Dem Senate candidate Jim Webb on CNN declaring victory before his supporters:
“I apppreciated what Senator Allen not long ago said when he came on the news and said, `We all need to respect the process in this country, the Democratic process.’ We all go out, we vote, we argue, we vote, but also I’d like to say the votes are in. And we won.”
Webb is leading 49.43%-49.36% with 99.47% precincts reporting.
More fun than the last two elections.
Late Update: Come to think of it. Make that the last three.
TPM Reader DH on the Virginia senate race and probable recount …
The Republicans have backed themselves into a corner in Virginia.
If you’re going to go to the mat with dirty tricks and voter suppression, your counting on staying under the rader and that once the election is over, folks will move on.
If Allen contests the results of the election it changes the election from a single day event into a 3 or 4 week event, plenty of time to chase down those callerid numbers and phone bank contractors.
Virginia isn’t Ohio. It doesn’t have Ken Blackwell to cover up the GOP shenanigans, and the state has already requested the FBI to look into them.
The Allen campaign is going to have to make the choice of whether contesting the results is worth the chance of exposing criminal activity.
Let’s hope they choose to contest. It’s our best hope of fully exposing the shenanigans of the GOP to the light of day and getting the mechanisms in place to prevent their use in the next election cycle.
Good point.
In the post below, TPM Reader DH is right. But get on this. It looks like Virginia will decide the senate. Karl Rove has turned races like this around before. You don’t know the lengths they’ll go to. Believe me, you’re not being imaginative enough.
Check out Josh Green’s article on Karl Rove from two years ago. Look what Rove pulled off in the disputed Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice race. Read it.
Get ready for the bogus headlines on Drudge. The rumors and innuendo. Live boys and dead girls. Like I said, your imagination will only get you maybe half the way there. Get ready.
Dems two seats away from controlling the Senate? CNN calls the Missouri Senate race for Democrat Claire McCaskill.
Okay, Webb’s putting some real numbers on the board now. The margin is up to just under 12,000 votes. That’s a steep hill to climb in a recount.
TPM Reader EF has their number …
Republicans’ control over our national political narrative cannot be overstated. I can’t count the number of times a candidate who wasn’t an effete urban sissy was described as being “different that the typical Democrat.” Tester, Shuler, Ellsworth, McCaskill, etc., etc.
The media has so completely adopted the GOP’s cultural frame it’s hard to even see it for what it is. We will be running uphill until we address this.
So true. I think Candy Crowley was maybe the worst offender. But, hey, we had CNN on at the office.
I really gave him a hard time in early 2005. But a big congrats to Harold Ford (D-TN). Tennessee’s a really red state. And let’s not sidestep the issue: He’s a black man running for senate in a southern state. That’s a tall order on both counts. He didn’t win. But he ran a kick-ass campaign. And he only lost by a couple percentage points. The word going into tonight was that support for Ford had collapsed over the last week and Corker was going to have a solid win.
And let’s not let the gauziness of the moment paper over the fact that Corker ran a disgusting race. The guy is a blight on the senate.
