Tonight Is, By and Large, A Good Night

I'm on my sixth drink in the past five hours or so, so take this all with a grain of salt, but in general tonight is a good night. Nate Silver has been almost completely vindicated; at the moment, 49 states match Silver's projection, and Florida is leaning Obama's way (which is what 538 projected as of Election Day) meaning that if you just took the candidate who was above 50% in Silver's projection, you would have called the electoral college with perfect accuracy. Federal Republican candidates who said stupid things about rape are 0-for-3. Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin have been declared losers, and John Koster is trailing Suzan Delbene by 10 points in WA-01. Democrats will gain seats in the Senate and because of retirements the world's most annoying deliberative body will become substantially more liberal. Locally, pot legalization and gay marriage are running ahead of Jay Inslee, who is slightly ahead of Rob McKenna despite the fact King County (Seattle) is the slowest county to count ballots in the state. Things are not perfect--for instance, an initative to open up Washington state to unaccountable charter schools appears on its way to passage--but on balance, tonight is another night where the arc of the universe is long, but bends towards justice.

More when I am a bit more sober. Beaudrot out.