Experts Expound

“What was your biggest surprise on election night?”

Prop. 8.  Wow.

The biggest surprise was the apparent reelection of Ted Stevens in Alaska.  Convicted felons usually don’t do that well.

Seventy percent African-American support for Proposition 8. Looks like Republicans aren’t the only party with divisions on social issues.

Call me naïve, but I somehow thought people wouldn’t go out of their way to strip their neighbors of their rights.

Please pray for the men and women of U.S. armed forces and intelligence services.

Biggest surprise was that John Howard would ask this question prior to 0900 on the day after the election.

The success of Prop. 8. It reinforces the notion that California’s capacity for tolerance does not extend to the gay community, especially since another conservative-backed initiative — Prop. 4 (parental notifcation for abortion) — failed by almost the same margin….

The margin of victory for chickens….

There were no surprises.  The Obama victory came about just as I had been predicting for months.

The close race in McClintock/Brown.  Thought McClintock would have a victory earlier.

Proposition 8’s (presumed) passage. Who knew that out-of-state Mormons could have such an influence on our election! Apparently many asked themselves, “What would Moroni do?” and cast their votes accordingly…

The gerrymander held and the Dems did not win as many Assembly seats as I had expected.

The biggest shock (and fury) was that the Secretary of State’s election night results website was such a disaster. Providing timely election results is a major reason that office exists. People couldn’t get on or if they could they were later booted off when trying to refresh the page…

The depth and breadth of Obama’s win. None of the mean Republican traitor-treason-radical crap stuck to him. I was sure it would.

The passage of Prop 8 in light of the huge liberal turnout for other races. And secondarily the closeness of the 4th District Congressional race between McClintock and Brown, since Placer is the most Republican county in California….

That I stayed up so late and Prop. 8 passed.

Obama wins by 24 in California and the Democrats can only gain back the two Assembly seats they lost earlier in the decade.  The seats drawn back in 2001 truly are “safe seats.”

The nearly $10 billion bond for high speed rail passing — not that it wouldn’t be great having a Euro-style rail system in this state. We just keep pulling out the credit card, again and again. Did I say I was surprised? Strike that…we want it ALL.

Democrats have to be surprised and disappointed by their minimal gains in the Legislature – particularly given Obama’s massive victory margin in the state. The apparent passage of Prop. 11 also means that Democrats can’t gerrymander themselves to automatic victories in the future and creates political uncertainty for the careers of incumbent legislators.

Andrew Acosta, A.G. Block, Mark Bogetich, Barry Brokaw, Morgan Crinklaw, J Dale Debber, Peter DeMarco, Jim Evans, Kathy Fairbanks, Jeff Fuller, Rex Frazier, Ken Gibson, Evan Goldberg, Deborah Gonzalez, Sandy Harrison, Bob Hertzberg, Jason Kinney, Mike Madrid, Nicole Mahrt, Steve Maviglio,  Adam Mendelsohn, Barbara O’Connor, Bill Packer, Kassy Perry, Jack Pitney, Adam Probolsky, Tony Quinn, Matt Rexroad, Matt Ross, Roger Salazar, Dan Schnur, Will Shuck, Ralph Simoni, Sam Sorich, Ray Sotero, Gary South, Kevin Spillane, Rich Zeiger.