This reminds us of an ancedote that Dolores Tayoun, wife of ex-City Councilman Jimmy Tayoun, once told us. When her husband first ran for office, Dolores proudly strode into the voting booth at 9th and Ellsworth to cast her ballot.

She closed the curtain and -- whoosh! -- a hand suddenly reached in and flicked several levers. Call it the "Hand of Democracy."

Shocked, an indignant Delores turned to see a man behind her and said, "I wanted to vote for my husband!"

The man, exasperated at this novice's ignorance of South Philly politics, replied, "How [else] do you expect him to win?"

As of the census[4] of 2000, there were 484,564 people, 181,633 households, and 126,961 families residing in the county.... The racial makeup of the county was 66.72% White, 25.33% Black or African American, 0.28% Native American, 0.82% Asian, 0.04% Pacific Islander, 4.96% from other races, and 1.85% from two or more races. 12.20% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. The most commonly cited national ancestries were German (12.2%), Polish (9.6%) and Irish (7.1%).

If that's the case, I guess she can sit on the sidelines while Obama and McCain fight it out. If something really bizarre happens (Obama is abducted by aliens, or is found with the proverbial dead woman or live boy), she can step in.

I hope she continues, but respect her decision either way.

I can't decide if the Mayor of Gary is a buffoon or if they realized they were going to get caught and stopped.  Or both.

So I've been holding my breath the entire evening. All I can say is, wow. And whew.

Of course keep in mind, just days ago Obama was supposed to win Indiana and win NC by 20 or more points. And I think the trouble with Obama's electability has not improved. Button line, he can't win the general with these numbers. And Brazil seems to want to make it worse.

Is unable to answer why reporting the votes is taking so long. He says it's the absentees but cannot explain why the other ballots weren't released earlier.

He's making it look worse.

The Mayor of Hammond says they knew what the machine votes in other cities were at 7:30. It's midnight and we don't have any information and it looks bad. This looks improper. I'm not saying it is, but it looks. We don't need this kind of negative exposure in Lake County. He's telling the Mayor of Gary to release the numbers.

Here's a question, why does the Mayor of Gary have the ability to hold the votes.

Now the Mayor of Hammond is trying to get the Mayor of Gary to tell why he hasn't released the machine votes. Mayor of Gary says it's absentee counting. Mayor of Hammond is grilling him. Has no answer why it is taking so long to count the vote.

4,300 votes. Is that a mandate that Obama is damaged goods??

"Lake County Republican Chairman John Curley stood by his Democratic counterpart Rudy Clay as the nation waited for vote totals from Lake County. "There's no hanky panky going on," Curley said after members of the national media wondered why Lake County's votes were taking so much longer to count than the rest of the state. "We have more than 11,000 absentee ballots, far more than we've ever had before," Curley said, insisting it simply takes time to get through that many tallies."

(Reported in the Post-Tribune of NW Indiana)

I'm pretty sure it was the Gary Mayor. The quote, itself, is accurate; it was a collective jaw-dropper here at casa mea, and the FOX guy clowned around about it for awhile.

The problem is with our own unrealistic expectations, aided and abetted by several severely flawed polls, even by the usual reliables.

And she still got outspent 3-2 at least.

I think it was a victory for Clinton, from the perspective of a valiant comeback.

In NC, with its huge black population, the odds were always bad.