I'm on the road this week. I watched election results in a hotel room in Flagstaff, Arizona last Tuesday. Today I'm in San Jose, leaving for Sacramento later this morning.

Yesterday I came down the hall of my hotel toward the breakfast area, where a man I'd seen in the hotel before was watching MSNBC on the big screen TV (this was late in the afternoon). I'm traveling with my dad, and he was in an animated discussion with this guy over the election results.

I'd seen this guy before. During breakfast the other day he was giving the minimum-wage hotel staff crap for not having more than two or three cups of waffle mix available. When asked if he needed to make more than two or three waffles, he said no. He was upset that the hotel appeared to be cutting back on waffles by only putting out a few cups of mix. The hotel worker then proceeded to bring out about a dozen cups of waffle mix.

Waffle Man then appointed himself the head of the Waffle Police, making sure everyone knew that they were not making their waffles right.

Anyway, now Waffle Man was arguing that Sarah Palin was way out of line bringing up Obama's relationships with William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezo, and other terrorists, radicals, and felons. Dad argued that those relationships matter; that who he associates with as a candidate is an indication of who he'll associate with as president.

Waffle Man says, "Oh yeah? Well John McCain couldn't even make Admiral in the Navy." I'm not sure that John McCain tried, or wanted to be an Admiral after he came home from captivity in Viet Nam. In any case, McCain did go on to have a successful political career.

Dad was trying to make the case that Obama might get us out of Iraq, but that he had advocated increasing our presence in Afghanistan, and had admitted that withdrawing from Iraq now would likely result in us having to return to clean things up later. Waffle Man stated, "You watch: Barack Obama will bring peace to the middle east."

I interjected at this point. "On what basis do you make that claim? What experience has he had that leads you to believe he can do that? What accomplishments does he have in the area of international relations?" Waffle Man had no answer. I pointed out that Obama advocates unilateral invasion into the sovereign territory of Pakistan. That hardly sounds like a peace-making move.

Waffle Man said, "Oh yeah? Well George Bush can't even complete a sentence." Not only is this an ad hominem argument, which I told him, but it's patently untrue. And it has no bearing on whether or not Obama can bring peace to the middle east.

Waffle Man continued his well-considered argument: "You McCain supporters just can't stand seeing a black man in the White House." OK, so now he's accusing us of being racists. He attempted to prove his point by citing the debunked story of McCain advocates yelling "Kill Obama" at a campaign rally. This was reported on (I believe) NBC but was dismissed after investigation by the Secret Service.

I found Waffle Man's arguments typical of those of Obama supporters. First, you make all kinds of ad hominem attacks against McCain supporters based on racism. To an Obama supporter, everyone who votes against Obama is a racist. Second, you make ad hominem attacks against Palin for her hairdo, McCain for his age, and Bush for his occasional misspeaking. Then you assign whatever accomplishments, experience, and character attributes to Obama. You can do this because Obama built his campaign on creating a frenzy based on emotions, not on facts. Obama is The One, The Messiah, The Lord Almighty. All things are in His power. You can assign any motive, any plan, any character attribute to him, because we know so few actual facts about his history and personal philosophy.

My experience is that most Obama voters are like Waffle Man. They didn't vote for him because of what he stood for, but because of how they felt he felt about them and their problems. The fact that he was at the center of the cause of the current economic crisis, for example, means nothing to them; he's going to fix the economic crisis (using, apparently, his omnipotent will).

Time will tell if Waffle Man is right. Based on what we learned in the campaign, the media will spin everything to Obama's favor, and facts will be few and far between.