Declaring Victory

Jim Webb: "The votes have been counted and we have won." Here's what's great, the ex-Republican in Webb came out here - he flat-out declared victory. Thumbed his nose right in the face of Allen. This is going to be a knock-down drag-out fight, especially if the Senate hangs in the balance. Remember Florida? That's what we've got to deal with. We all know that the media rewards strength. Just like Bush in 2000, Webb just walked out and said "I won." And the media will just accept it and ask the nation to do the same.

This is a brilliant maneuver by Jim Webb. And it couldn't be a bigger victory. Once again, in early 2006 George Allen was the presumptive nominee of his party for President. He's going to fight his ass off, but it looks like he lost his Senate race.

UPDATE: Here are some more victories. MN-01's Tim Walz, ANOTHER netroots candidate, wins. And John Hall of Orleans WINS in NY-19!!! And here's another hero - Jack Murtha. He just said "I'm running for Majority Leader" on MSNBC.

UPDATE: CBS just called Missouri for Claire McCaskill. Joe Lieberman just had a caniption fit. The Senate might be in his hands.

UPDATE #2: Great post by a reader over at Talking Points Memo.

The Republicans have backed themselves into a corner in Virginia. If you're going to go to the mat with dirty tricks and voter suppression, your counting on staying under the rader and that once the election is over, folks will move on. If Allen contests the results of the election it changes the election from a single day event into a 3 or 4 week event, plenty of time to chase down those callerid numbers and phone bank contractors. Virginia isn't Ohio. It doesn't have Ken Blackwell to cover up the GOP shenanigans, and the state has already requested the FBI to look into them. The Allen campaign is going to have to make the choice of whether contesting the results is worth the chance of exposing criminal activity. Let's hope they choose to contest. It's our best hope of fully exposing the shenanigans of the GOP to the light of day and getting the mechanisms in place to prevent their use in the next election cycle.

Great point. There's going to be a lot of pressure, higher-up pressure, for George Allen to shut up and go quietly.