Category Archives: General

The Day After

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What I wrote in my head as I lay in bed at 4:00 this morning:

Half of me wants to scream, half of me wants to cry, and half of me is just numb. That doesn’t make mathematical sense, but it hardly matters in a country that no longer cares about reality.

What a disaster.

Bush won 51 percent of the popular vote, a higher percentage than Clinton ever got. No candidate had broken the 50-percent mark since 1988.

All 11 of the anti-gay-marriage amendments passed, even in Oregon.

Social conservatives Jim DeMint (North Carolina), Tom Coburn (Oklahoma), and John Thune (South Dakota) will now be in the Senate, and probably gay-baiting Mel Martinez (Florida) as well. The Senate will contain 54 Republicans.

Chief Justice Rehnquist is likely dying, so we will soon have Chief Justice Scalia. Moderate Justice O’Connor will probably retire, and liberal Justice Stevens is 84 years old.

The fabled youth vote never showed up. Young people didn’t vote in any greater numbers than last time. As Matt Haughey says, “Fucking stoned slackers. You can never depend on them for anything.”

(Update: Youth turnout actually went up.)

And Bush won the same percentage of gay voters as last time. Absolutely fucking astounding.

Sparky speaks my thoughts.

The Left Coaster writes excellently.

Andrew Sullivan writes about the impact on gays.

I feel reverse schadenfreude. Instead of taking pleasure in others’ pain, I’m taking pain in others’ pleasure. I felt this way in fifth grade, when one of my best friends won both the math and language-arts awards, leaving nothing for me. He was beaming and I was in tears.

I get the message. We’re not wanted here. Fine. I’m ready to secede. Let’s create the Greater Federation of Canada and Former Northeastern United States. It would look something like this. Who’s with me? West Coasters, you can join us too.

Part of me says: We got through the first four years, we can get through the next four.

The other part of me says: Supreme Court. Supreme Court. Supreme Court. That’s 25 years of hell right there.

Last night at around 6:30, before any polls had closed, I turned to Matt, breathed deeply, and said, “Let’s just sit here for a while and appreciate this moment, before any bad news starts coming in.” He looked at me like I was crazy.

What a disaster.

Ground Zero 2004

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I just got to Matt’s apartment. As usual, I walked right past Ground Zero in order to get there. Tonight, I stopped for a moment to look at it.

To look out at Ground Zero on Election Night 2004 — to look out at the place that, for better or worse, defines everything that’s happened to our country in the last four years, on the night when we’re hoping to define what happens to our country in the next four —

— was… wow.

Just… wow.

Election Day

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I spent most of today, from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., working at the Hudson County Administration Building in New Jersey, dealing with emergency absentee ballot applications and registration problems. It’s part of my job to do this every Election Day, but this was my first time doing it for a presidential election, and I was in awe at the long line of people waiting. Most of these people had first gone to their polling places, only to learn that their names weren’t on the registration books as they should have been. They then had to come to the county building and wait on line, at some points for an hour, to get the problem dealt with. Then I (or another person) would walk them down to a judge, who would hear the problem and make a ruling. Then, if the ballot or registration were approved, the voter would have to go back to the original polling location to cast a ballot.

I was inspired that all these people were going through all of these in order to vote.

Later in the day, I went to my own polling place and was disappointed that there was no wait. It wasn’t a peak voting time, but I’d still been hoping for at least a 10-minute wait or something. Instead there was just one person ahead of me. I’d be hoping to feel like part of a crowd.

I’d been feeling so inspired about voting today, but it was all over in a matter of seconds. It’s too bad I didn’t think to bring a camera with me like other people did.

Still — I’ve done my duty. When I see New Jersey’s popular vote tally on TV tonight, I will know that one of those millions of votes belongs to me.

Yeah — it is pretty inspiring, after all.

I’m sleepy, but I’m too edgy to nap. So now I go to Matt’s place to watch the returns.

All that’s left to do is wait.