Today the beleagured Republican National Committee elects its new chairman, so last night GOP leaders gathered for a little group therapy…

The party’s outlook is grim, Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell implored, as he rolled off figure after figure of demographic groups Republicans lost badly in 2008, particularly blacks and Hispanics.

He lamented that the party is increasingly becoming a "regional party."

"That’s called a minority party," the Senate Minority Leader said, "and I didn’t sign up to be in the minority party."

Chairman hopeful Mike Duncan, for one, is confident the GOP can chip its way out of this lily-white sand trap…

Duncan defended the RNC, saying it has "50,000" on their "social network" (presumably, he means Facebook) — more than the Democrats, he contended.

Almost immediately after Duncan finished trying to convince the members of the party’s hip, social networking prowess, the lights in the room went out. The Republicans, literally, were in the dark.

It's funny because it's true! Know what else is true? Here's the RNC on Facebook: 52,991 members. DNC on Facebook: 35,197 members.

So when we start choosing our government by tallying Facebook popularity instead of votes, which should be any day now, the Republicans can stop pretending to care about blacks, Hispanics, women, Jews, Arab Americans, poor people, residents of New Orleans, etc., and get to work on issues that really matter to their constituents.

Like SuperPoking.

While the Jon Stewart and the Daily Show correspondents recharge their batteries following two weeks of ass-kicking convention coverage, let's use this week to take a look back on the cream of their convention coverage.

The DS correspondents bring it hard core to the DNC and show why they're The Best Fucking News Team Ever.

John, Jason, Aasif and Rob report live from Larry Craig's infamous bathroom/sexatorium in Minneapolis.

Jon chooses the media analysis of Wyatt Cenac over Samantha Bee's, even though she's "Still the One."

This is Sophia Maguire, a very enthusiastic Barack Obama supporter from the Beltway area that I had the good fortune of running into on the last day of the DNC.

She told me she approved of Obama's choice of vice president, citing Joe Biden's 35 years of senatorial experience, as well as his time spent as the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, as the perfect compliment to Obama's youthful vigor and deep understanding of Constitutional law.

Her brother Sam agrees with her in most, but has slightly different reasons for throwing his support behind the Obama/Biden ticket…

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…and all I got was almost pepper-sprayed and wrongly imprisoned.

Well, that's a stretch. But it could have happened. If only Michael and I had stuck around Thursday's protest about twenty minutes or so longer.

Ah, regrets.

Anyway, we still have a lot of things, observations and conversations from those two conventions that we never hit upon on the blog for lack of extra minutes in the day. So, we'll be catching up with ourselves all this week.

One observation I can definitely make right here and now is that — after two weeks of hanging out with either ends of the bell curve — it's sooooooo nice to be back in lovely godless, deviant New York City where nobody gives a shit what you think, just so long as you don't brush against them on the subway.

Barack Obama's Acceptance Speech
August 28, 2008

John McCain's Acceptance Speech
September 4, 2008

To be fair, I do realize that the ability to speak well does not a qualified president make.

Presidents should be judged on whether or not people hate them in Germany.

Denver, DNC

Minneapolis-St. Paul, RNC

Can you spot the difference between these two pictures?

Answer after the jump…

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