If you’re a political junkie, you’ll want to check out ABC News’ online bank of exit polling data from last night. There are tons of material to work with here, particularly in trying to understand the public energy behind possible Obama policy initiatives. However, be warned: you could spend months working these numbers.

Maybe you’re one of those many Americans who only vote once every four years. If so, chances are you’re a bit fuzzy on where your local polling place is. And let’s be honest, you may not want to admit your relatively low level of civic engagement to your neighbors and peers by asking, “So, where do we vote?”

So here it is, another great resource from the wunderkinds at Google: a maps feature that will direct you to your local polling place based on the address at which you are registered. Give it a go. Then get out tomorrow and vote. And by the way, don’t wait another four years to participate.

As the Dow continues to plummet, Americans are suddenly getting a crash course in the dynamics of financial markets. But both the right and left have offered very little beyond political theater, instead resorting to unintelligent rhetoric about “fat cats” and “golden parachutes.”

If you want to actually understand a number of the critical market collapses that have had direct bearing on the economic crisis, you need to know why the corporate paper market matters. You also need to understand the significance of the unregulated credit default swap market. And you need to understand how all of this plays into the Paulson plan (now law).

A great place to start is with Ira Glass, Alex Blumberg, and Adam Davidson on the most recent edition of This American Life. Give them an hour and you will have a much better understanding of the macroeconomic forces at play in the current economic crisis.
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By the way, if you don’t already, go ahead and subscribe to the This American Life podcast. Pound for pound, it’s some of the best radio in the biz and it is free.

Ralph Stanley endorses Barack Obama in a radio spot running in southwest Virginia . . .

Creepy, just plain creepy.

Yes, that noise you hear is the sound of the Palin pop quickly deflating.

Just what is a ‘populist’? In modern American politics, no identifier has become more overused than this one. Case in point: Michael Gerson’s suggestion that Sarah Palin stands a the populist tradition, an heiress to the legacy of William Jennings Bryan.

At the 1896 Democratic convention, a backwoods, religious no-name rose to speak. “Great cities,” argued William Jennings Bryan, “rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms, and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.” The reaction of the crowd to Bryan’s gospel of populism was electric; delegates stood on chairs to cheer and throw their hats. The reaction of elites in the great Northeastern cities was less enthusiastic. A New York Times headline referred to the convention as a WILD, RAGING, IRRESISTIBLE MOB. Elite opinion on Bryan was eventually summarized by H. L. Mencken: Bryan was a “peasant come home to the barnyard.” Bryan never won the presidency in three tries. But his populism transformed the Democratic Party and informed the New Deal, making him perhaps the most influential presidential nominee never elected to office.

The closest I have ever come to witnessing a Bryan moment was Sarah Palin’s speech at the Republican convention–the triumph of another backwoods, highly religious populist. Palin praised the honesty and sincerity of small towns; pressed her credentials as a hockey mom, member of the PTA and small-town mayor; and railed against the “Washington elite,” “power brokers” and (a little close to home) “reporters and commentators.” If hats had been in style, they would have been thrown.

Of course, Gerson is not alone in his misuse of populist terminology. In a campaign season when both candidates are labeled as populists (for example, see here and here), the term has lost any meaning in contemporary American discourse. Class warfare, maybe. Ideological and social conflict in an increasingly diverse America, to be sure. But let’s stop throwing populist jargon around. You never know, you might just irritate a quirky historian or graduate student.

If you’re finding the political headlines today to mark a new low in the campaign (seriously, this is what we’re talking about?!), you probably need a laugh. And this is sure to please.

After that brief therapeutic interlude, we’ll soon return to an attempt at intelligent blogging.

If it weren’t for some astute colleagues in the history department at UK, I would have missed this one…

Alben Barkley has become something of a new family member over the course of the last year. And until my graduate studies are complete, he’ll likely set up permanent residence. So I was pleasantly surprised to see NPR’s All Things Considered devote an entire story to Barkley. If you want a good introduction to Barkley, check out this piece by Joe Richman.

The story is comprised mostly of interview material with Barkley’s grandson, Stephen Truitt. Of course, I can’t help but think that it would have been helpful to have some input from an historian. But then again, Barkley studies aren’t exactly en vogue these days. Maybe someone will write a significant social biography in the near future and rightly reintroduce Barkley to the front of 20th century American political history. Sounds ambitious, doesn’t it?

Yesterday’s announcement that Sarah Palin’s unmarried seventeen year-old daughter is five months pregnant, took over the news cycle. And the McCain campaign had to quickly spin the story in a careful way. From all accounts, it doesn’t sound like Palin’s political neck was on the line at any point in the day. But it reminded me of one of the more masterful acts of vice presidential self-preservation in modern American political history.

In the 1952 campaign, Richard Nixon was accused of benefiting from an illegal slush fund of campaign contributions. When the story broke, Dwight Eisenhower understandably considered dropping Nixon from his ticket. However, Nixon’s masterful spin in a nationally-televised speech on September 13 saved his place on the Republican ticket. In fact, the performance prompted Ike to greet Nixon at the airport with a reassuring, “Dick, you’re my boy.”

Nixon managed to divert attention away from the alleged scandal and to position himself as an everyman, whose wife wore a “respectable Republican cloth coat” and who refused to give away the family dog, a cocker spaniel named Checkers that had been a gift to the Nixon family from a political backer. Of course, the situation now facing the Palin family is not entirely analogous to Nixon’s in 1952. But to what extent she and the McCain campaign are able to spin this as a “we’re just a typical American family” story does have a few similarities. And it looks like McCain is likely to tell Palin, “Sarah, you’re my girl.”

If you’ve never watched the Checkers speech, you can below.