LDWorldWide

Surfette aka Lisa/Palo Alto
7:00 p.m. PSTTHE BIG O
…er, make that Senator O.
Victorious Sen. Barack Obama, (D-Ill.), third African American senator since Reconstruction, is thanking supporters from his blog. (What do I mean? That’s reporter-speak for it’s been really @#*$%!! long since a black person was called Senator. Slate’s Explainer explains.)
Meanwhile, the question of which party controls the Senate remains open as other votes pour in and get counted.

Sarah/Chapel Hill
10:02 p.m. EST
I’m trying to drink enough to blot out the reality, but just can’t seem to choke down the beer. Dammit. And I really don’t feel like eating now. Call Evan - he’s at someone’s house. I tell him I’m too tired and out of it to come over. He sounds depressed. Call Mom - she sounds like she’s in a black despair.

Lisa aka Surfette/Palo Alto
7:12 p.m. PST
Oh please. Oh please oh please. I cannot believe what the LA Times and others are reporting about Ohio!!!!!!!!!!!!

Surfette aka Lisa/Palo Alto
7:15 p.m. PST
KERRY IN OH, PA - BUSH IN FLA?
The Los Angeles Times reports:

Partial returns showed Kerry with a narrow lead in Ohio, a wider margin in Pennsylvania, and trailing in Florida. All drew the heaviest attention from the candidates in the closing days of the campaign, and each has been seen as among the most crucial in assembling the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

Free registration required except for the LA Times’ homepage, which is devoted to a great, big, updating electoral map.

Laura/San Francisco
7:30 p.m. PST
The low point of my day is turning on the TV to see a sea of red throughout the middle and bottom. We watch John Stewart interview William Weld and Al Sharpton.

Lisa aka Surfette/Palo Alto
7:35 p.m. PST
Oh, no. Is there any hope that late election returns can overcome the gay marriage ban on the ballot? Friends of ours, attorneys, spent the day in polling place mosh pits as observing attorneys and they say the lines are still snaking out of downtown, urban (read: loyal black Democrats the party is so lucky to still have despite all their screwups) polling places. How close can it be? How far can the conspiracy theorists push it?

Chris has taken over my computer. He toggles back and forth between various blogs and the LA Times homepage, which has done a fantastic job with a huge map graphic.

I feel numb.

Surfette aka Lisa/Palo Alto
7:36 p.m. PST
WHOOPS–MAKE THAT BUSH IN OH?
The LA Times updates.

“Partial returns showed Bush with a narrow lead in Ohio — and polls were being held open late to accommodate long lines of voters; Kerry with a wider margin in Pennsylvania, and Bush leading in Florida, although there were no significant returns from heavily Democratic precincts in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.”
Surfette white knuckles her beer…her sources say there are lines in Columbus, home of Ohio State.

Kendra/Norwalk
11:00 p.m. EST
Time for bed. I have been watching news coverage on television and computer all evening and am dismayed again at the polarization of our country. I can’t believe 11 states voted to ban gay marriage, and even civil unions in some cases. I wonder, in this day and age, who really believes that sexual orientation can be changed? And if you understand that sexual orientation cannot be changed, how can you say to thousands of people that they don’t have the right to share their lives with someone? That’s just mean.

Jill/Olney
11:10 p.m. EST
Ahhhhhhh. I’m more tired than interested, but I can’t turn it off.

Lisa aka Surfette/Palo Alto
8:15 p.m. PST
No, I feel sick. The margins just hang. Ohio and Nevada and New Mexico and Florida just sit there, votes slowly rolling in, balancing on the edge.

All I can picture is Bill Frist as Vice President when Cheney’s heart has had enough, and tanks rolling into Iran, as teenage girls all over Montana worry about the morning-after pill they can’t buy and the abortions they cannot get. Not to mention [Jeb] Bush/Santorum ’08. I’m on my third beer but I think I need morphine.

I’m putting Jake to bed now.

Linda/Troy
11:50 p.m. EST
I hate this. There are so many red states - once again, I am reduced to coloring in the lines with a primary color. My friend Blair calls from the Human Rights Campaign party in Washington, D.C. and says it is going to be a long night. Florida is Bush country (duh); Ohio — because only Republican counties have been counted — is projected to be Kerry; and Iowa and Wisconsin are in the balance. (At least I think that’s what she said. I’ve had about 20 glasses of wine and enough carbs to kill Dr. Atkins if he weren’t dead, so I am not quite sure, but it was the inside scoop from the nation’s capital).

I just can’t believe it. I just thought there would be a sea of blue. What planet am I on? Why do I have friends who voted for Bush (even lesbians, and even after I explained that Bush and bush aren’t the same thing…)? Why can’t anyone see how creepy GWB’s religious beliefs are and how he is slowly sewing them into the fabric of our nation? Why can’t even my “intelligent” friends see the difference between the way John K. approaches gay marriage and the way GWB does? How will I have lunch with my Catholic, Republican father on Thursday without crying? He’ll patronize me and tell me why George Bush is the answer to my future (since I haven’t married a rich, white man).

How will I ever determine if Tom Brokaw has a speech impediment or if he is just drunk? How will I get a job on the Daily Show or fundraising for HRC? How will I get up in the morning to another four years of him?

I am so bummed out. I just don’t get it. Sometimes I think the Electoral College does blow. But I do understand why it works, I guess.

Louise/Olympia
9:00 p.m. PST
Man, this is so boring. Brokaw sounds drunk. Seems that no states have changed from how they voted four years ago, and Karen Hughes is so smug, I could punch her in the nose. Where’s that Halloween candy?

Not clear what is happening with Christine and Dino. But for someone who was supposed to cakewalk, she’s not doing so well.

Lisa aka Surfette/Palo Alto
9:15 p.m. PST
We surf and sigh and surf and sigh again. Chris is shrugging his shoulders like the Libertarian he is—hey, if people want to hurt themselves, all we can do is protect ourselves, is his opinion.

But I’m just plain horrorstruck. And it’s hitting me – if the Democratic Party cannot beat George W. Bush, who can it beat? This president was primed for defeat. Plummeting approval ratings. Abused prisoners. Abandoned soldiers. A laughter inducing deficit, not to mention O’Neill’s and Clarke’s abdications. I mean, Jake’s school feels vulnerable enough that they’ve printed and distributed emergency plans in case of a terrorist attack. And people voted for this guy? It IS Bush’s to lose, not Kerry’s to win, but oh how I wish Kerry had itemized a game plan rather than talking tough and asking us to trust him.

Americans don’t trust anymore—it’s been headlined and live-televisioned out of us. We just want to know what we’re getting. That’s why McDonald’s is a chain even though its cholesterol and fat content will kill us long before mad-cow disease will kick in. I’m so pissed off at the mall-hunting, bourgeoisie I see around me in Silicon Valley. Perhaps if our needs were overtly threatened in any way, perhaps if we had any clue as the loss of personal liberty and international reputation the United States and its citizens have experienced over the past year, we as a people would not stand for this.

It’s too bad. I was hoping to visit Indonesia and Iranian ruins before I died. Doesn’t look likely now. And I can blame American women, the majority of voters, who appear poised to make another massive and idiotic mistake.

Ann-Marie/Boston
12:00 a.m. EST, November 3
Matt comes to bed. I think he is saying that there is still no winner.

Sarah/Chapel Hill
12:30 a.m. EST
Apparently, we will never know who won Ohio. Or, Bush won. Unclear. I stumble to bed.

Alice/New York
12:35 p.m. EST
moms watching the race
its close
i go to the computer to type this tiredly
and in the time its taken me to write it
looks like bush has won

ok im going to bed
this time ill leave the cel phone in the table

Surfette aka Lisa/Palo Alto
9:48 p.m. PST
FOUR MORE YEARS: GOP CONGRESS
Quad-City Times Newspaper Online reports,

“Incoming Sens. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Richard Burr of North Carolina were all outspoken conservatives in the House. Their presence in the Senate could help dissolve that chamber’s reluctance to adopt House bills on abortion and gay marriage and making Bush administration tax cuts permanent…”

Sarah/Chapel Hill
12:50 a.m. EST
Phone rings. It’s Nicole. She’s on her way home, wants to know if she should pick me up. Hmmmm. I tell her I’m on the verge of passing out.

Surfette aka Lisa/Palo Alto
9:51 p.m. PST
GROUND ZERO: CUYAHOGA COUNTY.
Here.

Update: Given how late people were voting, I think it’ll be hours, at least, before we know…

Linda/Troy
1:10 a.m. EST
Ohio remains the big mystery with its provisional ballots — I don’t even know what they are, but I gather they have something to do with whether a person is registered to vote. The last of my party guests has departed in a fog of Sam Adams. We scribbled on the map, called Blair in DC for “early” projections, and sighed repeatedly and loudly at the red stripe of states that cuts through the center of our country…and expands outwards in ways I try to forget. Remind me to always live in a blue state.

What’s going on with Dan Rather — he said something along the lines of “you can bet your double wide on that…” tonight. Hey, I lived in a double wide; it’s no palace, but there is something to be said for getting from the bedroom to the bathroom to the kitchen in three steps. At one point he also said, “Knock, knock, knock, can you hear that? That’s George Bush knocking on the door of the presidency again.” or something like that. It was so odd. I sort of felt like he is just so damn old, he can say whatever he feels like. Maybe all journalists say stuff like that.

I know there is still hope. But I am irritated at how silly I was to think that it might have been easier than this - it’s like when kids think they can feign illness to get their parents back together again. DUH. It’s not that easy, and when they realize how goofy their hopes were, they feel humiliated. I am still hopeful, but doubt is creeping in — inflated by fatigue and wine, of course. Bush has the lead in Ohio at the moment — and moments ago took Alaska.

I have to go to bed now. My eyes are like little burning coals. And you can add that I was teary a little while ago to our journal. Everyone left, and I was sitting in the weird glow of the TV and the dimmer light in my parlor, and I just felt so alone and stuck with GWB.

Lisa aka Surfette/Palo Alto
10:15 p.m. PST
Talked to my brother. We’re both so depressed we cannot form sentences. Hearing the shock in his voice is painful.

He may be the next candidate I can believe in. I better tell him. In the morning. Now I have to sleep on how to break the likely news to Jake. …

Louise/Olympia
10:20 p.m. PST
Bush is revving up his motorcade – but, but – has he won? Okay, so I don’t feel so detached anymore. I feel sorry for Kerry. Once, Walter Mondale came to speak at my law school, and he could not have been more wise and delightful, but he also seemed a little sad. That was 1989, five years after he lost to Reagan. Anyway, I hope Kerry is permitted to proceed into posterity with some dignity.

Can’t bear Tim Russert any more. Still can’t find Jim Leher. On CBS, everyone looks so old, except for Leslie Stahl’s stupendous wig. No news on the Governor’s race. Still sleepy from last night’s indulgences. Going to bed.

Sarah/Chapel Hill
1:20 a.m. EST
Phone rings. I’m not asleep and leap out of bed. Could it be someone calling to tell me that Kerry, against expectations, won? Nope. It’s a friend from law school – public defender, living in San Francisco with his wife, toddler daughter and infant son. Like me, is originally from the Midwest. Still professes to be optimistic . . . but then tells me that Ohio was just called for Bush. Deflated, he hangs up.

Emily/Boulder
11:30 p.m. MT
I’m so tired I have to go to bed, although I feel like I should stay up and watch the horror of the election, which is now what I had feared most – a close race that Bush was certain to win. It’s ghastly and I feel much sadder and more despondent than I’d imagined. I also feel guilty, because I know Eric will stay up and watch and that he feels the same way I do, and I want to support him.

Jill/Olney
2:00 a.m. EST
Thank Heaven I fell asleep and was not watching them still not wanting to commit to Ohio. At this point all the stations are just going over and over on this . . it could get closer . . . we could have recounts . . we might not know for days. The TV goes off.

Kendra/Norwalk
2:30 a.m. EST
Husband calls from Nova Scotia, rousing me from REM sleep, to tell me that Kerry is going to lose the election. I hang up on him.

Sarah/Chapel Hill
3:00 a.m. EST
Sleep fitfully, get up and check cnn.com. No one has declared the President the winner, but it looks inevitable. I think, “What could possibly make it worthwhile to get up tomorrow?” It hits me – I can take a long drive through the red zone, to Atlanta where my brother, sister-in-law, nephew and ten-day-old niece all live. What a happy thought! I can fall asleep now.