YEEEAAARRRGGGHHH!!!!!!!!

(With grateful thanks to Howard Dean!!!)

Two years ago today I sat at my desk with my head in my hands and sobbed my heart out. My concerned colleagues asked me what was wrong. "Bush won! He stole the Presidency!" I wept. I could not believe it. It felt like the end of the world. For a few hours the night before I had allowed myself to believe that John Kerry was gonna win and that things were gonna be all right after all. That morning I awoke to the worst news possible.

It's been a long two years. It's been an even longer six years. (Funny, that!)

Last night I stayed up until the wee small hours reading Daily Kos, and endlessly refreshing the CNN election results page for Montana as we waited for the final votes to be counted. The percentage of precincts reporting crept slowly up, and John Tester's lead slipped slowly down, and I got more and more nervous as the night wore on. Finally at 4am I called it a night and went to bed, as it was clear that more recounting needed to be done and it wasn't going to happen for a few hours.

I fully expected to wake up this morning to find that somehow a few thousand votes had miraculously appeared in the Burns pile, and that it was all over.

Hell, I half-expected to wake up and find out that the Dems' majority in the House had disappeared during the night too, and that every Republican's pile of (electronic) votes had somehow increased by just enough to push them over the edge...

I didn't even dare to celebrate last night - I was too scared of hexing it by morning. And I couldn't bring myself to even consider the possibiliy that we might win the Senate, too.

So when I was greeted at work with the words "They've got Montana!!!" I did some pretty enthusiastic Snoopy Happy Dancing round the kitchen - and when I heard the words "...and they fired Rumsfeld!!!" - well let's just say my rebel yell was heard from one end of the office to the other.

And when the news came in this afternoon that they'd called Virginia for Jim Webb and the Dems - my joy knew no bounds. The Snoopy Happy Dance was well in evidence at Shift today, folks!

It's funny being a Kiwi obsessed with American politics. Most Kiwis aren't even very interested in their own politics, so they really don't pay much attention to anyone else's! However, I did notice a few people in the office with a spring in their step today. I've yet to find a Kiwi who's got anything good to say about George W Bush, so I guess I'm not really surprised. It's just that there aren't many people here who are quite as into it as I am.

Here's a nice little Mac geek pic to celebrate the demise of old Rummy - and about bloody time too! You're next, Dick!



realnrh, a blogger on Daily Kos, wrote this comment at some point last night, and I think it pretty much says it all, really:

The scope of victory

• No Democratic Senator lost.
• No Democratic Representative lost.
• No Democratic governor lost.
• No Congressional open seat was lost.
• No Democrat-controlled state Senate was lost.
• No Democrat-controlled state house was lost.
• We won at least nine state senates or houses that were previously under Republican control.
• We won approximately ten percent of the entire set of Republican Senate seats.
• We won more seats in the House of Representatives than the Republicans have held in the entire duration of their 'revolution.'
• We won six governorships.
• We virtually wiped out the remaining Republican presence north of Virginia and east of Indiana, including a spectacular bloodbath in New Hampshire that flipped both chambers in an enormous surprise and took control of every branch of elective office in the state.

New Hampshire went for Kerry and for Lynch. We did our part. Now it's time to add Paul Hodes to that list.

by realnrh on Wed Nov 08, 2006 at 09:27:57 PM NZDT

Awesome. The Big Blue Wave has come rolling in with a vengeance at last!

So I'd like to say a huge THANK YOU:

• to Howard Dean and the DNC for his remarkable 50-state strategy


• to Markos Alberto Moulitsas Zúniga for setting up Daily Kos and giving all us lefty political junkies a place to call home - and to every other Kossak out there on the internets - you rule!!!!!!
  


• to the netroots and the progressive bloggers for digging deep, never giving up, and for helping to make so many of these races winnable


• to the people of America who have finally and resoundingly said "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH" and who have kicked the bums out!!!!!

YEEEAAARRRGGGHHH!!!!!!!!

And finally, here's a salute to Freedom - George Michael vs George W Bush - by mgarthoff and entitled King George II OR How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love W.

Turn up the sound and enjoy!



Technorati tags: Democrats, mid-term elections, victory, blue wave, Howard Dean, 50-state strategy, John Tester, Montana, Jim Webb, Virginia, Donald Rumsfeld, resigns, Daily Kos, Markos Moulitsas, freedom, George Michael, George W Bush, Bush, Republicans, defeat, American politics.