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Things I Think About On Four Hours Sleep The Day After Election Day

© lawhawk

The origins of this article comes from a posting I made earlier this morning at Kirk Lindstrom's discusssion area. I will continue to add links (and some text) as appropriate. It was certainly a blast blogging last nite. Lots of information came in fast and furious. That OH, IA, and NM haven't been called for Bush, despite significant leads in all three is a topic for discussion all to its own (see my discussions on media bias for more insight on that).

Now, on to the fallout and random musings from the election results:

1) Drug stocks look like they're bullish on Bush winning - PFE was up $1.70 in early trading and other drug stocks up with healthy gains. And you think that has just a teeny tiny bit to do with Kerry/Edwards' plan for health care, tort reform, and prescription drugs?

2) Markets do not like uncertainty, and they are going with the facts as they stand right now - Bush won, and they're rallying on that news.

3) A bit of undercovered news - Afghan elections were confirmed by international panel, with Karzai declared winner, despite some showing of fraud. Panel found that the fraud wasn't widespread or confined to aiding one candidate. In other words, the opponents to Karzai have to get over it - they lost fair and square.

4) Time to reevaluate the exit-polling process. They were so far wrong as to be useless - and swayed the way the networks handled early returns until they sorted things out later in the evening. The bloggers had a field day with early exit-polling results that showed a big Kerry win, which cannot be further from what really happened. Canning the exit-polls might be a good place to start.

5) Time to reevaluate the way provisional ballots are handled and how we should look into consistent rules nationally to avoid individual areas utilizing their own rules.

6) DNC has to look at why they cannot win anywhere except the coasts and large cities. RNC has to look at how to improve showing in Northeast and West Coast.

7) Barack Obama may now have national platform on which to work, but it will be interesting to see how he develops his record. Hillary is frontrunner in DNC.

8) GOP field is wide open, with Rudy, Frist, and Condi Rice as attractive candidates.

9) A Rudy/Condi (or switch 'em) v. Hillary/Obama would be a hoot to follow for any number of reasons, not the least of which is that the NY metro area would matter in a big way (for a change it could be a battleground area). Think of all the angles, the minority vote, national platforms with women on both, national security v. domestic issues, Clinton v. the Prosecutor (Rudy).