Worth Seeing

From Michelle Cottle in The New Republic online:

"Early indications are that this election laid to waste a couple of fundamental pieces of the conventional wisdom that we all heard in the closing days of the race: one, that high voter turnout benefits Democrats; and two, that undecided voters tend to break in favor of the non-incumbent. Figuring out how these two tidbits turned out to be so wrong will give the hard-core electoral handicappers something to obsess about for the next several weeks.

Meanwhile, the rest of us might want to turn our attentions to a more basic question: What the hell happened with the exit polls? I understand that these samplings are always less-than-spot-on. But come on, people, these babies were so wrong last night that Bush backers looked ready to kill themselves--and each other. (And as a result, I have more than a few dear friends, not to mention a husband, now finding it very hard to cope with their dashed hopes.)"

To be honest, the numbers are waaaay off. And, as my brother points out, www.electoral-vote.com says

"One thing that is very strange is how much the exit polls differed from the final results, especially in Ohio. Remember that Ohio uses Diebold voting machines in many areas. These machines have no paper trail. Early in the campaign, Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell, a GOP fundraiser, promised to deliver Ohio to Bush. He later regretted having said that."

Kerry conceded for *what* reason?