The country had one choice amongst the major candidates that opposed the Iraq War, and that choice won despite relative inexperience, but his first choices have been pro-war: Biden and Emanuel. I recall him promising he would change the 'culture of Washington' that led to that war. At least Obama reiterated his critique of the war up to the general election date and, most importantly, won instead of McCain, Rudy and Hillary.

The United Nations should monitor Alaska elections. Lisa Murkowski outperformed polling expectations in 2004 and now Ted Stevens, coming off the felony conviction, has substantially outperformed post-conviction polls which had Begich up by margins of 8 (Rasmussen), 22, 2 and 6 in the days before yesterday. Alaska uses Diebold optical scan machines, which have been proven to be susceptible to voter fraud.

The Democratic Senate pickups, as well as the Presidency, have been by large margins and the Republicans have generally won the close Senate races of the past decade. What's comforting is that the margins put up in GA (Diebold), AK, and MN (ES&S) are not 51% or more which is what you would shoot for if you were rigging the election. Bev Harris documented in her book something I noticed at the time, that Chambliss' 1994 margin for victory over incumbent Max Cleland defied all polling, and she noted other irregularities in Georgia voting that year.