I hope so. He’s the second-best thing that ever happened to the Republicans, other than Bill and Hillary themselves.

The mayor of Fort Lauderdale (a Democrat who supports Bush) called Michael Moore a gas bag last night. The Mooreheads weren’t amused:

After Moore left, a throng of Kerry supporters lashed out at Naugle, chasing him down several city blocks while some screamed,

Can we put to bed this weird myth about John Kerry being a “good closer“? He’s really a pretty lousy politician, and has only survived in his Senate races by being a liberal plant in the hothouse of Massachusetts. He couldn’t survive out in the wild of the rest of the country.

The frightening thing is that Bush really was vulnerable this year, and the donkeys screwed up by picking one of the worst possible candidates, because they foolishly thought that Kerry’s Vietnam record would somehow inoculate them against being soft on defense. In retrospect, I think that a Gephardt, or a Biden, or particularly a Lieberman (I might have even voted for him, despite the dreary prospect of having to listen to his whiny voice for four years) could have knocked him off.

…would Kerry have lost if he didn’t have the media nurturing and protecting his campaign? Evan Thomas thought that their support was worth fifteen points. If so, imagine a 67-33 result…

Dick Morris thinks that the exit polls were deliberately screwed up.

If so, why? To discourage and suppress the Republican vote?

Maybe. After all, it worked in Florida in 2000, when the early (false) call of the state for Gore reduced Bush turnout in the panhandle (where polls closed an hour later).

Whatever happened, I agree that we need to understand it–it may indeed have been one last attempt of many through this election season by a now shameless MSM to steal an election. Fortunately, they are even bigger losers at this point than John Kerry. As is John Zogby. He may have trouble getting people to pay attention to him next time.

[Update at 9 AM EST]

Michael Barone has a plausible theory about how it happened:

My own suspicion is that some Democrats

He got a majority of the popular vote for the first time since his father did it. He got, in fact, more votes than any presidential candidate in history. No one can rationally claim that he was “selected, not elected” this time. If John F. Kennedy was a legitimate president with a mandate for his policies, with only a plurality of the vote and a fraction of a percentage more than Nixon, so now is George Bush much more so, as a sitting president.

The deep divisions won’t end, of course, nor will the cries of “Halliburton,” “Chimp,” “Hitler,” “Ooooiiiillll” from the fever swamps, but let’s hope that the Dems will finally have figured out that they must confine that infection to the loony fringes of their party, instead of giving it honored box seats at their convention, if they ever hope to regain power. Let us hope also that we have finally fought the last battle of the Vietnam War, and that America finally won.

Fox News has just predicted that Bush wins Ohio, which puts him within four electoral votes of reelection. Hard to see how Kerry can run the table from here.

It was closer than I expected, but with this victory over their tormentor and accuser, it looks like the Vietnam vets will finally get the parade they never got. And soon, John Kerry will be dismissed from duty, perhaps more honorably than the last time, but not much.

[Update at 1:16 AM EST]

Uh oh.

The Kerry campaign won’t concede Ohio–they think that the provisional ballots could still give them the state, and CNN refuses to call it. Unless Bush can pick up enough other states, we may be going into extra innings. It looks like he’ll get Iowa, but that won’t be enough by itself. They still need to pick up Wisconsin and either Nevada or New Mexico to make Ohio moot.

We’ll get rid of Larry Flynt. Somehow, though, like all the others, I suspect that it’s an idle promise (and certainly just the opposite of a threat, at least to me).