So it’s been over a week since I last posted, mostly because I knew that after Brandy and acallidryas offered their thoughts I should put up some kind of election reaction and words were failing me. Seriously. It really is difficult to articulate what’s been going through my head the past week. This Onion headline captures a bit of it:

Kobe Bryant Scores 25 In Holy Shit We Elected A Black President

The mindblowing historic nature is part of it; another part of it is what the last eight years has been …

Update 10:20pm
McCain’s concession speech is on now, and he’s being quite gracious — this is the McCain I remember from 2000 and haven’t seen since.
Update 8:23pm
MSNBC has just called Ohio for Obama. Wow. That’s pretty much game over, barring any kind of west coast shock.
Nice. Now it’s all about the House and Senate races. More later…
Update 8:15pm:
Wisconsin got called amazingly fast, faster than it’s been called in the last two cycles. I take that as a good sign… Basically, all Obama has to do to win at this point is …

Here, dear reader(s), is a handy-dandy quick reference list of which states close their polls at which hour. I’ve also included some annotations on what to expect at various points of the evening, but take those with a grain of salt.
(You could, of course, also download the delightfully festive color-coded map from Swing State Project.)
All times are Eastern Standard Time (EST). Note that in some states polls close at different hours; the times given are generally the times of the last poll closings in that state (but in some cases …

The first official returns are in, courtesy of the New Hampshire towns of Dixville Notch and Hart’s Location:

Democrat Obama defeated Republican John McCain by a count of 15 to 6 in Dixville Notch, where a loud whoop accompanied the announcement in Tuesday’s first minutes. The town of Hart’s Location reported 17 votes for Obama, 10 for McCain and two for write-in Ron Paul.
…and poor old Ralph Nader got shut out.
So is this a key indicator, a good omen, a portent of things to come today? Naah, just some late-night election …

Catching up on some reading, I noticed Skippy ruminating about the McCain camp’s unbridled/unhinged optimism heading into Tuesday. He goes on to quote John Dickerson over at Slate, dutifully reporting the uptick of that thing called, um, Hope on the Straight Talk Uncomfortable, Dangerous Local Express:
mcinturff released a memo yesterday that outlined his case for why it’s still possible for mccain to pull a rabbit out of his hat. here’s what he sees: his poll of battleground states shows obama with such a small lead, it’s within the margin of …

Okay, so I take that “day of rest” thing pretty literally and don’t usually see the Sunday Morning Yakfests when they’re first broadcast, but I’ll often do a little catching up once a more civilized hour of the day has come around. And often, I will discover the inadvertent hilarity I missed.
John McCain was on Meet the Press this morning, but since he was campaigning in Iowa, he appeared via satellite from Waterloo. Yes, Waterloo.
You’d think someone, anyone on his staff would’ve stopped and said “Um… Maybe there’s some symbolism …

Wow. Just wow.
Kos has the scoop on this one:
Myers Research (D) & Grove Insight (D). 10/23-24. Likely voters. MoE 4% (No trend lines)

Likely voters
McCain (R) 44
Obama (D) 40
Early voters (34% of the sample)
McCain (R) 46
Obama (D) 47
The sample was 40 percent Republican, 33 Democratic, and 26 percent independent. ASU has its own survey coming Monday, and they’ve hinted at similar results.
My father, who actually lives in McCain’s illustrious home state, essentially told me something like this was going on — that there was a lot of rumbling on the ground …

It seems like just last week that Colin Powell was persona non grata in many sectors of the left for his participation in the runup to the Iraq War. Okay, actually, it was just last week. But now that Colin Powell has endorsed Obama, it’s all good, right?
Erm.
Powell’s endorsement is powerful as far as endorsements go, but bluntly, that isn’t very far. Endorsements make everyone feel warm and fuzzy for a little bit, but they’re notoriously poor in terms of delivering those actual “vote” things that win an election, and …

Dick Morris is smoking some good shit:
In the meantime, Republican bastions like South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana are now no better than tossups. If the election took place this week, it would be a wipeout of major proportions. Even McCain‘s home state of Arizona has to be classified as leaning toward Obama.
Damn, and I thought I was an optimist. I’m with him on Georgia to an extent, …

Sometimes that is, indeed, what a picture is worth.
H/T to Jack and Jill Politics: