^{Curled Up In a Ball Drinking Rum - My Election Night}

For days before Election Day, I'd been seeing signs and omens everywhere, but they were meaningless because I could turn them any which way. For example, the Red Sox. Hey, that's Massachusetts ... but damn that Schilling.

On Saturday at the bookstore portion of my supermarket - from which I have never seen anyone ever buy a book, by the way - I notice copies of Unfit Commander, an anti-Bush book, dominating the top of the display. At first I'm pleased by this. A few weeks ago this shelf was split between that book and Unfit for Command the famous anti-Kerry book. A bit later I noticed someone had spread out the anti-Kerry books so they blocked the anti-Bush books. I corrected this problem. Catching sight of this Bush-bashing raises my spirits until I realize the implication: all the anti-Kerry books have been sold.

In the checkout line, I notice this cover of Cosmopolitan featuring Sarah Michelle Gellar in a typical Cosmo pose. The magazine placed a circular blurb near her head, saying "Flip me over for a mouth-watering treat!" Personally, I thought it was unclear whether the invitation was coming from the magazine or Sarah Michelle Gellar. The idea of a Bush victory filled me with so much dread that I couldn't even chuckle.

I spent Election Night itself curled into a ball drinking rum. I'll confess to being both sad and bitter. I'm disturbed by the poor judgement shown by my country. I'm bothered that we weren't able to turn out the worst president of this century, either because we were too scared and thought a vote for him was the way to get the terrorists, or because we were too stupid and thought Saddam still has WMDs and something to do with 9/11, or we were too angry to admit that we made a mistake - in attacking Iraq, in squandering the global good will and our surplus, in allowing Bush to be appointed in the first place.

Although it might be wrong to read too much into this election, we'll almost certainly do it. The media will certainly condemn the Democratic Party for being too liberal, just as it did after the Republican gains of 1994. Really though, how much more centrist can the Democratic Party get? I'm sure there will be a lot of kicking around of John Kerry, but the reality is he didn't change himself from his career in the Senate to the primaries where the Democrats picked him. My vote changed from being anti-Bush to pro-Kerry during the debates. Kerry seemed calm and considered, reasonable and decent. Everything Bush isn't. I don't agree with Kerry on everything, but he's a grown up and we needed one in the White House.

I won't kick Kerry around (even though I did a little of it during the campaign). As miserable a failure as Bush clearly is, there might have been nothing anyone could do. America has never voted out a President during a war. It might be as simple as that. In 1972, the Vietnam War was unpopular with a majority of Americans but Nixon, another retrospectively miserable President, won in a real landslide. Too much has already been made of the fact that Bush is the first to win a majority of the vote since his father in 1988. That has more to do with the three-way races in '92 and '96 and W's own inability to beat Gore. It says very little about Bush, the least popular President re-elected in modern times.

We deserve him. Young people broke for Kerry, but didn't show up in strength. It will be a labor of four years not to turn some bitterness on my fellow citizens who voted for Bush. It is hard for me even to wish Bush on the people who cheer for him. Let your children shoulder the debt, I want to say. You pay for his spending, his nation-building and his no-bid contracts. You lose your overtime, your health insurance, your jobs. You lose your privacy and freedoms. Go ahead, pretend your health savings account will pay for kidney dialysis, you idiot. Send your kid to Iraq...

But that's where it ends. If I wished death on those who disagreed with me, I'd be a Republican. Clearly, there are Americans who don't care about security or jobs or education or health care, as long as a couple of guys aren't allowed to marry two towns over. Clearly, there are people who think that others should die in Iraq because we have to get revenge on Saddam for 9/11. What do you say to such voters?

I'm not entirely sure. I guess I would start with something like, "Hello. I live in America. Once this all bottoms out, you're welcome to come back."