It's now after three o'clock in the morning on November 3rd.

Bush is leading in Ohio by more than 145,000 votes, with 99% of precincts reporting. That victory margin has been growing as the last votes trickle in. Abstentee ballots, a clear majority of which will go for Bush, have not yet been fully counted. Bush will win Ohio, and by winning Ohio, Bush will win the election. This is a practical certainty.

Ohio state election officials report that there are at most 175,000 provisional ballots. The actual number of provisional ballots is probably closer to 125,000. In the 2000 election, 90% of provisional ballots were deemed valid under Ohio law. (This time around, the validity of provisional ballots will be decided under federal law, which is more stringent than the Ohio law that was applicable to provisional ballots in the 2000 election.) Assuming for the sake of argument that in this election there really are 175,000 provisional Ohio ballots and all those provisional ballots are valid (an extraordinarily unlikely assumption), 83% of those provisional ballots would have to go for Kerry for him to overcome Bush's 140,000 vote lead. If, as is more likely, only 90% of the provisional ballots are valid, 92% of those ballots would have to have Kerry's name on them. If you add absentee ballots to the mix, Kerry would have to win virtually every valid provisional ballot. If there are only 125,000 provisional ballots, a Kerry victory is not only a practical impossibility, but also a mathematical impossibility.

In other words, as a practical reality, Kerry cannot win Ohio. Kerry cannot win this election.

A few minutes ago, the Kerry camp sent John Edwards bounding out to announce that they will fight to make sure that "every vote is counted" and that victory will be theirs if every vote is counted. In support of the Kerry fantasy and with the aid of interviews with left wing lawyers and "analysts," the MSM have been strenuously pretending that Kerry could receive enough votes from provisional ballots to change the Ohio result.

Why do the MSM continue this pretense?

Not because they believe that Kerry can actually win--that is a practical impossibility. They support the pretense because they wish to cast doubt on the legitimacy of Bush's victory.

Consider the evidence: Although Bush leads Kerry in Ohio by 145,000 votes out of 5.4 million votes cast, CBS, ABC, and AP are still refusing to "call" Ohio for Bush. By contrast, Kerry leads Bush in Pennsylvania by only 125,000 votes out of 5.6 million votes cast, yet the MSM "called" Kerry the winner in Pennsylvania several hours ago. Why do the MSM think Bush's win in Ohio more doubtful than Kerry's victory in Pennsylvania? Because generating doubt in Ohio is necessary to support the Kerry fantasy. Meanwhile, though they clearly now wish they hadn't, NBC did "call" Ohio for Bush earlier this evening, but NBC is now refusing to "call" Nevada for Bush, even though Bush leads Kerry in that state by 3% with 99% of the vote recorded. Several other states have been "called" on slimmer margins. But now NBC won't call Nevada because, having already projected Bush the winner in Ohio, NBC can't bring itself to acknowledge the clear Bush victory in Nevada because that would put him above the 269 electoral votes needed for victory. These shenanigans make it clear that the MSM's purpose is not to exercise caution to ensure the integrity of the election, but to try to continue for another four years the now habitual Democrat fantasy that "Bush stole the election."

Yes, the Dems with the help of the MSM can drag this out and keep Bush's certain re-election victory from becoming "official" for another ten days or so. But the truth is it's all over but the crying.

Will the Dems cry less ten days from now?

Somehow I don't think so.