Photo: Sullivan/Getty

So it's over. Won't have much to say here, since I just got done writing a piece for the magazine following a long day and night of travel and my brain is therefore in full melted cheese mode right now.

On my flight from Atlanta to Phoenix yesterday evening I sat next to a McCain supporter from Georgia, a retired military guy gone into sales. We were both watching the returns come in on Delta's in-flight TV service. When news flashed that the polls had closed in Florida, he turned to me.

"I bet those people in Miami-Dade‚ will be supporting Obama big-time," he said, apropos of nothing.

In Phoenix a few hours later, at a very somber McCain "Victory party," another retired Air Force officer railed against the new regime. Obama, the man said, will "demoralize the armed forces" to the point where "we won't even exist anymore."

I asked him if he really thought Barack Obama would intentionally destroy the military and ruin the country just because deep down inside, he hates America that much. The guy shrugged.

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Illustration:Barry Blitt

It was hot, it was dirty, and it took a very long time to be over — but it's finally time to light that cigarette after the 2008 presidential race. In the end, this strange and bitterly fought campaign season was really about two things: the unbelievable, almost inexpressible incompetence of the Republican Party, and the commensurate rise, on the other side, of the remarkable figure Barack Obama.

So now, from Mitt Romney as a Kmart shopper to Hillary Clinton as a horse, a few favorite moments from the trail.

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Photo: FReeper dinasour/MichelleMalkin.com

In connection with the whole whining theme, something has to be said about Republican third-stringer Michelle Malkin’s column yesterday. As noted, we should all brace ourselves for an unprecedented period of whining about liberal media bias; it's starting already, with hacks like Malkin already cranking out what essentially are early election post-mortems, blaming the already-conceded McCain loss on the campaign press.

Malkin listed five major crimes of liberal bias committed by the “Obamedia.” One is the absurd story about a “suppressed” videotape purportedly showing Barack Obama attending a “Jew-bash” party with Palestinian professor Rashid Khalidi, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

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Photo: Getty

Off today to Pennsylvania to catch a joint McCain-Palin appearance. That should be fun. McCain's latest tactic is to cast himself as the last electoral bulwark America might ever have the chance to employ against the inevitable socialist takeover. I can't wait to see the applause he gets from all those Pennsylvanian anticommunists.

The reason I even joke about this is — well, let me just make this one small point before I hop in my car. If, as expected, Barack Obama wins, we should all get ready for the emergence (one might say re-emergence) of a powerful new storyline in the right-wing media. There are going to be many stories circulated about the rise of Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann and other in-the-tank-for-BO media types. Complaining about media bias was already a national sport before this election season, but now that one of America's top TV commentators is an affable lesbian who rolls her eyes every time she reads a Republican talking point, you can expect the howls from the hills to be louder than ever.

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Illustration:Victor Juhasz

The strategy of the Era of Rove has worked for a long time — but now, suddenly, things are different. Not only does the torch-bearing evangelical Colorado of Ted Haggard and James Dobson appear poised to turn its nine electoral votes blue for a nonwhite presidential candidate, but the congressional seat belonging to one of America's most celebrated gay-bashers in this once-impregnable Republican stronghold is also up for grabs. Has there been a sea change in the electorate? Is there a place on the American map where you can actually see the country outgrowing the politics of bigotry?

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Illustration: Victor Juhasz
Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power. Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she's the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV — and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.

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