Bush won, Dan. Get over it.

When last heard from, gentle reader, yours truly was departing for work, with President Bush closing in on victory in Florida and things looking good in Ohio. Before departing, I made the comment that if he carried both, it was hard to see how he could not win the election.

Well, guess what? He carried both. And he won the election.

But CBS won't admit it, and the Democrats are carrying on their mantra about "wanting every vote to be counted." You know. The one they used in their attempt to steal Florida by counting votes nobody ever cast four years ago, and then claiming that imaginary voters were being disenfranchised when Republicans insisted that only real votes cast by real voters should count.

Dan Rather and company, having manufactured two- count 'em, two- phony stories in the closing weeks of the campaign in an attempt to avoid this outcome for the election, is clinging to the lame excuse that roughly as the same number of provisional and absentee ballots have yet to be counted in Ohio as President Bush's majority in the state in order to avoid calling Ohio and the election.

Did I say "lame?" Lame is far too mild a term.

Like Kerry is going to get every one of them- which he pretty much would have to do!

Now, there are nowhere near the 250,000 such votes the Kerry camp claims. But just for the sake of discussion, let's say that there are.

As it happens, military ballots- a goodly proportion of the still-to-be-counted votes- tend to go about 85% Bush. It is highly unlikely that the provisional and absentee ballots will trend dramatically otherwise than the rest of the votes in the state. Yet even assuming the Kerry camp's figures, given the size of the President's lead, in order to carry Ohio, Kerry would have to get more than three of the provisional and absentee votes for every one that goes to the President- and it just ain't gonna happen!

Andy Card is right: the President's lead in Ohio is statistically insurmountable. It's time for Kerry, Edwards, and Rather to concede the election- and maybe even make a gesture or two of reconciliation after one of the most despicably vicious campaigns in modern history.

President Bush has been re-elected, guys- with a decisive victory this time in the popular vote as well as that clear victory in the Electoral College you can't bring yourself to admit. He is the first President since his father in 1988 to be elected with an absolute majority of the popular vote.

Deal with it!