CNN/Fox Projection: Obama wins presidential election.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=354165

by Anon84 • 18 years ago

145 137 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

ojbyrne8• 18 years ago

As I commented on another story, it was over (statistically) the minute Ohio was projected. They just had to wait till polls closed on the west coast, so they could use their exit polls from CA/OR/WA, which everybody on the planet knew were Democrat.

trickjarrett• 18 years ago

AP calls Florida for Obama, if he didn't win before when CNN called it, Florida will guarantee it.

robg3• 18 years ago

Now that that's finally over, back to code! :)

jmtame• 18 years ago

All the better when coding and knowing the guy you voted for understands what network neutrality means.

mixmax• 18 years ago

and intends to appoint a national CIO

bapbap• 18 years ago

And that a bubble sort probably isn't the the most efficient way to sort one million 32-bit integers

Anon842• 18 years ago

Here, here!

johns2• 18 years ago

Hear, hear!

Anon842• 18 years ago

This was an REAL mistake. English is not my native language.

edw519• 18 years ago

Why did you stop coding in the first place?

jbrun• 18 years ago

Yes, but now there is some hope that there will be an economy to buy/use/rent your code.

jackchristopher• 18 years ago

Eric Raymond has some great quotes in How To Become A Hacker that seem to go over a lot of heads.

"But a note of caution is in order here. The hacker community has some specific, primarily defensive political interests — two of them are defending free-speech rights and fending off "intellectual-property" power grabs that would make open source illegal...But beyond that, most hackers view attempts to systematize the hacker attitude into an explicit political program with suspicion; we've learned, the hard way, that these attempts are divisive and distracting. If someone tries to recruit you to march on your capitol in the name of the hacker attitude, they've missed the point. The right response is probably “Shut up and show them the code.”

pwoods• 18 years ago

Gotta give it to Eric R for his convictions. His wife must get tired of his stubbornness though. Geese.

ars• 18 years ago

Since the tendency of the kids on the internet is to criticize the establishment, do you think digg and reddit and sites like that are going to start leaning the other way?

For the first time in weeks I saw a story critical of obama on digg.

kajecounterhack2• 18 years ago

I doubt it -- the kids on the internet criticize things that deserve criticism. Unless Obama does something worth criticizing, I doubt we'll see much change from what it looks like today.

gills• 18 years ago

He voted for the bailout.

[deleted]

Prrometheus9• 18 years ago

Did you just seriously make a comment that implicitly states that Obama has done no wrong?

(FISA, PATRIOT II, Bailout, war funding, VP wrote the PATRIOT Act and invented the "Drug Czar", etc.)

hugh5• 18 years ago

Hopefully the new counterculture will be more libertarian.

It's awfully hard to be cool while blindly supporting the President. Let's hope it remains that way, because the alternative would be bad -- not just for politics, but for coolness.

fallentimes• 18 years ago

Ok great - we've all had our fix. No more politricks on HN for 4 more years. :)

astrec• 18 years ago

Actually the campaign for re-election begins around 18 months after inauguration. Hopefully the mods keep HN relatively politics free for the next 4 years.

unalone• 18 years ago

Fox News is calling it. That means it's safely over.

DanielBMarkham2• 18 years ago

From someone who didn't vote for you, congrats Obama!

A couple of sources called it (really) once Ohio flipped.

Now it gets interesting. I would beg Obama voters to follow along and read multiple sources as things go forward.

I love politics.

delackner2• 18 years ago

I would beg all of you to read a non-US news website regularly. You could do worse than the economist and the BBC.

Watching the way the rest of the world sees the US makes it a little easier to see the inanity of so much US political news coverage. (And likewise that of any other country's local political news, as covered by outside sources).

alex_c• 18 years ago

I was watching the live feed on the BBC News website. It wasn't great, but I don't think I could've survived watching CNN instead.

DanielBMarkham2• 18 years ago

Absolutely.

Here's a good site I brought up a while back. It covers hundreds of foreign-language media and translates some of their material into English.

http://watchingamerica.com/News/

mightybyte• 18 years ago

Yet another outcome correctly predicted by pg's "It's Charisma, Stupid" essay. Although the need to nominate only charismatic candidates hasn't sunk in.

will_robinson• 18 years ago

Something keeps bothering me about charismatic leaders with revolutionary views and overwhelming mandates in times of severe economic trouble.

ojbyrne8• 18 years ago

I don't agree. I hope that while he won because of severe economic trouble, I think they recognize that the root of that problem has been severe disruption of freedom and democracy by the current party in power.

I hope that economics will be put on the back burner and "security" (also known as security theater - also known as fascism) will be the most important consideration. As in rolling back "security" in favor of "democracy."

Freedom fixes economics. And the last administration has been assaulting freedom for eight years.

nostrademons2• 18 years ago

I'm encouraged by the humility he showed in his victory speech. His mood seems entirely different than, say, Bush's "Mission Accomplished" Iraq stunt.

brandonkm• 18 years ago

I don't think there was really any doubt that Obama was going to win. Over this election season we witnessed the best and most technologically advanced campaign ever. Not only on the ground game level, but on all levels. Cheers to President Obama for running an excellent campaign.

dmpayton• 18 years ago

President Elect Obama. He's been elected president, but he won't be president until January.

tortilla• 18 years ago

YES WE DID!

leonroy• 18 years ago

There is no place for your enthusiasm here. This is not reddit ;)

andreyf3• 18 years ago

Let the disappointment begin!

ojbyrne8• 18 years ago

I'm so disappointed not to be in the US tonight :-(.

palish• 18 years ago

Yeah man, it was great to be here! I, like, went to bed and stuff. Totally wild.

Eliezer• 18 years ago

Wait... did the System just... work?

Can it do that?

izaidi• 18 years ago

Only after it completely fails.

SwellJoe4• 18 years ago

It just needed a good smack. But, remember, as with computers and women, one smack is maintenance, two is abuse.

mstevens2• 18 years ago

I think smacking women once is pretty dodgy, let alone twice.

namnori2• 18 years ago

I'll remember that one.

markessien2• 18 years ago

Is that the rule of thumb?

nostrademons2• 18 years ago

It's funny how everyone claims the system works when it elects the candidate they support, and that it's irretrievably broken when it doesn't. ;-)

TweedHeads• 18 years ago

They couldn't cover the fact that 80% of the people dislike the Bush Admin so much, and 90% of new voters would go Obama.

No, they couldn't rig it this time instead decided to go 51%-49% to leave with honor...

...and loaded pockets.

misuba2• 18 years ago

We won't know for two years.

anthonyrubin• 18 years ago

I disagree with Obama on many issues. I did not support McCain. It is difficult to express how satisfied I am knowing that an intelligent human being will once again occupy the White House.

mrtron• 18 years ago

I think it's going to be a huge inspiration for the world.

Seeing recent female and minority leaders being elected across the world shows we finally are moving towards reducing discrimination.

dgordon2• 18 years ago

I disagree with him on a lot of things, but he's right on this. The United States of America is the greatest nation in the world, the nation where all things are possible, the nation that, for every time we've fallen short, keeps saying "Yes we can!" Yes -- we can do justice, yes -- we can be better, yes -- we can fulfill the promise that all men are created equal.

Govern it well, Barack Obama.

potatolicious• 18 years ago

Looking at the results of Prop 8, California seems to disagree on "all men are created equal".

sgrove• 18 years ago

Aye, the saddest news in a long while. I wonder what can be done now to work against such a large setback...

dgordon2• 18 years ago

Unfortunately so. We have a long way to go yet.

markessien2• 18 years ago

I really doubted that this would happen. But it actually did, and I think it will really make a difference. This is America sort of saying to the world - hey, those war mongering guys were never us. This is the real us - the guy who thinks, the guy who does not fit the mould, the guy who never wanted a war.

In so many ways, the U.S has shown how agile it is, and why it's number 1.

SwellJoe4• 18 years ago

Why did you doubt it?

About a month ago, it became apparent to me that it was going to be a blowout. I've been confident Obama would win for several months...but it wasn't until the desperation in the McCain campaign began to show through so clearly (Palin, in particular), that I realized how badly he was going to lose. As of a few days ago, I was expecting a Reagan-style landslide, and I wasn't disappointed.

And, I question the "America is number 1" assertion. Number 1 in what competition? We're behind in several areas I consider vitally important: economic freedom, freedom of speech, per-capita income, education, and the list goes on...

kirubakaran• 18 years ago

Obama wins... FCC opens up white spaces... Business methods patents curbed... Man! Too much good stuff!

Prrometheus9• 18 years ago

I wonder if an Obama FCC would have taken this deregulatory step.

robg3• 18 years ago

Anyone else just hear the Cathedral and Bazaar reference on CNN? Amazing! A Republican analyst comparing Obama's campaign to open source software and on a major network.

ryporter• 18 years ago

A reference that I thought would have made a great headline: "A Black President Event"

halo• 18 years ago

It's on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-4afdMalVA

ksvs2• 18 years ago

What a relief. I'm sure he won't turn out to be perfect, but won't it be nice to have a president we can actually take seriously?

maximilian• 18 years ago

I wish I could celebrate more but I have to get up early and do homework all tomorrow.

We did have a few celebratory beers however.

ricree• 18 years ago

It may be just a speech, but that acceptance address was one heck of a way to start things off. Despite a strong (though very much appreciated) message of hope, he was very clear on the magnitude of the problem and the effort it was going to take to solve it. He seemed to touch on a lot of issues that I felt were critical to the future of the country. Energy and environmental challenges, getting the economy back to stable ground, healing political divides and tempering extremism; these are all issues that need to be tackled, and I am happy that he addressed them here.

Hopefully his policies will live up to the talk, but if nothing else I believe that his message alone will go a long way towards helping improve things. It seems all too rare these days for a politician to say that yes, things will be difficult and dirty, and there are going to need to be sacrifices from everyone, but despite all the hardships we really can work to build a better future.

hugh5• 18 years ago

Hopefully his policies will live up to the talk, but if nothing else I believe that his message alone will go a long way towards helping improve things.

Never forget: the unintended consequences of any government policy almost always wind up being far more significant than the intended consequences.

This is what I fear most.

redrobot50503• 18 years ago

You've got citations to back up your fears, don' you? I've love to see the horrible, horrible unintended consequence of seatbelt laws.

trapper• 18 years ago

Well done America! The rest of the world was holding their breath!

josefresco2• 18 years ago

Apparently not Russia, who took the opportunity to spout more crap about Georgia and blah blah blah

globalrev• 18 years ago

Congrats!

America is defineately not nr 1 anymore but maybe now you can get back to being so!

brentr• 18 years ago

Anyone concerned what this will do for innovation? How could an entrepreneur vote for Obama? He has clearly stated that he wants to "redistribute" the wealth. In my eyes, that's the essence of socialism.

andreyf3• 18 years ago

Taxation is not the only prerequisite of socialism, and just about any taxation can be viewed as wealth redistribution.

redrobot50503• 18 years ago

You've been paying taxes all your life, and that, in essence, is not socialism. Its called Progressive taxation. Many states in the US have their state income tax set up this way (the more you make, they more they take. In state that do not tax that way, they often tax you based off property ownership.) and they are not socialist.

I'm also not concerned what it will do for innovation (whatever that means) because historically the economy and stock market do better under Democrats than under Republicans. George W. Bush has yet to create one single net job, and he has a mere 75 days to do.

thomasmallen• 18 years ago

You heard it here first!

Please, let's keep it to computing and startups and other infrequent topics.

CNN/Fox Projection: Obama wins presidential election.

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