He can’t be president. He can be a starship captian, though. That’s almost as good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clx-aAxKiQM

It’s like when they rescue the whales in Star Trek 4.

Some victories can be stolen from you. This wasn’t one of those. It may have seemed like that after the ’00 and ’04 debacles, but the democrats ran very, very sloppy campaigns in those years.

Other pretty-much unarguable statistics that govern these kinds of elections:

1) Eisenhower was our last bald president. Since Television came in to presidential campaigning, we have never elected a bald president. Nor will we.
1a) If both presidents have hair, the better looking of the two always wins. Examples:
Nixon V. Kennedy: Kennedy.
LBJ vs. Barry Goldwater (Bald): LBJ
Nixon vs. Humphrey (Balder of the two): Nixon
Nixon vs. McGovern (Combover): Nixon.
Ford vs. Carter: Carter.
Reagan vs. Carter: Reagan.
Reagan vs. Mondale: Reagan.
Bush vs. Dukakis : Bush (I’ll admit in this case it’s seemingly a line judge call, but George Bush is really tall, and lots of people find that attractive)
Bush vs. Clinton: Clinton
CLinton vs. Dole: Clinton
Bush vs. Gore: Bush.
Bush vs. Kerry: Bush.
Obama vs. McCain: Obama.

So the man has nothing to fear so long as there’s a dearth of attractive republicans to run against him.

Foregone conclusion.

But seriously, congratulations. I know you really wanted this, and I’m happy for you. I really am.

I think it will be different than the Carter years. I think we’re looking at something more similar to FDR than anything else. Right now there’s an economic crisis, a need for jobs, and an infrastructure that desperately needs to be improved or flat out rebuilt in places. FDR made that work to the country’s advantage.

Something else the Obama has going for him that Carter didn’t is momentum. Rachel Maddow pointed out last night that the Obama campaign harnessed the voter registration movement, rolled that right into an early voting movement, rolled that into getting out the vote on election day. Now they should roll it into something else.

This is a huge deal, it really is, but even if Obama hadn’t run, the Republicans were loosing this one. So if it wasn’t Obama now, it’d be Clinton now, and if it wasn’t her, it’d be someone else.

Back in the 1970s, Jimmy Carter resoundingly defeated Gerald Ford, but that wasn’t so much a vote FOR Carter as it was AGAINST the Nixon/Ford era. People were furious. The Democrats could have run a trained chimp against Ford and won (Arguably they did.)

What happened last night is very similar – I mean, I predicted it fairly accurately months ago – - but I sincerely hope that it’s differently. I hope, hope, hope this is the beginning of some real change in both parties, and I hope hope hope that they don’t blow it the way Carter did.

Can we roast Dick Cheney on a bonfire?