100 Things About the Election, Part I

Call it a series of things I noticed during and after Election Day that I considered important. In no particular order...

1. Voting is really cool. I spent nearly two hours in line, which was a personal record, although that's not saying much, since I've voted absentee most times. You get a chance to talk to all sorts of people with differing backgrounds and a wide variety of opinions. Business people, immigrants, scientists, doctors, college kids, old school hippies -- a great cross-section of America, all in one high school gymnasium. The woman in front of me in line advocated forcing people to vote, ala the Australian system. Maybe it's just me, but I don't want people to vote who don't feel like doing it. Heck, I'd like the people who do vote to get better educated.

2. By the way... being in a middle school gym causes some serious nostalgia. Not necessarily all good.

3. They wore all black on the Today Show this morning. Hee hee.

4. What exactly did Fallout Boy John Edwards bring to the Democratic ticket? North Carolina? Nope. Other Southern states? Nope. Increased votes from women? Nope. Maybe it was good hair. You had to love Dick Cheney's line about delivering Wyoming's 3 electoral votes to the Bush-Cheney ticket.

5. Kerry Spot notes that Rather thinks Karl Rove is running the blogosphere. Man, Rove is an evil genius. He's running that GOP GOTV (get-out-the-vote) effort, pulling the puppet strings on Bush, and he's hard-wired into my brain. I think it's time Rather join Walter Cronkite on the train for crazy people.

6. Word has it the Kerry folks were calling close friends last night at about five PM claiming they had it in the bag, and to expect 300+ electoral votes for Kerry. Maybe they need to stop snorting the exit-poll data.

7. Kevin Drum, one of the best liberal bloggers, makes an interesting point about the gay marriage issue and its impact:

Since George Bush ended up winning, the "most important event" title ought to be something that helped him, not something that helped John Kerry.

With that in mind, I'll plump for the Massachusett's Supreme Court's decision to legalize gay marriage. The result was nearly a dozen initiatives across the country to ban gay marriage and a perfect wedge issue for Republicans. For the second election in a row, it looks like the president was chosen by the courts.

Hmmm. Gay marriage only became a wedge issue when the Massachusetts Supreme Court opted to force the issue to the forefront. I agree that plenty of evangelicals came out to the polls on the issue, but the fact that it made it onto ballots and achieved a clean sweep evidences some serious political miscalcualtion by the judges in question. Maybe the Dems appreciate the danger of judicial activism a little more.

8. The Swift Boat Vets finally have their parade today. God bless them, and God bless the fact that maybe we can finally put the-war-with-the-name-I-refuse-to-type away for good.

9. Ron Reagan, Jr. drove me nuts last night and throughout the election whenever he appeared on MSNBC. Since he's the son of my hero, I forgive him. Plus, we won, so ha-ha.