Hello, Kossacks!
If I may quote from my election night diary...
I know there's going to be a metric fuckload of these diaries being written tonight, but there are times in life when you just can't hold yourself back.
And if I may continue to quote myself...
And as for me, I feel like a semitruck loaded with pecan pie, porno and whiskey has just jackknifed in front of my house and I'm running around like Templeton the Rat at the county fair in "Charlotte's Web" just soaking it all in.
Follow me over the crest, where I quote someone other than myself.
Rush Limbaugh, not long ago:
I disagree fervently with the people on our side of the aisle who have caved and who say, "Well, I hope he succeeds. We've got to give him a chance." Why? They didn't give Bush a chance in 2000. Before he was inaugurated the search-and-destroy mission had begun.
I want to say first of all that Rush's thoughts are about as useful as an arm growing out of my asshole, and for one simple reason. He doesn't speak for as many people as he thinks he does.
You see, what my fellow cigar-smoking sexual deviant neglects to mention is that there's loads of conservatives who are rooting for Obama right now! Many of them even voted for him. But even the ones who did not still would like him to succeed. Some things are indeed bigger than politics, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
See, the thing about Rush is that the character he plays on the radio is exactly as evil as he says we liberals are. For years his character has been telling his audience that we've been crouching in our darkened studio apartments praying to Atheismo, non-god of all atheists, that just a few more Americans could die in the desert so that George W. Bush's approval ratings would sink just a bit lower. When New Orleans drowned, according to Rush, we cheered! Yay! A city is drowning! This will cost Bush dearly.
But see, this is the world he lives in. It sure as hell ain't our world. He dreams that we're as evil as he is.
As the President of the United States said today (yes, I know it's not actually correct to capitalize "president" that way, but today I'm breaking a rule):
What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply
The ground has shifted underneath our entire political debate. Why? Because Americans voted for the right person for the right reasons, and now we have the right president for the right time.
Today I sat in an office building in Oklahoma -- a state that gave not a single county to Barack Obama. And even in this reddest of places, people were huddled around a TV set to watch history happen. The lady next to me cried. I cried. I don't know who they voted for. But they were there. And I could feel it in the air -- each of them wants desperately for this man to succeed in the endeavors set before him.
Today was probably the third time in my life I've felt as though I've been witness to history, and the other two times have been tragedies -- a bombing that killed my fellow Oklahomans, and a terror attack that killed my fellow Americans.
I haven't felt this level of goodwill in this country (and indeed the entire world) since the aftermath of Sept. 11, and we all know how Bush squandered and misused this goodwill, twisting, perverting it and fanning it into the flames of war.
Now that Barack Obama has the same kind of unity and enthusiasm behind him, I can think of nothing better than to spend the coming months and years watching it all unfold with my friends here.
When I came back to this site to write to you, I felt the excitement of the uncertain. Today, it's a different kind of excitement.
I've gone through a lot right here on Daily Kos. I became a Democrat for the first time, right here. I owe you guys.
We got here, bracing one another up by the shoulders and encouraging one another with our words. Now comes the real work. And we'll move ahead as we always have -- with eloquent words, important debates, and (I feel most important of all) a sense of humor that is second to nowhere and no one else.
Now, what should we do first? Well, I say we gloat for a few days. Let the tears of the dead-enders, the 22-percenters, the Freepers, wash over you. Taste the salty goodness. Soak your genitals in their sweet, hard-earned sorrow, as is your wont. For once they were so proud.
See you in the comments.
Update: So where's edscan, anyway? I figured he'd be along pretty shortly to knock me off the rec list with his long-awaited announcement?