Author: Andrew Sullivan

And it appears that it will go down. A reader writes:

I cannot believe the smugness of the reader who casually dismisses Prop 19 because of his access to medical marijuana.  As I see it, this is not about the question of "gateway drugs," the relative harmlessness of marijuana, or anything else involving health.  It is a human rights issue. 

I live in Washington State, where recent reports indicate that black men represent nearly 60% of marijuana arrests, despite being only 8% of the population.  Taken a step further, almost 1 in 4 black men in Washington State are ineligible to vote.  This all despite, for example, the Seattle Police deptartment's expressed view that marijuana arrests make up their lowest priority of enforcement.  If marijuana laws are lowest priority, then they will only be applied to higher priority targets, as they are in Seattle, where they tend to be used for excuses to search poor minorities.  (The drug laws remind me of Anatole France's famous quip that the law in its infinite justice makes it illegal for rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges.)

As for California, the ACLU and NAACP have found that blacks are arrested for marijuana charges at vastly higher rates than whites.  In Los Angeles, for example, it is 6 times the rate; in Pasadena, it is over 12 times the rate.  So, sure: pot-rich white folk can sit around and say, "this doesn't matter to me."  They don't have to sleep under bridges, either.

Another writes:

As a liberal, that attitude coming from other liberals disgusts me.  I'm a medical marijuana patient too, and the reason I can legally posses and use marijuana is because I could afford to pay a doctor and register with the state; poor people doing the exact same thing I am are still criminals.  Any medical marijuana patient voting against Prop 19 (or not voting at all for that matter) loses any claim to compassion, as well as any right to condemn the right wing in this country for its indifference to human suffering.

1.06 am A very depressing result in Iowa as all three Justices who voted for marriage equality in the state constitution are removed after a brutal campaign against them by NOM. This has never happened before in Iowa's history of allowing such votes since 1962. NOM is also trying to remove marriage rights from gay couples in New Hampshire – and they may have secured a veto-proof majority to rip gay couples legally apart.

12.54 am Silver's final prediction is a Republican House gain of between 62 and 72 seats. That's a bigger victory than was presaged earlier tonight and it pushes this election past the usual first term mid-term swing.

It means a major victory for the GOP, based on nothing but resistance to Obama and a brilliant, if to my mind, deeply deceptive argument that he was and is merely a Big Government Liberal, when, in fact, circumstances forced his hand much of the time; and his small-c conservatism explains the rest. It was a victory therefore for pure oppositionism – a policy of total non-cooperation that the Republicans decided upon from the very beginning of the Obama presidency – enabled by one of the worst economic climates in decades.

The question for me is: will the GOP propose any serious cuts in entitlement or defense spending in the next two years? I suspect they have no intention of doing so, but the scale of this victory surely demands some kind of budget from the House that actually delivers on what the Tea Party promised.

You can win a mid-term simply by being anti-Obama and anti-incumbent. I don't believe you can win a general election on those grounds alone. If the House betrays the base on spending, the GOP will be vulnerable to another tea-spasm. If the GOP actually proposes serious Medicare and defense cuts, then we'll finally have some sort of resolution as to what this party still stands for, if anything.

The Dish wants this presidency to succeed – but also to get America's long-term fiscal crisis resolved. How those two things interact will be a fascinating thing to watch.

12.47 am Small mercies watch: California may not have legalized cannabis, but Dallas has finally legalized alcohol.

12.43 pm My old friend, and raving socialist, John Cassidy, makes a nicely understated point about the lack of a Republican mandate, and the difficulty of the looming House majority:

Boehner now presides over an uneasy alliance of business conservatives, social conservatives, and Tea Party activists. Selling the American public on the notion that this lot could run the White House might not be so easy.

12.41 am. Just as the House formally shifts to the GOP, Harry Reid pulls out a relatively comfortable victory over Sharron Angle.

12.40 am The Bennet-Buck race is getting excruciatingly close.

12.37 am Legal weed is trailing 56 – 44.

12.36 am Norquist goes for the full metal nihilism:

"I don't want any stinking ideas from presidents," he said, "I want them in harness, pulling the plow."

12.25 am. Jim Newell loses it:

CNN is debating whether Barack Obama has a problem connecting with voters, for the seventh consecutive hour. They never bother to define "connecting," and what he might have to do differently to "connect." Talk in a clown voice? Wear pants for his shirt and a shirt for his pants? Shoot them with Predator drones? Or maybe they mean physically connect, as with glue, or duct tape. It's hard to tell because it's mindless idiot bullshit. Economy! Bad! Look outside the window!

12.19 am. Feingold falls – a man who ran his first campaign in favor of … deficit reduction.

12.15 am Palinites spin the O'Donnell loss:

Here is a flashback to what Ben Smith from Politico wrote about what Christine O'Donnell's performance meant for Governor Palin back in September: So I'd say that if O'Donnell breaks 40 percent, that's enough to give encouragement to a Palin bid, and it would take a really substantial wipeout to make a plausibly discouraging case. As of right now, O'Donnell is breaking that 40% mark, not far off from the 43% that exit polls showed Mike Castle would receive in a deep blue state like Delaware.

12.13 pm Small mercies watch: Tancredo went down. I wonder if some Democrats might secretly be hoping that Sharron Angle wins. She'd be a fantastic icon for the Tea Party in Congress, the O'Donnell for the next few years. Reid? He should quit and give the leadership to Schumer.

12.08 pm So the Democrats keep the Senate. But Illinois and Pennsylvania seem to be drifting just out of reach. That will make a difference to morale.

12.06 pm Apologies. I got trapped on a BBC TV set, watching John Boehner, tan-free, blubber up about finally getting his American dream. It was a lovely re-branding, but utterly devoid of content. Which is about as good a metaphor for the GOP in this election as one can imagine.

10.40 pm Backlash-lash? A reader writes:

Are you paying attention to this? Early doors, but it looks like Iowa is voting to retain its Supreme Court justices and is rejecting calls to form a new constitutional convention. These are campaigns orchestrated by people who want to reverse the Iowa Supreme Court's ruling that made gay marriage legal in the state. We had millions of dollars from outside the state flood in to convince us that our liberties were being taken away. Iowans saw through it.

10.38 pm The Toomey-Sestak race is getting closer; as with Illinois. They're nail-biters that could eventually spin tonight as a wave or merely a current.

10.34 pm Ferraro and Palin are now competing for the female victim prize on Fox.

10.32 pm The young failed to show up, hence the weakening of the Obama coalition. But that's more a mid-term phenomenon than a general election issue.

10.17 pm. Buck is down in Jefferson County, Colorado. Good news for Bennet.

10.14 pm The price of victory, according to Tim Heffernan:

The question for Boehner (and to a lesser extent Mitch McConnell) will be: how can we balance doing nothing (that is, maintaining popular spending and attacking Obama for it) and appearing to do enough to satisfy the insurgency? If they can't answer that question satisfactorily — if the populist anger overcomes the allure of control — then, yes, we may well witness a Congressional Republican insurgency like the electoral one we've just been through.

10.09 pm The Tea Party leaders keep misquoting the Founding Fathers.

10.06 pm. Kos warns:

Any Democrat switching parties will face a teabagger primary challenge and will lose it. Guaranteed.

9.57 pm 60 seat gain? That's Silver's adjusted projection:

Frankly, this night is looking slightly anticlimactic, with both the House and the Senate having moved in relatively clear directions so far.

9.55 pm The key to Manchin's victory: Independents.

9.50 pm Not looking so good for Toomey in Pennsylvania. I'm a little surprised at how well some of these Senate Dems seem to be doing. Bennet, Sestak and Giannoulias are comfortably ahead right now. Maybe the results will tighten. (Silver thinks Giannoulias' lead is misleading.)

9.47 pm Homer Simpson syndrome and fat finger problems in Pennsylvania.

9.45 pm O'Donnell says she has changed Delaware politics for ever. Sure has. Oh and "we've got lots of food here. So let's party!"

9.41 pm. Of the five toss-up seats in the Senate, the Dems are ahead in the three now reporting.

9.38 pm Rubio bravely confronts those who do not believe in America.

9.32 pm John Cole takes a whack:

Grayson is getting killed. Probably for not being progressive enough. … I bet if we got the public option Grayson would be winning. Just because.

9.30 pm Dogs walked. House won by Republicans. JPod was off, as a reader notes:

Yarmuth voted FOR Obamacare. Moreover, the "Nazi" guy was not in KY. I do not know what JPod is smoking.

8.51 pm. It looks as if Manchin has won West Virginia. The Dems will keep the Senate in all likelihood, well in 88 percent likelihood at this point.

8.45 pm A small sign that GOP expectations and media hype may have gotten a little out of hand. Ponnuru does a pre-spin post-spin spin:

Whether or not Republicans meet the expectations that people have acquired over the last few days, it’s worth remembering how different things looked at the start of the year (let alone the start of 2009, when people were saying the Democrats would probably gain Senate seats because the map favored them). People are barely talking about the GOP Senate wins in Indiana and Missouri — but at the start of this year both of them were considered real races. And few people were paying close attention to Wisconsin.

8.43 pm Gotta walk the dogs. Back in a bit.

8.40 pm Silver's model now predicts a 57 seat gain for the GOP in the House. It's slowly going up.

8.35 pm It's only, er, 8.35 pm and Pareene is already pissy:

Wolf Blitzer is literally impossible to pay attention to. If Manchin wins, it is either evidence that there is or isn't a "wave," according to the CNN panel.

What would we do without them?

8.32 A Senate white-out: there will now be zero African-Americans in that body.

8.29 pm The GOP wins the anti-banker vote. Seriously:

Who's to blame for the economy? Bankers (34%), Bush (29%), Obama (24%). Of those who blame bankers, Republicans hold an 11 point advantage.

8.25 pm Democratic Delaware: O'Donnell loses, and the open House seat is projected by CNN to be won by the Dem.

8.17 pm The Nazi re-enacter loses. JPod sighs.

8.09 pm It sure looks like Alan Grayson is headed for a very hard landing. Rubio is over 50 percent – humiliating for Crist, Meek … and Bill Clinton.

8.03 pm Democrat Yarmuth wins in Kentucky. This was regarded as a harbinger for the Democrats. If he won, it shouldn't be quite-so-bad for them. And it looks like a healthy lead right now, FWIW.

8 pm The early exits for Prop 19 not so encouraging:

Though voters ages 18 to 39 generally support Proposition 19 by slim margins, the measure is trailing among voters 40 and older… The first wave of 1,500 voter interviews did not show unusually high turnout among young voters.

Kleiman sighs. Or exhales. And Captain Hindsight shows up.

7.58 pm Lexington, Kentucky goes all gay on us.

7.55 pm Brilliant insight of the night:

"If we see a surge of an angry tide of voters, the Democrats are cooked."

Yep, Eliot Spitzer. Ride that cooked wave, baby.

7.46 pm. Weigel on the early results:

There are no good signs for Democrats in Indiana, where they hoped to hold at least four of their five House seats — losing only the only vacated by Brad Ellsworth — and are now losing three of those seats in early counting. Indiana has higher unemployment than the national average, and Republicans targeted Joe Donnelly and Baron Hill all year. The results — again, very early — are less promising for Republicans in Kentucky, where both John Yarmuth and Ben Chandler are leading in seats held by the GOP as recently as 2006 and 2003..

7.42 pm This Prop 19 news seems promising:

I’m told by organizers on the ground that youth turnout is so high that the polling location at San Diego State University has completely run out of provisional ballots. We’re hearing that it will take 3 or 4 more hours to re-stock the ballots there.

7.37 pm Aqua Buddha FAIL:

69 percent of white, born-again voters backed Paul – an even healthier showing than the 64 percent who voted for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's last re-election bid.

7.30 pm Rand Paul wins. Of all the crazy ones, I hoped for his election the most. And remember: he's replacing Bunning. He's the likeliest Republican to put defense spending on the table. Some appreciation of his now close-to-impossible balancing act here.

Notice this too from the exit polls: voters oppose the Afghanistan war 54 – 40 percent. Just sayin'.

7.27 pm Those conflicted Americans again:

On spending priorities, 40 percent favored deficit-reduction, 35 percent "spending to create jobs," and 19 percent cutting taxes.

So a majority of the voters ushering in this Congress want more fiscal stimulus, not less.

In a separate question, voters divided on the Bush-era tax cuts whose possible extension is before Congress. Forty percent said these cuts should be continued for all, vs. 37 percent who say they should be continued only for people in less-than $250,000 households. The rest, 15 percent, said the tax cuts should expire for all Americans.

In another look-ahead question, on the health care law, 48 percent said they favor repeal, vs. 16 percent who said the law should remain as is and 31 percent who said it should be expanded.

7.22 pm Ambers notes:

In several states, Democrats are leading among self-described moderates, but conservatives are turning out at such high rates, and are skewing so heavily to Republicans that it washes away the Democratic gains. 

Yep: the Fox News intensity trumps the moderate middle. Sounds like the last year and a half to me.

7.05 pm A reader writes:

If Obama's '08 IDs do not turn out today, it will not be for a lack of effort on the part of Organizing for America. I have received no less than a half-dozen reminders to vote today (perhaps three dozen during the entire early voting period in Texas). I voted quite early, and still have not been taken off the call lists, e-mail lists and blockwalk lists from the main organization all the way down to the local state organizers. I have been bugged to the point that I am ready to throw my phone into the Lake Austin and completely shut down my e-mail account.

7.01 pm. Yep, I'm settled in with a cup of coffee, a bunch of Ginger Snaps, a browser, four Dish under-bloggers on call … and the TV on.

TPM has an automated map. Nate Silver urges patience: 

As I warned you, it's going to be some time before we get any sort of meaningful results from Indiana and Kentucky. The biggest potential surprise so far is in Indiana's 2nd district, where Jackie Walorski, the Republican, has a 1,500-vote lead so far on Joe Donnelly, but only 3 percent of precincts have reported. If Mr. Donnelly lost, especially by a significant margin, that would be a bad sign for the Democrats.

The WaPo's Fix got a little, er, excitable at 5.01 pm today:

Man oh man…starting to get exciting now. T-minus 2 hours until polls close in Indiana and Kentucky.

Wired Election Party: a nicely put together Twitter-powered website.

From CNN:

The economy isn’t just the most important issue to voters this year – with unemployment hovering around 9.6 percent, it’s roughly twice as important to them as the other top issues of concern combined, according to early exit polls. Sixty-two percent of voters name the economy as their most important issue this year. Health care ranks a distant second, at 19 percent. Illegal immigration and Afghanistan follow at 8 and 7 percent.

More:

Voters may not be happy with the Democratic Party. But they aren’t too thrilled with the GOP either, according to early exit polls. Democrats have a 10-point favorability gap: 43 percent of voters have a positive opinion of the party, while 53 percent aren’t thrilled. The Republican Party also gets a thumbs-down from 53 percent of the nation’s voters, with just 41 percent saying they’re happy with the GOP.

Nate Silver, who is live-blogging, says these should be mostly ignored:

Whatever these polls say, you should mostly ignore them; early exit polls are not intended to be taken at face value and can even be rather misleading. Here are 10 other reasons to ignore them.

Ambers agrees with Nate.

A reader writes:

I know you favor decriminalization of pot, but Proposition 19 is not the way to get it done in California. 

The proposition is actually a bit of a mess.  It doesn't create a central state regulatory body or entrust an existing body with the responsibility of regulating pot.  It leaves the responsibility to all the local governments to regulate.  Ugh.  The word is "patchwork."  And it creates this odd protected class of employee pot smokers by preventing discrimination in employment based on use unless the employer can show "actual impairment" of job duties as a result of use.  This is a nightmare litigation scenario. 

It isn't as bad as the opponents say ("your kids' bus driver will be high!") because driving under the influence and other activities will still be illegal, but there are concerns that the proposition will require employers to show actual impairment of job duties if the employer requires that employees refrain from smoking at lunch or right before coming to work.  I'm quite sympathetic to decriminalizing personal use but, as with most propositions, this isn't the way to get it done.

Another writes:

The problem with marijuana consumption and traffic safety is that there is no reliable metric or tool (as with alcohol) to judge whether someone is too impaired to drive. I'm a state of CA employee and I've talked to the folks at the state Office of Traffic Safety (who have done an excellent job reducing DUI fatalities in the state) and they firmly believe that Prop 19 would be a law enforcement nightmare. There are very few police who are trained in recognizing impairment in drivers. How do you decide if someone is too stoned to drive? Who's gonna pay for all that training? Drug policy experts like Keith Humphreys and Mark Kleiman all believe that marijuana consumption will increase with Prop 19 and with this the state will surely see an increase of stoned drivers.

Another:

I have believed that pot should be legal since I volunteered for NORML in the early 80s. So I was initially for Prop 19 … until I actually read the details of the proposition and arguments from both sides. Two concerns are leading me to vote No. One: The idea that each municipality can set its own regulations for commercial sales and its own tax rates strikes me as a disaster waiting to happen (similar to the backlash with medical pot, as cities try to rein in the explosion of dispensaries). My vision has always been a single set of regulations for the entire state (or country, really) and single taxation rates. Prop 19 allows the complete opposite.

Another:

As a Californian in San Francisco, I can tell you the simple reason Prop 19 is failing. My stoner friends want it to pass, but my liberal-but-not-stoner friends feel like they don't know what they are voting for. There is no clear picture of what a post-liberalization state would look like. I don't know anyone who thinks medical marijuana has created a problem, and people now smoke openly in the streets (remembering that is legal if you have your medical marijuana ID card). But even medical marijuana has been messy in the actual administration of the laws concerning pot clubs and municipalities. Without a solid image of what a post-legalization society would look like, people on the fence are hesitant to vote for such a dramatic change.