Thank you. I'm done for the night and am turning the results phase over to Joe and all of the extraordinary co-bloggers here at TMV. I'll be back with my take on the final results tomorrow morning.

Godspeed, Shaun

You bring up a good point. Saying you will leave if your candidate doesn't win is not exclusively a Left reaction. Anyone, from either side, who want to keep the whole damn 'he isn't MY President' meme going, well, I wish all of them would leave. You can oppose a President, think him a complete moron (or a sexual predator), dislike hos policies, etc., but we, as a people, HAVE to get back to respecting the office of the Presidency, as compared to the occupant. And that means some modicum of decorum and deference is due the person as well.

I don't agree with most of Obama's positions, and think he does have an agenda in mind that is WAY more radical than he ran on. But if indeed he is elected, as seems likely, he is MY President. Because I am an American, and the will of the voters carries the day.

writinghannah, indeed a vast amount of effort, time, and money went into this whole campaign, and perhaps after tonight one side will have nothing to show for it. But it doesn't much do the country any good if we set out a record turnout tonight and then everybody just goes back to business as usual tomorrow and just stops paying attention until they are called upon again in 4 years. I'm inclined to believe that Obama will get a mandate; I would hope that his supporters hold him to account and demand him to act on many of the things he ran on. You better believe that the Repubs and talk radio will. But I think anyone threatening to leave the country if he isn't elected can go ahead and get a jump start now. The same can be said for those threatening to leave if Obama wins. The country would be much better off without a bunch of sore losers sulking because their candidate didn't win. After all, it is about the country right? Do your part and do what you can to make it better.

I am just sick of whiny little people like you that just cannot accept losing. I for one would prefer you to take your immature, self-centered, melodramatic little ass and leave if Obama does lose.

* * *

Here in Detroit metro, turnout (the _real_ story of this election) has been extra-high, as has been true elsewhere. It's not just young, naive, duped Obamaniacs. The real question will be, how large will the Dems' victory be? As for the turnout, once more, that is the _real_ issue this year. It eclipses even 1960, the JFK election year the lesser-endowed are currently gushing about. It's not just the easily-fooled young voters this time. As I had suspected (without engaging in hyperbole, or worse, fiction, unlike others), it's an augmentation or amplification of 1996.

Observations today:

Bill Press (“ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” “ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh” “O'pa'ma'”) stupid, though he did have some good guests once more on his show.

Stephanie Miller was stupid as usual (with what are marginally passed as “males” on her show behaving as typical FM morning-show I-think-I'm-a-comedian idiocy in Extra Excess).

The more-conservative AM radio show host stand-in asked properly if there would be a relief from the disgusting overt bias shown by the Obama-campaigning media today. In my view, there has been. They don't seem worried.

Rush Limbaugh did okay but was struggling. Bad news is bad news, after all.

Shaun Hannity tried being halfway sane, pressing the issue of close races where they were (still) close.

Ed Schulz (or Schultz, whatever), was great. “We've been waiting FOUR YEARS for this! Heh, heh, heh, heh [cackling the way Michael Savage does, Scrooge-like when discussing the other side's misfortunes]“.

I don't know how Rachel Maddow will do (she's typically illogical and over-emotional like the other lefties) but her career and MSNBC's betting on being more-left than the rest of the liberal media is certainly paying off tonight.

I could add something related to the lunatic far-left fringe and Professional Whiners about Iraq, given the likely outcome tonight.

*** Capital Under Foreign Occupation And Control ***

*** Nation To Be Subject To Alien Occupation Plans ***

To echo Ricorun…. No one asked me about weapons. There are benefits to living in an overwhelmingly blue area.

I am nervous. And not night-before-the-swim-test nervous or even night-you-lose-your-virginity nervous, it's a low rumbling primal panic which I can only liken to Star Wars panic. Disney panic. The edge-of-your-seat-terror that makes you wonder if Skywalker's doomed after he refuses to join Darth Vader and drops down into the abyss, if the wicked octopus or grand vizier or steroid-pumping-village-misogynist is going to wed/kill/skin the dashing prince and then evil people in dark funny costumes are going to take over the world… if it wasn't a movie of course.

And tonight it's not. It's not a movie and yet I feel like Obama might as well be wearing an American flag cape while a decaying McCain, in a high-tech robotic spider wheelchair wearing an eyepatch and stroking an evil cat, gives orders to a sexy scheming Palin who marches back and forth through their sub-terranian campaign lair in four inch thigh-highs and full-body black leather catsuit bossing around the evangelical ants with a loooooong whip… umm… is this just me?

Anyway, the point is that things feel weird folks. I have friends who have peed in waterbottles to keep from interrupting a Halo-playing marathon who got off their asses/couches to volunteer for the Obama campaign not once, but many times. Friends so cheap their body content is at least 1/3 Ramen Noodle who donated a good deal of their hard-earned cash to the campaign. People have registered to vote in record numbers, and yet, something just doesn't feel right. I think we should stop congratulating ourselves for just voting. To vote is a privilege which people have died for, and I think there's a whole lot more to be done for the country than to simply help win an election every 4 years.

Hundreds of millions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of man-hours spent on both sides by good-intentioned people who want to make a difference in an historic election, so many resources and voices and energies devoted to a single day. After tomorrow, half of that is going to have been a waste. And I can't help but wonder what could have happened if all that muscle had been put towards something else, and what will happen to its momentum after the election has come and gone. Shouldn't we be donating our money to good causes whenever we can? Helping people who don't have? Dedicating some of our time to contribute to making the country which provides for us a better place? Of course a power shift is a hugely significant step on the path to great reform, but worrying about this election has been a wakeup call for me:

Even if Obama wins, we have not “won.” This isn't a movie and we can't toss every greedy lobbyist oil fatcat bigot down a reactor shaft. I think if we dedicate ourselves to the ongoing welfare of the country as much as we have to the outcome of this election, we'll have a much better shot at coming closer to the overwhelming good the liberals hope Obama will usher in, but which no mere mortal could fully realize alone.

Which brings me to the other side. I've heard a lot of people claim that if McCain wins, they're leaving. I heard the same thing about Bush's reelection, and his unelection before that, and nobody seems to be leaving. And that's fine. Because as much as I complain about certain political happenings, atrocities, etc., I really do like it here and I suspect most other people do too. We have New York and Hollywood, purple mountain's majesty and sea to shining sea, we created jazz and country music and baseball and cars and lightbulbs and computers and that movie with hundreds of animated singing Chihuahuas! I mean who among the shivering Plymouth pilgrims ever imagined ordering hundreds of animated singing chihuahuas onto a magical box from an invisible information superweb?

The point being, if things don't turn out the way I want tomorrow, I feel compelled, as a college-graduated adultish-type-person, to take a stand. And if I'm going to leave I'm going to leave. But if I'm going to stay I'm not going to sit around whining like I have for the past 8 years. It's like when I don't clean my room because it's dirty and then I blame the dirt. So in my very indecisive way, before you and your screen, I'm declaring my intention to make some kind of stand in the event of -(Ican'tevensayit)-, and encouraging you to consider making one too…

Jump the ship or grab a bucket?
-Sigh-
Wasn't everything so much easier back when the worst possible affront to your values was a PB&J sandwich cut diagonally with crust?

Anyways, I guess what I'm saying is that if we're going to stay on board, we should probably be generous with our time and resources when times are tough even more than when the hero saves the day. Because what if he doesn't? And what if he can't? If we're serious about real change, election day should only be the beginning of “Yes we can,” not the end.

Best,
Hannah Friedman
http://www.writinghannah.blogspot.com

Seriously though, my current neighborhood makes it awfully easy to vote. I’ve lived here since 2001, and up until this year’s primary there never was a line. We’d just walk up, check in, and proceed onto a voting booth. Even “the girls” (my dogs Sally and Sirocco). And no one ever bothered to ask us about weapons. Okay, the girls didn't have pockets, but I did. There are benefits to living in an overwhelmingly red area.

Even during the primaries, when I did have to stand in line (dammit), the reason turned out to be the little old lady checking off names for one of the parties. She had an attention span of about 5 sec, and had trouble with the alphabet past the first letter of your last name. Once we got past her we pretty much had our pick of booths. Today there actually was a line — a legitimate one. It wasn’t because of a bitty bottleneck, the place was actually busy! So it would appear that turnout is definitely up this year, even here in our bright red neighborhood of deep blue CA.

Oh, and by the way, the girls had to cast provisional ballots this time around. Lol!

I plan to go a little later this morning, hopefully (sometime around 10:30 or so). If not, I'll probably wait until the evening. Our polling location is an elementary school, so I figure it's best to stay away during drop-off and pick-up times, lunch time, and immediately after work….we'll see, I have a feeling it's going to be busy no matter what time of day I go.