It's not long until we know for sure, but Drudge's leaked exit polls show Obama with a 2-1 lead in Virginia and Maryland and a 3-1 lead in DC. (UPDATE: The Republican race looks a whole lot tighter. Can the Huckabee surge continue?) Everyone's reporting record turnout, which is also a very good sign. Sit tight...

Election results are now coming in for the day's primary and caucuses:

Louisiana (closed primary, and please note the reports of dirty tricks)

No reports yet, but the exits look good. Results are coming in now, extremely slowly. At less than 1% in, it's Barack up 49 to 37. According to CNN's exits, analyzed here, this is likely the closest match of the night.

...at 14% in, it's Barack 54%, Clinton 37%.
...MSNBC calls it. Barack sweeps!

Nebraska (caucus)

CNN has already called it for Obama. With 74% of the precincts reporting, it's Obama 67, Clinton 33. Good numbers.

Washington (caucus)

No official call yet, but reports all day have sounded very good for Obama, with huge margins all over Seattle and elsewhere. CNN's called this one too.

With 37% reporting, it's Obama 67, Clinton 32. More very good numbers.

Meanwhile, Kansas is Huckabee country.

...and Louisiana!
...and Washington!

Has McCain been crowned too soon?

Very good news from Iowa tonight for Obama supporters as Barack takes Iowa by a solid margin (at the moment it's just about 7%). The turnout is the other huge story tonight—the Obama campaign is claiming over 200,000 people turned out, which if true is approximately twice the participation in 2004.

That the Republicans decided to go with Hucklebee is just the icing on the cake.

I already spoke a little bit today about the reasons why I support Obama, reasons I find echoed in this piece Bill Simmon sent me from the Carpetbagger Report.

So in honor of this historic occasion, let's just skip all that and go back in time instead to the moment that started it all:





The site is long gone now, but I just checked my personal archives for the post I wrote on Three Guys after the speech in 2004. Here's what I had to say back then:

BARACK OBAMA: GODDAMN.

That man really is going to be president.

But as usual it's my good friend Shankar D who's worth listening to:

Obama gave a simply great speech that will, I believe, be remembered for a very long time. Like Clinton, he evoked a belief in the essential unity of the American people, but with much more powerful rhetoric and moving imagery. It was a much-needed clarion call at a time when ideologues on both sides of the aisle seem to relish and cherish the cultural boundaries that separate us from each other. A call that had no more fitting author than a man whose very existence bridges that gap.

But for progressives, it should be remembered for more than that. In those powerful final paragraphs, Obama premised his call for unity on the fundamentally liberal ideals of brotherhood and compassion.

For alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga. A belief that we are connected as one people. If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief -- I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper -- that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. "E pluribus unum." Out of many, one.

Martin Luther King Jr. is smiling from above, I suspect, at this young black man giving life to the abstract notion that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

By weaving this old-fashioned liberalism together with an embrace of the principles and people of "the other side" – individualism, a pragmatic view of government’s role, and an embrace of our Red State brethren – Obama fused the promise of the left with the promise of America.

The drunken reverie of the moment will undoubtedly wear off. But tonight, I feel a renewed sense of hope about the possibility of a New Liberalism that accounts for the poor, the isolated, and the marginalized in a way that brings us together, rather than pushes us apart. Idealism will always have to confront the reality of politics and life itself, but great leadership is its surest steward. And if nothing else, I am hopeful tonight about the future leadership of this country. Such is, I suppose, the audacity of hope.

Jan. 2 is traditionally the day where I link to things on the Internets. This one is no exception.

* Via MeFi, David Cross attempts to explain why it's okay that he participated in the awful-looking Alvin and the Chipmunks remake.

* New blog Paleo-Future promises "a look into the future that never was." Sold! It's in my RSS reader now.

* My good friend Tim over at Bitter Laughter waxes nostalgic about Disney World's Carousel of Progress, and also concludes that Huckabee is sort of frightening.

* And in New Hampshire's Union Leader, Barack Obama puts forth the case for Barack Obama.

Bold electoral prediction from my father: Fox News's decision to unfairly bar Ron Paul from its debates will be the nail in the coffin that pushes Paul into a third-party run as a Libertarian, as he hinted he might last weekend on Meet the Press. I sure hope he's right; let's have Huckabee running in a fourth, pro-life party while we're at it and kill the unholy Republican coalition once and for all.

It's a poll, and worse still it's a poll of the incomprehensible Iowa caucus system, but if the Des Moines Register poll that called 2004 right is to be believed Obama should win Iowa by a good margin. More than that, the poll's internals show Obama with huge support from independents—their breakdown of likely Democratic caucusers includes only 50% Democrats and 40% independents, which if true would be an unprecedented level of caucus participation from independents and suggests a Reaganesque blowout in November if Democrats have the wisdom to nominate him. Steve Benen at Washington Monthly has a nice roundup of responses to the poll, including Marc Ambinder's aforementioned breakdown of the poll's demographics and the Edwards's campaign's skepticism that so many alleged first-time caucus goers will actually attend. Best of all is this from TNR's Noam Scheiber, quoted in its entirety for optimism:

Just to add a bit to Mike's thoughts on the Register poll--Obama's lead is clearly driven by three factors: His lead among first-time caucus-goers, his lead among independents, and his lead among young people. What's interesting about the poll is that all of these groups make up a larger portion of its likely caucus-goers than in most previous polls. So the Register is basically saying that the groups that disproportionately favor Obama are much more likely to turn out than they have in the past. Now, the Register has a reputation for being the gold standard of caucus polling, so that may well be true. Or the paper could be way off the mark. But the thing is, it may not matter either way. That's because the Register poll isn't just a description of what's going on. More than any other poll, it actually influences what goes on. Iowans will wake up tomorrow to find a headline that says, "Obama Widens Lead Over Clinton." And, human psychology being what it is, that may well push them into the Obama camp Thursday night.

Meanwhile, in the Republican camp, Huckabee continues to lead the field despite the fact that he is a well-established maniac.

Two more days...

After a tornado tore through Arkadelphia, Arkansas, in 1997, Mike Huckabee refused to sign a disaster insurance bill for over three weeks because it used standard language that referred to natural disasters as "acts of God." I am not shitting you. He really did this.

"While I realize that to some this is a minor issue, it is a matter of deep conscience with me to attribute in law a destructive and deadly force as being an 'act of God,' " he eventually wrote to the bill's sponsors, Young and Sen. Wayne Dowd. While acknowledging that "acts of God" was the "appropriate" legal term, he suggested the legislature substitute "natural disaster."

This man is insane. Meet your next president. Via Washington Monthly.

A new poll shows Hillary Clinton with only a one-point lead over Barack Obama in New Hampshire, down from a high of 20, while another shows him up by three. (Still another poll has Obama up by eight in Iowa.) Meanwhile, on the other side of the fence, Huckabee continues to reveal that he's more than a little bit of a douche in an article to be published this week in the New York Times Sunday Magazine that asks the immortal question "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?"

Incidentally, Mormons also believe Gandalf is taller than Dumbledore and that Superman could beat the Flash in a race. It's really crucial that these differences get laid out before the election.