots, and boy howdy, didn't we get some turnout?
In contrast, gay marriage barely raised a hand in the crowd of 'reasons to vote' for the right.
5. The power of the left wing blogosphere.
There's a massive difference between the left and right wing blogospheres, and that difference can be relfected in no greater way than with Black Box Voting's Bev Harris. Whenever Bev sticks her head up here, despite the fact that she's a friend and ally, she gets pretty well chewed up, and that's because she doesn't play by the tough rules of 'proof' that the left blogosphere demands of any poster. She says there's a crime committed, she says the evidence is out there, but when she fails to deliver said evidence, Kossacks shut her down - and they remember.
On the left side of the electronic fence, you can't get away with just saying "George Bush knew 9/11 was coming", we want proof. We want sources. We want legitimacy, or don't waste our time.
On the right side of things, however - the Michelle Malkin/Hugh Hewitt side, you can say whatever you want, about whoever you want, and the masses will lap it up, be it right, wrong, or somewhere in the middle.
On the left, we like to educate ourselves, and when a corrupt Dem like William Jefferson comes along, we're the first ones to yell forhim to resign. On the other side, they don't want to educate themselves - they wallow in hatred, racism, bigotry, and out and out lies.
And that, dear readers, eventually drives away anyone but the ultra-right freakboys.
On the left, we not only found candidates to run in weak races, we found GOOD candidates - veterans and strong progressives, people who have facts at their fingertips and can speak truth to power for hours on end. On the right, they didn't raise a single candidate as far as I can see, and they sure as hell wouldn't run a primary candidate against a one-time VP nominee.
We engage in citizen journalism, they engage in muck-raking. We raise money by the millions, they don't. They blindly follow their leaders, while we lay down orders for ours, and woe betide any Lieberman/Landrieu/Cuellar that doesn't at least pretend to follow them.
In essence, the right blogosphere has made itself irrelevant, while the left has turned itself into a major political force.
And, oh yeah, we're not on the take.
The Wrap-Up:
While the last specks of dust are still floating around the room, it's safe to say the Democrats won hugely yesterday. It's also safe to say that, while the Republicans sure did cheat (and maybe even switched a few seats by virtue of that), they couldn't cheat enough to change the result.
Not with the 'far left extremists' of the blogosphere looking over their shoulder.
But that's not to say we can rest easy. They'll keep doing what they're doing, and they might even learn from us and pick up some of our tricks, like online organizing, or speaking the truth so they remain relevant (hahaha, who the fuck am I kidding?).
but rest assured - they will hack the vote in 2008 if we don't protect the process in the years prior. They will run wedge issue state-based initiatives on the ballot. They will use robo-calls, if we don't send people to jail for doing so. They will haul in the media and make them bark like dogs for them. And they will try to go to war with Iran.
We've taken control, fellow bloggers. Now it's time for us to make good use of that control, start weeding out the DINOS, and turn this country into a bedrock political climate where the seeds of fascism can take no purchase.
2008 starts today.