What A Day, What A Night

After voting in the sketchiest of polling places ever -- a smokey, warm, humid suite on the 3rd floor of the Holiday Inn (not a first-floor conference room, an actual hotel room complete with kitchen and toilet) -- I settled in for an evening of intense election coverage. For the first time in my voting life, I have sided with the winners. And by winners, I mean BLOW-OUT WINNERS! As midnight turned into 1:00 AM, I found myself giddy and grinning. I couldn't stop thinking about a-hole Republican agendas, evangelical nutcases, inept lawmakers, backwards Southerners, stifling conservatism, flawed and paper trail-less voting machines, false pretenses, pro-lifers, and uneducated xenophobes with cultural arrogance but very little culture. These phantoms have plagued my entire politically-aware life since the 1994 midterm elections (remember Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America?"), and the visceral glee that welled up inside of me while watching them fall was amazingly blissful and satisfying. Add to that the overdue dismissal of Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush's rare acknowledgement of responsibility for his party's failures (he even called the election "a thumping") and all of a sudden I'm starting to view our great nation with a little more pride and a little less disbelief. Finally -- 6 long years too late -- the American electorate gave Bush and his Republicans exactly what they deserved: a resounding "Fuck You!"