What tha? I go out to dinner for a few hours and when I come back, Bush has won Florida AND Ohio! Is this for real?

Urgh, and then I was listening to NPR and they were interviewing this voter and the guy couldn’t decide between Bush and Kerry… so he left his ballot blank! Sometimes I think we live in a nation of idiots.

-Jean Chen
San Francisco, CA

… “you” being all of my friends who said we would not know who the president was tonight.

“We’ve waited four years for this victory. We can wait one more night.”– Vice Prez candidate John Edwards, doing the this-is-not-a-concession-speech.

The dealie is that Ohio will decide the election. As said before.

We’ll see.

Went first to a restaurant in downtown Oakland; had some snacks with friends who are reporters and politicial organizers. One of them is Jessica Tully, who works on marrying musicians with political causes. We rolled to Barbara Boxer’s election-night party just in time to see her declared the winner in her Senate re-election race.

Then ended up at a loft with a beautiful view of the bay bridge, where I basically got the news that Kerry lost.

Ended up in a conversation about hijacking the Democratic Party… yes, the party that couldn’t bother to win even facing a President who botched the economy, national security, and the separation of church and state.

Speaking as a journalist–viva four more years. This will be one big friggin’ rollercoaster. Hear the giant sucking sound as no-bid contracts fatten Halliburton’s wallet. Just watch the Supreme Court abolish abortion rights (Rehnquist is already ill; there will be a slew of new appointees) and there be hospital ships in international waters, women helicoptered from shore…. and, as my friend Ben said, thoughts like, “We’ve had this experiment of black people voting in America for sixty years…. and we’ve had just about enough of that.”

The 2008 election starts tomorrow. And it’s really about values. I wrote an article on PopandPolitics called “It’s the God. Stupid?” about the fact that most Americans saw values as the center of their decisions. The Democratic Party has ceded the language of values to the Republicans, and it cannot continue to exist and leave that void.

==========

By the way, here’s the current electoral college map.

So, I’ve been traipsing around the Bay Area this election night. Hard to believe it’s only 10pm Pacific…. feels much later.

Let me just quote an email I sent three weeks ago:

“Whither Ohio goes the nation.”

It’s not done yet, but it’s close to done. All, for Kerry, hinges on the outcome in Ohio, a state which has rustbelt job-loss districts; corporate hubs; Christian right; and gay and lesbian communities. In other words, its demographics are as mixed as Florida’s.

============== FOOK ===================

An inside source just told me Kerry lost Ohio, which means Kerry lost.

More soon.

======== UN-FOOK =========== OR SOMETHING ======

okay…. fox is calling Ohio a win for Bush, but CNN is calling it as “too close to call” because there are 600,000 pending ballots (absentee and provisional); and now Iowa is back in play b/c of voting irregularities.

So who the hell knows?

I just finished a calling drive on behalf of Move On PAC at La Palapa restaurant here in NYC. The turnout was impressive, with no less than 100 people taking turns making phone calls to residents in Florida, encouraging them to vote. What was most interesting about the people who came to the volunteer effort was their economic standing and their attitude towards the process of encouraging others to vote (and in this case for Kerry). First, all of the volunteers were caucasian, and either students or white collar employees (the rest were retired or artists/musicians). There were no minorities (aside from me) in sight. Having spent over 3 hours at the restaurant, I became acutely aware of the situation after about hour 2. Now the reasons are numerous for this divide, and a living wage is one place to start, but the realization that New York City, the land of the melting pot, could not spur a sense of comraderie during this election was disheartening – coming from a teacher who teaches in one of the worst urban public schools in the city.
Secondly, I met or interacted with some of the strangest volunteers while participating in the effort. Most notably was a fourteen year old boy who sat next to his mother (an older woman who yelled at those on the other line as if she were in the subway). The boy would call a perspective voter and berate them about Bush’s policies. Having been hung up on once, he would call again and proclaim, “How dare you hang up on me.” not to be outdone after being hung up on a second time, he would call a third time and hang up as the receiver picked up the phone. Now I am all for encouraging children to become involved in the process of politics, and I would certainly allow a child to attempt to make two phone calls and “fail.” But when does the parent step in and explain to the child the proper procedure in which to make these phone calls. Like mother like son I guess.

On a brighter note, of those who came the mood was cautious but optimistic and it was nice to interact with others during the election of my lifetime.