Late-night November 2nd/3rd:

Welcome To The Pre-Occupation

Is four, maybe four and a half, hours of sleep enough? I'm thinking I might need to go back to bed for a bit. That might not be enough rest for living in the United States of WHAT THE FUCK?!

It's all but done. Kerry will call it by this evening. The numbers just aren't there.

Oregon liberals did their part, though, didn't they? I'm trying not to think of the national reprecutions and look instead at the nice work in Oregon. It's clear that we have a whole lot of work yet in front of us ...

They have 53 Senate seats, now that Daschle's out, and a gain in House seats. Bush is President again. They handed us our head on a platter, my friends.

Senseless war in Iraq? Crappy economy? Candidate who can't string two sentences together coherently? No health care? No problem.

Karl Rove is truly an evil genius.

It’s morning in my house. And, yes, it’s morning in America. (Cue cheesy Reagan commercial.)

Last night, I left an election party and told a friend I was “off to find a dull razor blade.” She replied, “well, at least find a sharp one.” That cheered me up a bit.

Despite our national disaster, our country’s collective insanity, a Congress further to the right, a vision of 20 to 40 years of awful Supreme Court decisions, two awful ballot initiatives passing – despite all that, it’s a time for hope. A time to hope that we discover a time machine and can fix all this.

No, actually it’s a time to wake up and be more playful. To have our moods less intertwined with the evil being done in the world, less tied to the news cycle, and more intertwined with the people around us.

It’s a time to bring joy into our everyday lives. We should be cooking good foods, playing fun games, listening to each other’s struggles and triumphs, having great sex, following our dreams, dancing our dances, learning new things and enjoying good laughs.

That’s a challenge for many of us who have tied our identities and emotions directly to what happens in the world. We’re the folks who make the news and listen to it – we’re the ones who file the lawsuits, who organize the grassroots, who educate the ignorant, who lobby the bills, and who fight the election battles. That’s excellent, very important work. But when the day is done, we’ve got to have something else in our lives. Something that we, not some ignorant voters and bad people, control.

So, yes, grieve yesterday’s losses – and celebrate yesterday’s victories. Yes, there were many victories. Oregon’s solidly democratic win for Kerry and others. The first Oregon state Senate in over a decade (solidly so), and improvement in the state House. A Democratic Senator elected in Colorado. Bike/Walk PAC sweeping our candidate races, including Robert Liberty who took out an incumbent. And, hallelujah, mobile homes out of the Oregon Constitution.

But don’t take too long obsessing over it. Don’t second-guess all the failed campaigns and pour over weird analyses and numbers and what-ifs. If we give over our happiness to the numbers, we’ve lost. We have plenty of crazy work in figuring out how to throw a wrench in the machine, and I'm confident we’ll rise to the occasion. When sanity is outlawed, only the outlaws will be sane. It’s a time to keep our sanity (terrorists hate sanity).

Say it with me: let’s dance, flirt, make cookies, sing, play games, hug, make mad passionate love, and follow our dreams. Together, we can be happy.

Great post, Evan.

But I'd add one thing - well, three things, but they're related:

• Read your Palast. Every. last. word.

• Make it your personal mission to know as much about election law as Tim Mooney. I plan on studying for and taking my LSAT, just to determine if I possess the faculties required of a lawyer.

• Give an old lady a break; sign up to be an election official.

Because nationally, this election was stolen, just as sure as the 2000 one. Florida, Ohio, New Mexico.

• Diebold machines.

• Republican suppression activities, not as much designed to throw out votes (although, in the rare cases they succeed, it has that effect), but to slow down the line.

• 6 hour waits in Florida. 9 hour waits in Ohio. Ask yourself why those people waited so long, as premature call after premature call filtered down to the line over radio and television: to keep the status quo?

Even in Democratically-controlled New Mexico, the non-Catholic Hispanic vote is being suppressed at registration, at the county level. There was a public demonstration in Las Cruces - lowriders cruising the boulevard, just for the right to register.

Thousands and thousands, denied. Just like Mississippi - circa 1950.

People have the right to vote, and in some cases will wait as long as it takes to do so, but they also have things to do. If you've got to pick your kid up from daycare, you can't stay in line.

I doubt Ohio Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell is going to give up Bush's lead in the provisional ballots, but that's not where the battleground is. We've got to put some people in jail, and beat them until they talk.

They cheated - AGAIN.

Don't let it slide, even if the elections run smoothly and fairly here. What happens over there matters over here.

Be vigilant.

Looks like the fat lady is about to sing. It's over guys.

I'm not going to cite the laundry list; you can go to Palast just as easily as I can, 'Prof.'

I can program Access to siphon 300,000 votes off a supposedly-secure "voting machine" as easily as I could a million, or even a billion. You could, too. How big do you want the number? If you've got the hack, it's just typing.

But riddle me these: why is it that Ohio and Florida are the only states to not match the exit polling? Why'd the networks make the call before 1.6 MILLION outstanding votes came in from Florida, and specifically, West Palm Beach and Miami-Dade? Why'd Betty Castor not concede when the networks made the call? Think she knows something about her own state that you don't?

If that popular vote margin is such a gold standard, true statement of the American electorate, Republicans ought to be able to run and win on a straight, honest race without the racist intimidation of African-American voters, without the likes of Sproul and his crew of thugs, without 'Ben Over' denying D registrations in the South Park Blocks, etc., ad infinitum. And I'd even spot them their slanderous ads and the electronic highway signs on the I that distract drivers. But they lost here, big, with ALL that stuff - why? Because Hardy Myers and Bill Bradbury were on the case, and Ds were vigilant.

Contrast Bradbury and our system with Glenda Hood and theirs. Tell me what YOU think is more easily rigged.

Nevermind for a minute that there's not a documented, verifiable instance of D voter fraud since 1964, we're the party of inclusion. We don't pull that crap because we don't have to. We turn out under a fair system, we win. We always have, and we always will.

I'm sure Officer Johnny Wingnut of Jax PD would rather be at home having a Coors than door-knocking the black neighborhoods, asking for IDs, and telling citizens a bunch of bullshit about when they can or when they can't vote.

It's extra work from his point of view, it's flat out wrong from anybody else's, and in a democracy with laws, he should be stood down and taken into custody for committing a CRIME.

That's your margin, Prof. CRIMES.

Remind you of anybody?

If you want to continue to live in a fantasy world, you won't be much help in pushing forward a progressive agenda.

The Prof's nailed this one. You must know your enemies, and I have news: if we think our enemies are rural America, we better get real used to losing. The real enemies are in the GOP--those like Tom DeLay who wish to subvert democracy, like Dubya, who will vamp in costume, look you in the eye, and lie, and like John Ashcroft, who uses his authority as US AG to advance policies antithetical to the spirit and letter of the Constitution.

What we need now is to remember our roots and get back to the people. A little prairie populism, perhaps? Remember what the man said:

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there And that sign said - no tress passin' But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin! Now that side was made for you and me! In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple Near the relief office - I see my people And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin' If this land's still made for you and me. I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts And all around me a voice was sounding This land was made for you and me