(FiveThirtyEight.com) Obama: 349 McCain: 189

Four hours before numbers from Virginia start streaming in, and minutes before you awaken to a bombardment of a strange phenomenon called the exit poll, here are the final numbers drawn from a composite of 14 polls from folks at FiveThirtyEight.com.

Scroll down the page for some beautifully drawn up scenarios from these numbers.

Obama: 348.6 McCain: 189.4




Here is how FiveThirtyEight got at these numbers.

An Antifits Prediction: Who takes Virginia, wins the election.

Why I think Barack Obama is the next President of the U.S.?

At last night's debate who looked more Presidential?



At the Antifits, we thought it was Barack. Even Fox agreed. Apparently, smears don't help a presidential candidate.

Oh! W.

Updated on 09/26/2008:
Apparently, President Bush's bailout did go through a lot of bottleneck on the floor of the Congress on Thursday. And now, Washington is working over the weekend to come to a consensus by Monday. Read the New York Times story here.
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Did anyone watch W. address the nation last night? First things first, with this being dubbed as the "greatest depression", W. could not have kicked things off on a more positive binge.

Didn't anyone else get it? The red tie.



Face it America, he will again get what he wants. Even though if it takes a bipartisan frenzy, no John McCain on the campaign trail and Senator Christopher Dodd looking as someone more important in Washington than he really is. And apart from a certain executive pay clause and the temporary ban on short selling, it will be all on his terms.

"Once this crisis is resolved, there will be time to update our financial regulatory structures. Our 21st-century global economy remains regulated largely by outdated 20th-century laws."

Wow. Anyone who can read between the lines, there would not be anything drastic with regulation after all. So W. calls the democrats for a trillion bucks, gives a certain few like Sen. Christopher Dodd and Sen. Harry Reid a few soundbite on TV, but in real terms, ignores their cherished call for a more stringent regulatory framework.

Though this bailout business did put us through a lot of stress. Specially with an angry Sen. Dodd on TV. Let us give it to him. It is his 15 seconds of fame.

And we thought we would not see him much after the most inconsequntial presidential campaign. Ah! well, these are uncertain times.

"Many borrowers took out loans larger than they could afford, assuming that they could sell or refinance their homes at a higher price later on."

Even if it was a couple of lines camouflaged somewhere in W.'s speech, I cannot help applaud a President, who in a world of John McCain and Barack Obama, can literally tell the Americans that like Wall Street, they fucked up.

Or Wall Street fucked up because the American people fucked up. First.

And this Presidential Election; call it a clusterfuck, or a cute Daniel Radcliffe turning into a naked Daniel Radcliffe. There is only as much as we can take. Asked about whether he would go to Washington, Sen. Obama said:

“If we get consensus and everybody is popping Champagne in Wahington, then I’ll probably go back to campaign with folks who are having a tough time in Ohio and Michigan.”

Spare a minute for folks in Michigan and Ohio. Gail Collins writes of them in the New York Times:

"Since the people of Ohio and Michigan have been visited by a presidential candidate virtually every hour for the last six months, it would seem that they could get by on their own for a day or two."

If the last two weeks on Wall Street should teach you something, just remember that the President matters. Even if just for the next four months. Well, add more than a bit of Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke.

After which with the debt ceiling of the United States at $ 11. 3 trillion, I don't think either President Obama or President Palin in Washington would be wielding much stick.

But with them in Washington, for folks in Michigan and Ohio "change" shall prevail.

Transcript- President Bush's speech on the economy on 09.25.2008 [NY Times]
Bring on the Rubber Chickens- Gail Collins [NYTimes]

Keith Olbermann on 9/ 11

I think for this once, The Antifits could do by shutting up.

Barack gets it moving, but is it too late?

Obama: "You can put lipstick on a pig- It's still a pig...You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change, it is still gonna stink after eight years."

Look at Obama's latest commercial. Finally, they get it moving.



But could it be too late? Watch the McCain commercial. Call it obscene. Call it perverse. Or call it whatever you want to call it.

But damn, they bloody know how to get down, and dirty. Maybe, also win elections.



This is actually my first Sarah Palin tagged post. So Mrs. Palin, you even made it to The Antifits.

By the way, while we are at it, read Peggy Drexler's Palin: Don't underestimate the babe factor on The Huffington Post here.

And Maureen Dowd's take on Palin before the Charlie Gibson interview in today's op-ed in The Times here. Recommended.

Not McCain, even if that means Billary!

John McCain is the Republican candidate. At least the beer you drank on the Super Tuesday result watching party did not go without anything substantial coming out of it.

I do not presume to know much about him. But I am still hard pressed to know how is he the media darling that he is? They talk about his ethics, and the fact that he is willing to work on bipartisan lines to get what America needs done. He’s a veteran, been obviously of great service and has some stories of it. But can we have McCain as another President, and not think that it’s another term of the Bush Administration? I doubt it.

On immigration reform, he's run as far to the right as he can, aligning himself with the most extreme elements of the Republican Party.

On the war, McCain scoffed at Bush's call to leave troops in Iraq for 50 years, saying "Make it a hundred!"

On a woman's right to choose, McCain has vowed to appoint judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade.

On the economy, one of the issues that the American people care most about, McCain has said: "I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated."[1]

A war for a hundred years. Almost a denial that fiscal irresponsibility is what’s not good for the economy and an insistence that it is a Mexican working on minimum wage that it is distorting it all. And by calling it the sanctity of life, you cannot argue overturning Roe V. Wade is nothing but an infringement on a woman’s right to live her life the way she wants to. And by talking about appointing judges who talk your mouth is probably undermining the sanctity of the judiciary a bit.     

They say he is the best of the lot. But a lot of what! And of all the talks about special interest, ethics and financial reform, there is much truth to the fact that the two of the three sources of McCain’s campaign cash are lobbying firms based in Washington D.C.

America needs to decide. But what is decided is that McCain is the choice of the GOP. Millions of dollars of special interest money is flowing in. You can be bloody darn sure of one thing; the Pharmaceutical majors and the Insurance companies definitely do not like Barack talking about putting healthcare negotiations live on C- Span. One can guess which candidate their money would go to. And if anything the Republicans are good at it, it is probably winning elections.

I keep doing it again, but in Barack’s words, “we have gay friends from the south and friends who go to the church in California.” Come on, Even Billary! Better a never-ending soap opera at the Oval Office than another Republican. For yourselves, and the world.

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[1] Howard Dean, in a widely circulated E- Mail titled How we will beat John McCain dated February 6, 2007.