So Jabba the Hut has weighed in, endorsing the now silver-haired Luke, "remember the terrorism line, Luke, remember the terrordome". Too late for the now tarnished Death Star, electricity cut off for several years, once shit-hot gleaming metal finish rusting. Princess Leia traded in her light saber for an over-under sawed off shotgun - "for recreational purposes, you understand" - but it's not enough to face the waves of new anxious Storm Troopers.

Ah well, Cheney, the mystery man of the White House, will be some kind of history come January. I figure he came out now to endorse simply because it doesn't matter. The weird one is that just 28% of white people who attend church regularly support Obama. The good news is that's a pretty tightly defined demographic, so over time when perhaps the Barackolypse doesn't bring in all the Four Horseman (tax hikes, Sharia Law, ban on guns, gay boy scout teachers) they'll settle down a bit to an anti-Obama bloc of just 60% or so.

Meanwhile, good new self-produced ad on Prop 8.

Winners & Losers of Campaign 2008? (Is it too early to start tabulating?). Drudge tarnished, Oprah brand tainted, Fox/MSNBC/CNN diminished, Samantha Powers & Wes Clark sidelined, Clintons halfway out of re-education camp, Sarah Palin will be Danger Mouse for years to come, McCain will be the new mascot for "nice guys finish last" (skillful marketing whether you like him or not), the Chicago School of just about anything is now in, the Iraq War still crazy after all these years, Warren Buffet the new more acceptable - to the right - George Soros, bloggers like Atrios-Digby-FiredogLake-Shakesville-Openleft-MyDD for helping shape and cut through the debate, Politico for finding a  fairly neutral ground to report from, McClatchy for providing an independent voice on Iraq, MoveOn sidelined.

Name your own poison/pleasure below. And thanks to OpenLeft & Public Enemy for the title. And thanks to George the Curious Monkey Bush for providing the surreal background to what could have been an uneventful prosperous 8 years. You can keep the W's on your keyboards as souvenirs. We'll be throwing the lot out and fumigating anyway.

Update: As I mentioned in a comment, Glenn Greenwald has really shone on the blogosphere these last couple of years. Hard to believe that it took blogs to actually follow scandals like the prosecution of Scooter Libby, when the DC press was all aghast that one of their buddies would actually be indicted. Two years ago TPM Muckraker shone on collating all the existing scandals.

Update 2: In followup to my earlier posting on the large margin for females in early voting, wow! Look at those numbers in Georgia!  Women make up 63% of the early black voters,  56% of early white voters.  So let's see how women fare in new policies and in the divvying up of incoming administration positions - so far not too impressive share of the pie (since I assume Treasury will definitely be a man, Chief of Staff seems likely to go to Emmanuel, etc.), so might be a good time to put on the pressure for those you want before all the cherry spots are gone. But in any case, one of the big winners of 2008 - early voting! Vote early, vote often as we always said. Who needs the holiday rush to the polls? If you can't do it mail order, at least get it out of the way before November.

Update 3: who I'd like to be big losers would be the Blue Dog Democrat and of coure the biggest dog Independent, Joe Lieberman. But I haven't been able to figure out these last 2 years whether they were so clever or the Pelosi/Reid/Hoyer axis was so weak and ineffectual. We'll have to save some of our predictions until that important detail gets worked out. While I haven't been a big fan of some recent Obama positions, it wouldn't sadden me to see him instill some voting discipline in Congress. (Along with actually have Democrats remember their lines in front of the press, like the important lower end of the tax hike figures for Obama's tax plan. Richardson, Biden? To the principal's office, now. And bring your coats, you may be going home for the day.)

Update 4: A late entry big winner - the War in Iran!!! Yes, folks have been trying to proclaim it inevitable ever since Kyl-Lieberman, but no matter how many times we seemed close to the starting gate, it remained a non-starter. Until Sarah grabbed the bull by the horns and said what we've all been thinking for years - "Hey gang, we're at War with Iran!!!" Now that's just a tad maver-icky assuming the war powers as VP candidate even before you're elected, but I'm sure Cheney would approve - it seems to fit his style to a T.

Update 5: The death of the undecided voter. Once seen as weighing the scales of Solomon, pondering and considering in deep reflective wisdom, the undecided voter can now be summed up as David Sedaris in the New Yorker does: Think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. "Can I interest you in the chicken?" she asks. "Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?" To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked. Or as I see it, "Hi, I'm not a disgusted non-fundamentalist moderate, nor a progressive, nor a die-hard Republican nor a member of the armed services nor someone who can read the papers and interpret simple obvious facts by myself. I must be a _ _ _ _ _!!!"

Update 6: On the remaining to break side, it's hard to see yet how the youth turnout will actually go. Some are claiming business as usual, others are predicting much higher than usual. Does early voting hinder or help? I can't imagine it not being a record year, but... Big losers? Conservative religious fundamentalists. Perhaps the biggest winners - moderate conservative Republicans - that will be Obama's swing target group over the next 2 to 4 years. The Rove tactics were the dog that didn't quite bark this year - why not? I think they didn't believe McCain could win anyway, didn't really want him to win, enjoyed saddling him with Sarah like a 150-pound anchor to swim with in rough seas, and well it doesn't affect Rove's legacy anyway. Final tally for America - now okay to be black, not so good to be Muslim. As if we didn't see that coming on 9/12.

Update 7: Super cool, I've been enjoying OpenLeft's personal campaign ads, and now David Sirota (not always my favorite, I have to admit) has one on how New Yorkers can vote for Obama but still send a special "but make mine progressive" message along with it. So basically the candidate sees not one lump of votes, but a few lumps of votes from different sources. Nice to not just be lost in the crowd.

Update 8: The 50 state press. Well, it wasn't as thorough as we might have hoped, it was certainly much more advanced than 2004 & 2006, thanks in part to the early efforts of the Net Roots, having a riveting primary the first part of the year, and just in general having better candidates and worse prevailing conditions. But the lesson should be learned - don't give up early, keep the pressure up and capitalize on your opponent's mistakes, and support those lower-tiered candidates as well - they're the future bread-and-butter.