Shannon Love

So I woke up this morning, slid out from between my silken sheets, shooed away the gaggle of maids and valets, took the express elevator to the breakfast nook and flipped on my 2048 inch plasma display to find out that the !@#$% election still isn’t officially over!

Arrrrr-freaking-gggggh!

I swear to the elder gods that if Kerry calls out the lawyers I will find the nearest registered Democrat and give their shin bone a sound thrashing! I am so sick of this already!

Okay, breath, calm, go to my happy place.

Ahhhhh! John Kerry, George Bush and hoard of lawyers are in my happy place!

Wait, there’s no express elevator to the breakfast nook! I must be dreaming! I just need to wake up and find out that it’s all over.

Just need to wake up, wake up, wake up…

So it looks like Bush is going to win by 270-something. I’m going to bed and run the risk that I will wake up and find out that Kerry won Ohio.

I got to thinking. Kerry has been aiming for the Presidency since he was 16. Some claim he has built his entire life around his pursuit of the office. If that is true, will he go all weird like Gore did when he loses? Will he show up in January with 30 extra pounds and a beard? Will he be found wandering drunk in a small village in France wearing nothing but a drooping speedo?

Perhaps I should set up a Kerry Weird Watch trade on Intrade.

The suspense is killing me!

Jeez, I never stress over election but this time I just had to make a prediction in public and now my fragile, fragile ego is bound up in the results!

Could be worse. I could be a soldier in Iraq wondering if the insurgents and terrorist will go ape-shit the the moment they hear Kerry won.

Yeah, that kind of puts it all in perspective.

Bismark famously said that people who like legislation and sausage should never watch either being made. I am reminded of this as I watch all the lawyers, paranoid poll-watchers and others ranting around today.

Democracy is such an ugly business and American democracy more than all the others. It’s hard to think of a more over-the-top, hysterics prone decision-making system. If most democracy is like watching sausage making then American democracy is like watching someone make sausage while the pig is still in a position to register its objections.

And yet it works.

Most reports show possibly record setting voter turnout for today’s election. Question is, whom does that help? Historically, high voter turnout helps Democrats — Republicans usually max out their voter participation rates in nearly every election, so the high turnout is thought to be driven by episodic Democratic voters. If true, this would help Kerry. I wonder, though, if this pattern is still true or whether it holds for this particular election. There seems to be a lot of energy all over, this year, and a lot of people who will vote for Bush because of the war that normally wouldn’t even think about voting Republican.

Matt Welch on Hit and Run has Zogby calling the Electoral college for Kerry but has Bush winning the popular vote. I would like to see that just to watch Democrats suddenly fall in love with the electoral college and to watch Republicans bemoan the lack of one-man-one-vote.