I feel bad for Kos, since he’s been soured since early in the night. And he seems never to even have enjoyed the contact-high of the mid-day exit polls. But doesn’t this post seem a little premature?

Kos notes that an MSNBC poll is showing that the “youth” vote is down. Kos, old buddy, no matter who wins or loses, I think a smaller youth vote is something we should all be able to celebrate, no? I mean, have you ever met America’s youth? Confronted with a news story about the most recent suicide bombing in Israel, one youth voter today asked me, “What’s a Tel Aviv?”

This particular youth voter isn’t stupid–she’s exceedingly bright and successful and attends a prestigious university. But she (sensibly) spends her time concentrating on things other than current affairs and is, well, youthful. Which is a synonym for “not having been around long enough to know better.”

Sex should be left to the young and voting to the old. It plays to both groups’ strengths and is–all things considered–an exceedingly fair trade.

Where have you gone, Hugh Hewitt! Hugh is the best and smartest voice of Republican optimism out there, so I don’t know what to think when he comes out with this: “There is no room for confidence, of course . . .”

Soxblog is, funnily enough, blue. Here’s something to cheer him up:

On the morning John Kerry announced his choice of John Edwards as his running mate, my first thought was, Gee, he’s giving up on North Carolina already?

Honest.

In a non-political note, Galley Brother B.J. was at the Jets game last night and came away with this amazing tidbit: “Hulk Hogan’s daughter is hot!”

What are you going to do when Hulkamania runs wild on you? Indeed.

Beldar makes an excellent and very, very important point: We haven’t had an attack on American soil since September 11, 2001. Al Qaeda and the forces of Islamist extremism surely would have hit us again, if they had the means.

For our safety–for the grace of being able to safely go to the polls and make our choice today–we always owe these heroes a special debt of gratitude, but today even more so than usual.

Thanks guys. You’re the best.

I don’t mean to cap on Jim Geraghty’s sourcing–and again, I picked Bush by 8–but here he passes on the word from a “Middle Cheese” in Bush land who says, “There is total confidence that at the end of the night, Bush will win.”

Really? Golly, I would never expect Bush, Rove, Hughes, et al. to be totally confident unless it was true, right? Ditto the “Closer than they’d have liked, but the president will win” line. Citing “confidence” from a candidate’s team is meaningless. And anyone rooting for Bush who’s taking succor from these anonymous reports is just begging to get burnt.

(Remember, George W. Bush hasn’t made any mistakes in the last four years, either.)

I hope it doesn’t look like I’m picking on Bush today, because it’s not my intent. My point is that we don’t know anything, and it’s bad enough that blogland got twisted up over one set of anonymous, queer-looking numbers. People shouldn’t make the same mistake twice by latching onto equally dubious counter-explanations.

Psssst . . . it’s okay not to have all of the answers all of the time.

At 5:00 p.m., Zogby called the race for Kerry. Bush is going to win the popular vote, 49.4% to 49.1%. Kerry will win the Electoral College 311 to 213. And Zogby can tell all that from a phone survey with just 955 respondents. Amazing!

Shouldn’t Ana Marie “Washingtonienne” Cox post these numbers, too?

The shifting sand? My friend Hugh Hewitt has been pretty confident of a big Bush win since at least the Boston convention. Now he’s reporting that, “Second-hand from the Bush-Cheney bigs: Closer than they’d have liked, but the president will win. Today’s undecideds breaking for the president.” Does he know something we don’t?

Dept. of Pots and Kettles: Didn’t I also predict a big Bush win? Yes! I believe the spread I predicted was 8 points. In my defense, the useless, baseless theory I’ve been pimping for weeks has been that someone would win big, but that I wasn’t sure who. With a gun to my head, I went with Bush at the last minute. But that doesn’t mean I would be surprised if Kerry wins. (And if Kerry wins big, I could still be 1/2 right!)

Update: If Hugh starts talking about the importance of holding a Republican majority in the Senate later tonight, then it might be time for panic.

From Mark Koulitsas’s (that’s Daily Kos, to you) column in the Guardian:

“In 2000, the right might have gotten away with it. But the blogs, new progressive thinktanks, Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, media watchdog groups and allied organisations helped Kerry beat back the Swift Boat liars and put a spotlight on a clueless-to-hostile mainstream media obsessed with trumpeting Bush’s electoral advantages.”

So the people on the left view The Daily Show as being of a piece with Media Matters, George Soros, et al. Even though Stewart’s lead in is a show with crank-calling puppets. Fascinating.