Election Night

My friends and I are big dorks. It was my friend Jordan's birthday yesterday, and so a bunch of us went out to Toronado for some beer and sausages from Rosamunde's next door. Always delicious, yes, but the real show of the night as far as I was concerned was a couple of time zones away and brought to me by my Blackberry. I will not lie, I refreshed the New York Times Indiana primary results about every three minutes, even though it only actually updated maybe every seven minutes. I'd last looked at the county results map around 7pm, and so from then until 9pm all I knew, or guessed, or hoped, was that Lake County hadn't reported yet. I also will not lie, I definitely sang part of "Gary, Indiana" in the middle of a dive bar. My friend Sarah and I had each pledged to ourselves and our comrades to not go on from Toronado to the second destination of the night, the Page, primarily because I wanted to sleep and she wanted to avoid repeating any drunken decisions similar to those she made at our Cinco de Mayo celebration Monday, but with 89% of the votes in, I couldn't in good conscience go home and miss the chance to toast a victory for Barack Obama after a night of inching margins and percentages. So we went on, with a second pledge to only have one beer at the second bar, and were rewarded with CNN broadcast on the TV. (More bars should really show political results. Toronado was showing NBA playoffs, whatever that is all about.) We all had our smartphones in hand -- I had two phones, one refreshing the Times in case they got the results before CNN, and one texting my dad -- and we clinked glasses about six times.

And, ok, we were obviously going for a long shot, but I had also expected, or worried, that Clinton was going to hit like 8% minimum victory in Indiana, the polls not being promising, and also history not exactly being encouraging what with "close" races in PA and OH turning out only in her favor. So a loss for Obama by barely 20,000 votes is fucking A-OK for me, and I feel like all this is finally happening. I can't really say anything because I feel like I'd jinx it, but I am feeling good today.

Finally, overall I realized that I may need to be sedated on Election Night this November, which happens to also occur on my birthday. I was wired from the moment returns started filing in from Indiana until 11pm last night, and that's despite the two and a half beers I had in that time. I seriously have no idea how I'll manage to keep my heart rate at any reasonable level when what's at stake is not just one state, but the chance to finally get a Democrat back in the White House. Seriously, even now I'm freaking out about it.