A big loser in the presidential election was...

[BREMPRO]

conspiracy theorists.

what didn't happen?

the election was not disputed
they didn't steal the election with electronic voting machine manipulation
they didn't cancel the election because of some invented crisis
they didn't attack Iran to help McLame/Phlalin
they didn't declare martial law and deploy American troops in the streets.

It seems democracy still works.

The people have spoken!!

[rainy]

1. Does this also mean that the economy will come back strong?

[BeyondGeography]

2. And the Bradley Effect...RIP

It was already dead, anyway.

[asdjrocky]

3. And where are the riots and election fraud?

[Dawgs]

4. ..and the polls were pretty accurate.

[mikelgb]

5. post this on inauguration day

[JFN1]

6. I admit I had some of those fears

but I didn't have a conspiracy theory to back it up - I simply feared for our nation, and feared there was NOTHING the people in power wouldn't do to stay in power.

Thankfully, I was wrong.

[lapfog_1]

7. Actually, they did do or try to do each and every item on your list.

They attacked Syria (less of a military risk than Iran) just before the election.
They WILL dispute a number of races.
They probably DID steal a *lot* of votes, and possibly enough to make some races tight (look at Bachmann for an example).
They did bring troops back from Iraq to "Northern Command" and train them in riot control and deploy them to the US.
They had a number of invented crisis... notably the "credit crisis", and there was TALK of the need to impose martial law unless the bailout happened (which would have interrupted or influenced the election).

They also did massive amounts of voter suppression, as evidenced by the number of people who had to either vote provisional (i.e. non counted) ballots or simply not vote at all.

We simply overwhelmed them with numbers.

Do you really think that a true vote of everyone over the age of 18 and eligible to vote would give you a 6 point difference between McCain and Obama? They shaved at least 5 points off the margin. At least 5.

[BREMPRO]

14. i agree to some extent, but it was not enough to overcome the tsunami of Democratic voting

The Repukes clearly did try to suppress the vote, through voter roll purging and caging, but they do that every election and its well known not so secret conspiracy.
I'm not saying we should not be vigilant, just that the worst fear that some deep controlling power could steal the election from the people did not happen.
Democrats will dispute results too... ie Franken. A recount should reveal if it was fair or not.

[Avalux]

8. Votes were stolen. If it had been fair, Obama would have won by much more.

Couldn't steal it because it wasn't close to begin with; but certainly, those machines are faulty and need to be retired.

[JuniperLea]

9. Where have you been?

There was voting machine manipulation... but the voters were out in such vast numbers, it didn't matter. There were many reports of machines flipping Dem votes to McCain. It didn't work, but it was tried.

We don't really know if any of the other things you noted, most of which I don't believe, were planned or not. No one really knew how many voters would actually vote.

[wiggs]

10. disagree. There has been good reason to suspect election integrity, motives

of the Bush administration in Iran, an October surprise, etc.. Through the hard work of a lot of people, proposed electronic voting machines in some states were decertified...there were a lot of eyes on tabulators...fewer people were purged and more people were allowed to vote...perspective was given to Iraq and Iran....

We need people like Palast out there yelling warnings and conducting investigations that msm journalists and officials should be doing but aren't.

Obama beat an incredible political, media, corporatist, and entrenched power machine that has been thinking for decades how to game the system. Credit goes to Obama, volunteers, and small donors for overcoming the bs. Doesn't mean the bs didn't exist.

[treestar]

11. The people proved they are not so dumb after all

Thinking of that magazine cover from Europe saying how can 50 million people be so dumb with a pic of *. I was truly wondering if we were made up of a slight majority of koolaid drinking nutcases. Now it seems, not so much. They've gone down to 48%.

[Ganja Ninja]

12. Just because the GOP couldn't steal it doesn't mean they didn't make an effort.

They were just overwhelmed.

[Doctor_J]

13. Bzzzt. Thanks for playing

Hartmann just said that up to 7 million people had their registrations stripped, and had to take provisional ballots, which won't be counted. Election Fraud still need to be prosecuted and eliminated before 2010

[SoCalDem]

15. It took a JUGGERNAUT to assure it, though

Team Obama threw down a pretty big gauntlet, with their fund raising, voter registration, and of course it also took 22 months ..

In prior years, dems ran pretty conventional campaigns, and republicans could count on exactly which states might ned a "little tweak"..

Obama's team were NOT going to allow that to be an option anymore, and their "battleground" states were carefully chosen ..

NOW, if we tackle REAL election reform and introduce MANDATORY transparency throughought the whole process, and demand/get standardized presidential/house/senate balloting...paper ballots, we may not have to worry about fuure abuses, if the repubes rise from the ashes..(they will )

[Overseas]

16. Ridiculous! We turned out an avalanche to get our landslide.

Until you have studied all the reports, STFU !!

We are just lucky we had Obama with enough of a lead in advance, and teams of citizens and lawyers catching one third of the GOP tricks, that our turnout overcame the tricks.

Election integrity groups now have time and an honest administration coming in, to work out national standards for voting, like paper ballots and random audits, which has been administered at the state level.