One Republican won without winning Ohio

No apologies: I am one of the people who was a nervous wreck throughout Election Day, fearing a stolen election and resulting chaos.

As a matter of fact, my story budget for the Nov. 6, 2008 edition of The St. Louis American had two options for the lead news story: "Historic Obama victory, or nationwide riots render the U.S. uninhabitable." I spelled it out like that so it would look like I was joking. Maybe it looked like I was joking.

Watching the early election returns with our family friends the Eilers, I resorted to the therapeutic technique that also helped me get through a month of grieving with them over the loss of John's daughter, Marcella Sali Grace: I drew pictures.

I also wrote down phrases that would go good with pictures I might draw later. This bit about Lincoln winning the White House as a Republican without winning Ohio was voiced by a pundit on CNN, during that uneasy period when everyone in the studio knew the election belonged to Obama, but the producers didn't want to run the risk of calling early and eating crow when the call was overturned.

I supplied the sketch tonight, drawing pictures with my little bitty skinny kid. My source for the drawing is Mathew Brady's first portrait of Lincoln on Feb. 27, 1860 at Cooper Union, New York. It's included in a neat Fordham University Press book Abraham Lincoln: A Press Portrait that I might read next.

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p.s. Anyone following St. Louis politics, don't let former Matt Blunt chief of staff Ed Martin successfully reinvent himself as a centrist. He is a core operative at the far right of the Missouri Republican Party. As I pointed out in a post that got many hundreds of hits (and I hope persuaded somebody), Martin put together the national attack ad on Barack Obama's early ties to Weather Underground activist, author and educator Bill Ayers. My August 30, 2008 post ends with the line, "Ed Martin is banking on the voters to be dupes. Barack Obama thinks we are smarter than that. I can't tell you how much I hope Obama is right."

Obama was right. Ed Martin was wrong. Ed Martin is wrong. Don't be like Dave Drebes and trust this far right operative. One thing we will see in the aftermath of the Obama landslide is the wolf of the far right putting on the nice clean safe sane clothes of sheep. That's the phase Ed Martin is in. Don't trust it.