Final Night - What I've learned, and hope others have too

On November 4, 2008 the election was the topic of discussion on a message board.  This is what I wrote:

Is the black ribbon for mourning?

For a while I thought McCain might win the popular vote. It is amazing that there is such a gap between the EV and the popular vote. The polls exaggerated Obama's national lead, but the trend was accurate.
My dad's brother said he would lose faith in the American people if this guy was elected.
Can we expect Israel to launch an attack on Iran?
The borders are not going to be sealed.
Iraq could turn into a mess.
I hope he is as mild as Carter and not a menace like FDR and Wilson.
This disproves the notion that the first black President would be a Republican.
I find it disturbing that a man with his background could become President.
The Western Europeans will be happy.
The conservative movement must not give up. The popular vote was fairly close and we still need to stand up for freedom.

Someone responded with this:

A 4% national popular vote margin is something the US hasn't seen in 20+years. It might not be as big as some expected, but it's bigger than either of the last 2 presidents ever got.

Another person responded to that comment:

Um...que? Clinton won by 9% in 1996 and 5% in 1992.

Then I wrote:

Do Illinois and Pennsylvania now hold special elections for Senators?

Wikipedia has an interesting list on how this campaign was historic:

The 2008 election was the first time in U.S. history that an African American was elected president. It was also the first time two sitting senators ran against each other, as well as the first time an African American was a presidential nominee for a major party. In addition, it was the first time in history that both major candidates were born outside the continental United States, Hawaii for Obama and the Panama Canal Zone for McCain. Since the Republican nominee for vice-president was a woman, Governor Sarah Palin, the eventual winning ticket was bound to be historic, as neither an African American nor a female had achieved either of the respective offices. If John McCain had been elected, he would have been the oldest first-term president. Senator Joseph Biden is the first Roman Catholic vice president to be elected.

Another person said:

Here's my idea for a 2012 ticket:

Huntsman/Cantor.

Pro-evolution Mormon and Southern Jew combo.

I responded with:

I did not support Romney as he seemed like a Johnny-come-lately Republican, but I might consider Huntsman. I did vote for him as governor. I was listening to a local radio station and they think Romney will be the pick since he came in second (didn't he tie Huckabee?). I think Utahns are just too obsessed with him and I don't see the political reasoning for it.

Someone posted a quote that Steven den Beste wrote on his blog:

Now he has to reveal his true agenda. And with the Democrats also having a majority in both chambers of Congress, now the Democrats really have to lead. And they're not going to do a very good job of it. It's going to be amusing to watch. And the people who fell for the demagoguery will learn an invaluable lesson.

I responded with this:

I'm not familiar with the guy, but I expect this also. However, it is frustating that we go: lather, rinse, repeat. I do think that losses are supposed to help Republicans get back on message though.

Implicit Association Test (IAT) Featured Task: 2008 Election

The implicit-association test (IAT) is a measure within social psychology designed to detect the strength of a person's automatic association between mental representations of objects (concepts) in memory.  During the 2008 election there was a version that tested your racial biases by comparing photos of blacks and whites, and Obama and McCain.  It was posted to a message board on October 31, 2008.  On November 1, I wrote:

The test seems to determine how well you are with hand-eye coordination or thinking quickly rather than your racial preferences.

Someone else wrote:

I have slight auto prefs for white (some of the pictures were not so easy - but I didn't get a lot of Xs)

I responded with:

I agree. There was one picture that I thought was a white man, but I got an X, so after that I knew he was black. I did get more wrong in the black vs white section than the political one. I wonder if color pictures would be more accurate.

This was my comment in the original thread that Phantom mentioned this:

In college for a sociology class I took the implicit test and it showed I had a slight preference to whites.

Here is an interesting post from Dr. Helen (wife of Instapundit) in 2006:
http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2006/01/another-anti-republican-study.html

My results were:

Slight preference for blacks over whites and no difference between Obama and McCain. Those actually surprise me (given the different race result I had previously and because I am strongly in support of McCain). I did try really hard to get the right answers, I don't know if that means anything.

I'm quite certain that I am more biased towards blacks. I'm afraid of doing something offensive.

A few people responded to that last sentence.

First person:

That's the idea. Most of us have been groomed to feel just that way. It's called intimidation.

Second person (responding to both of us):

That's right. That's why we have, "If OBB doesn't win. it's because of Racism". That's why we have "If OBB doesn't win there'll be a 2nd Civil War" threads. Intimidation and guilt piled as high as they can.

But we can't have "If McCain doesn't win that's Racist" or "If McCain doesn't win there'll be a Civil War" - that's just not PC. 

It's all BS.

Third person (in response to me and the first person):

Which [intimidation and PC in general] is scandalous, and indicates an evil living. Thus, shun it.

Elizabeth Dole attacks Democrat with Godless ads

On October 31, 2008, The Hill had an article about an attack ad:

Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.) has released a second "Godless Americans" ad attacking Democrat Kay Hagan in what increasingly looks like the nastiest battle of the cycle. The new ad appears to take a step back from Dole's earlier controversial ad this week that suggested Hagan, who is ahead in polls, is an atheist. "If Godless Americans threw a party in your honor, would you go?" the ad concludes.

It was posted to a message board on November 1, 2008. On November 2, I responded with this:

This is what Wikipedia has:

Hagan...is active in her Greensboro Presbyterian church...Hagan called the ad "fabricated and pathetic", and stated that she does not support the agenda of the Godless Americans PAC and is not an atheist. Prominent Republicans such as Carter Wrenn and Ed Rollins criticized Dole for the ad.

If the group has the name "Godless" in their title, then using that word isn't by itself offensive.

Here are the two ads: