Conceding, McCain paid tribute to African-Americans, and honored Obama for--having defeated him.

Everyone is calling him gracious--on MSNBC, Keith Olbermann and Rep. John Lewis, for example. I suppose he was. What he couldn't bring himself to do: compliment Obama for the way he conducted himself; for any of his talents; for any ideas; for his character.

Beneath the velvet, it was faint praise. A bitter night for Sen. McCain, to be sure.

Peruvian shamans check in. I won't spoil this by saying whom they prefer.

That's the punchline of a Minister of Hate ad run by something called GOPTrust just now--on MSNBC, during Olbermann's show.

James Fallows same the same ad a few hours ago on MSNBC in California. He saw it several times. I saw it in New York. So some Republican outfit, on election night, is throwing money away on Keith Olbermann fans in the safest states in the universe.

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At cjr.org, Renee Feltz, citing research by John Kelly, pinpoints a key difference between the Obama and McCain campaigns' use of the Internet. Turns out there really is a difference in spirit--between a lateral, interactive approach and a top-down one. Guess which is which.

You guessed it:

Barack Obama's campaign reaches out to activist bloggers in order to communicate with and mobilize campaign volunteers and feed them into its online social networking site, MyBarackObama.com. In contrast, John McCain's campaign takes a top-down approach, using blogs--many of which it helped incubate--as an echo chamber for channeling mostly anti-Obama attacks into the mainstream media, in order to create an impression of grassroots online support.

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