A Little Self-Delusion on the Right

Conservative commentator Michael Barone isn't impressed by Obama's win and doesn't think that people on the left were particularly overwhelmed either.

How to defeat terrorist enemies sheltered in the territory of our putative ally Pakistan. How to live up to the high expectations so visible in the cheering and tearful faces in those crowds in Berlin, Invesco Field and Grant Park -- after a victory that was thrilling, but not quite what the Democrats hoped for.

Needless to say, Barone doesn't know what he's talking about because he doesn't talk much with "real-time" Democrats. But I do and there was pretty much a consensus around a six-point win by the time the final voting began on Tuesday. Poll analyst Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com is particularly among the left because he's so accurate and because he was a popular DailyKos diarist. Silver's model predicted the six point win that Obama got. So did RSI and one of RSI's colleagues at Morehead State University.

Barone seems to think that Democrats were expecting a huge landslide. But the fact was that "hope" for victory only solidified into "expectation" of victory on the day before the election. Active Democrats were expecting one last slime attack on Obama, still wondered if whites were that solid on an African-American president, and were still haunted by the 2000 and 2004 campaigns. So, it wasn't exactly as if confidence was high the weekend before the election.

But the polls on Monday, Nov. 3 showed an uptick for Obama and everybody started to become more confident. Friends started telling RSI they were no expecting Obama to win while RSI himself started telling students and colleagues that he expected the election to be decided in Obama's favor by 10pm or 11.

When the expectations actually started panning out, Atrios summed up a lot of feelings by blogging "holy shit" several times. People were stunned that they had been right about the election, stunned that Obama had run such a near-perfect campaign, and stunned that it had all worked out so well.

Democrats expected Obama to win, but the election was much more than they had allowed themselves to hope for. A lot of people cried to see it. Magic Johnson cried all night long. Mrs. RSI cried throughout Obama's terrific victory speech.

Obama's six point win was not exactly what conservatives like Barone feared, but it was exactly what Democrats were hoping for.