November 5, 2008, 8:46 A.M.

Kevin,

What’s for breakfast this morning in your house? I’m having schadenfreude over easy with a side order of gloating links.

I know this is supposed to be a time for magnanimity and extending hands across the aisle. John McCain’s speech was classy (though his supporters were classless) and Obama’s speech was sober and serious, rather than joyful, with not a hint of “I told you so,” in the text or the delivery.

Shit, even Karl Rove and Bill Kristol were gracious over Obama’s victory last night, but fuck it, I’ve been spending the morning cruising the conservative blogosphere and enjoying the wailing and gnashing of teeth. My favorite dummy of the right, Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review’s The Corner did not disappoint:

What Freaks Me Out About This Election is how oblivious to facts people have been. Everything about Obama’s judgment and radicalism — whether Sean Hannity or Stanley Kurtz or Andy McCarthy etc. is telling you about it — was essentially deemed irrelevant (including largely by the McCain campaign, save for Palin eventually talking about Ayers). Abortion? Near no one outside a handful of conservatives were talking about his record on infanticide — beyond abortion.

People are in for a rude awakening. And a mature conservative movement, with both an ear and a solid voice, will be needed.

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Dummy! If this is the core of a mature conservative movement, I think we’re looking at an easy Obama re-election in 2012.

The margin is both comfortable and close at the same time. Most of the states Obama flipped that padded his EV total - Virginia, Florida, North Carolina - were very tight margins, and in the case of Virginia and North Carolina, Obama ran well behind the democratic senate candidates. If those states had gone the other way, we’d be talking about how Obama won in a relative squeaker.

Which brings to mind the big question I want to ask you and what I’ve been thinking about is whether or not McCain (or another republican) could have won? The concession speech McCain didn’t make me want to throw a brick through me TV. If that guy had shown up with Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney on his arm would K-Lo be crowing about a future end to infanticide this morning?

—John

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