I ran across an article on a Right-Wing blog on election day 4 years ago and did a copy and save. A week later, I wrote my line-by-line response. Here it is, some feel-good Schadenfreude from what seems like such a more innocent time; right-wing website "The Financial Skinny" (not linking, and this post has been deleted from the site, but you can find a copy of it here where someone else cut-and-pasted four years ago) gives their hour-by-hour prediction of the McCain/Palin landslide.
theFinancialSkinny
Adventures in Real Life, Investing, and Politics
November 4, 2008
Transform This!
We keep hearing that Senator Barack Hussein Obama (D-IL) is a 'transformational candidate', so we decided to get an accurate definition of the word.
Transformation: A marked change, as in appearance or character, usually for the better.
We're fairly certain that in the opinion of most voters that last phrase, usually for the better, will rule out Obama.
It will begin in New Hampshire during election night coverage. The networks will hesitate to call that state for Obama because the actual vote totals will surprise them.
Actually, it was called for Obama right at 8:00.
Although it's a so-called 'blue' state widely expected to go for the Democrat, turnout will be much heavier than anticipated. That incremental turnout, above and beyond the increase that's attributable to 'new' Obama supporters, is what will sink his prospects in New Hampshire and elsewhere. We call it the anyone-but-Obama surge (ABOS). The pollsters and pundits this year are focused on the vast number of new registrants attributable to Obama's appeal to African Americans and younger voters. Those numbers are real, and there will be a surge in African Americans showing up at the polls.
Check.
Younger voters won't show in significantly higher numbers, and those that do vote will be much more evenly divided in their candidate preferences than has been expected.
Turnout was roughly the same as in previous elections, but they went overwhelmingly Obama.
Beyond that surge of voters are ABOS. ABOS rarely vote in presidential elections. They'll vote this time because they're highly motivated to stop Obama.
[crickets, tumbleweeds]
It's not his race that offends them, although that's what the media and the Democrats will claim on Wednesday morning. What repels them is his radical left-wing agenda and his apparent disdain for, and perhaps hatred of, American society. Americans are unhappy with the direction of the country, but that doesn't signify their wish to shred the Constitution and discard capitalism in exchange for failed socialistic policies. They instinctively distrust Obama and they're going to heed their intuition.
There seems to be an extraneous "dis" in that last sentence.
New Hampshire will be called for McCain about 1½ hours after the polls close there.
Again, called right away for Obama.
The political geniuses will note the anomaly but minimize its significance. The Obama campaign, however, will experience a sense of discomfort.
They were celebrating the fact that they also picked up a Senate seat, probably.
One hour later the networks will call North Carolina for McCain.
Too close to call for most of the night, until it finally went Obama.
With fifteen electoral votes and a large African American population, it was targeted by Democrats this year as the one state in which they could feasibly make inroads into the South.
Turns out to have been an insightful decision.
Sorry. No sale.
Do you ever get tired of being wrong about ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING?
"That's ok", they'll console themselves. "Virginia will turn blue".
And it did.
A half-hour later they'll be proved wrong again.
And they weren't.
The northern Virginia population increase of high-tech and government workers won't offset the military, retired military, and voters from other parts of the state who aren't buying Obama's shtick.
Apparently they bought.
Virginia's Secretary of State threw out thousands of active military absentee ballots, allegedly on a technicality, but in actuality because military personnel tend to vote Republican. That didn't sit well.
Didn't seem to affect the outcome. And what's with the paranoia?
Then the blue Commonwealth of Pennsylvania will fall.
I think by "Commonwealth of Pennsylvania" you mean "McCain's Last Hope".
'Blue' as in Democrat, but 'blue' also as in workers who "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them" out of bitterness over lost jobs. Did you imagine they'd forgotten?
Apparently it wasn't as big a deal to them as the pundits decided it should have been.
Hurling the 'racist' epithet at people who voted for Hillary Rodham Clinton isn't the way into their hearts.
They voted Obama overwhelmingly.
Pennsylvania for McCain.
Wrong.
Twenty-one additional electoral votes.
Okay, I'll give you that one. 21 is the right number. I guess that's worth partial credit.
Now that he [McCain] has picked up twenty-five blue-state votes,
He hadn't.
he can afford to lose red-state Florida's twenty-seven.
Which he did.
But he won't.
But he did.
Did you really believe that the Cuban community in Miami would vote for Marxist appeaser Obama? Cuban Americans know the evils of Marxism/socialism and the depravities it visits on the population.
And they're intelligent enough to know that it wouldn't happen with an Obama administration and voted accordingly.
Having lost New Hampshire,
He won it.
Pennsylvania,
He won it.
Virginia,
He won it.
North Carolina
Still not called at that point, but he eventually won it.
and Florida,
He won it.
Obama must win Ohio,
He did.
Missouri
Eight days later and they still haven't been able to say for sure.
(As we know, McCain did pull this one out.)
and Indiana.
He did.
We wish we could make one of those aggravating game show buzzer sounds now, but we'll settle instead for No, No, and No.
Actually, the buzzer would seem pretty appropriate at this point. Just not for the guy you thought.
The only way Obama will win Ohio is if he manages to steal it, and he has been trying hard.
Now you're just sounding paranoid again.
The ABOS vote, however, will overwhelm the Obama/ACORN fraud machine.
Apparently not.
In the Show-Me State, that little number in September with the prosecutors and the sheriff threatening people who run anti-Obama ads made an impression. The voters quietly noted it and filed it away for Election Day.
And it was so close they still couldn't call it 8 days later.
(And it did ultimately go McCain's way. You can't win 'em all, I guess.)
The idea of the Hoosiers going for Obama always was a pipe dream.
Pass me that pipe, dude.
Then McCain runs the tables from Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and up through the Dakotas and over to Montana.
He certainly didn't "run the tables" in Nebraska where Obama was the first candidate ever to siphon off a vote there.
He [McCain] might lose some combination of Colorado, Nevada or New Mexico, but it won't matter.
He lost them all, but you're right, it didn't matter by then.
Game, set, match.
Amen, brother. President Elect Obama all the way.
The American people exercise the common sense for which they are legendary,
Awww. Thanks!
by sending Senator John Sidney McCain (R-AZ), iconic American hero, to the White House.
For a visit with President Barack Obama (D).
In so doing they elect Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK) the first female Vice President of the United States.
And halle-frickin'-lujah that didn't come to pass.
Transform this!
My pleasure!