Admitting Defeat?
McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin, to PBS's Suarez: "There are ways to get to 270 without Pennsylvania. I don't think there's a way to 270 without both Pennsylvania and Ohio. ... We think we were very successful in the final weeks. We may have run out of time over anything else" (PBS).
CNN's Borger, on McCain changing his campaign strategies to run on experience, then change: "McCain did exactly what Hillary Clinton did. ... It was a Hillary Clinton campaign, and that didn't work for Hillary Clinton."
NPR's Greene: "The McCain campaign ... said they thought they had the technology ... to compete against the well funded Obama camp. But it seems it didn't work" (PBS).
Ex-WH adviser David Gergen, on the somber mood at the McCain "party" in Phoenix: "It was sort of the final rites or something" (CNN).
MSNBC's Guthrie, also at the party in Phoenix: "There's no question it's somber. ... You hear snippets of conversations: 'if only, if only, the economy hadn't collapsed when it did'."
CNN's Bash, on responses McCain advisers gave when asked if there's a chance McCain will win: "The answers I got were no, no."
Meanwhile, MSNBC cuts to African-American crowds in Harlem and Grant Park, Chicago, and finds that despite the Obama wins, the mood is not yet celebratory. Olbermann, on Grant Park: "There's no banners, no ballons yet. ... I think I see one American flag."
CBS' Reynolds, on Obama's OH win: "I think we can say Joe the Plumber had no coat-tails."