Barely, I am emerging from my post-election depression. To celebrate, I spent quite a while at the dentist. Woo, fucking, hoo, I’m all about living large and sucking life’s marrow.

It was my first visit, since the ugly poisoning episode. The plus side of bleach keeping my throat its whitest white, and the thrill of the afterburn, appears to be two-fold.

One, they are bending over backwards to be the nicest, bestest dentists around with me their star patient. The senior dentist guy came in to the room to say “hi” and make sure I was comfortable. Later, he came in to assist with filling my broken tooth nub. (I now have a tooth that looks more metal than tooth; nice and gangsta-style, only it’s silver not gold. It kind of looks like that James Bond villain, Jaws.)

Secondly, it looks like I might get some bucks off the final crown (the part of the crown that exceeds insurance). So, yeah, bring it on, and torture me, just so long as I get a bargain.

I still feel a little weird that I helped lose a chick her job. Apparently, she didn’t leave gently into the night and accused the dentist of overselling her role in the murder attempt. I was there, and I know she could have been a whole lot more attentive to, I dunno, her job and me, the victim. But, nonetheless, on the karma front, as a recent statistic in the job losing field myself, it doesn’t feel great.

(They told me she got a job across the street from their office at the Greek take-out place. That little detail kept me from getting the Greek Salad and/or wrap I was planning on buying post-cavity plugging. Bleach and feta, the new white.)

In other news, helping a bit with the Bush-winning blues, is the power of the Internet. The subject of a couple posts reached out over the virtual world. Besides reminding me that not all people living in the “red states” are assholes, we got to do a quick catch-up via IM.

The only downside is the complete and unadulterated dorky teenageness (I guess the actual word would be adolesence) of the cyber-convo. The dork stakes got raised when the phone rang midway through the IM’ing session, and it was Kevin, who started the whole thang that led to my stalking in the first place. So, there we were, three former Math Team colleagues, talking and typing with me as the virtual gatekeeper. Sad really. I kept thinking one of us should ask about that week’s homework assignment or the extra credit.

Yeah, at moments like that, I have a hard time comprehending that I am indeed (as are many of my friends) in my fourth decade of living. Maybe I should get a job hunt thing going, so I can better remember the painful shackles of mature adulthood, instead of getting all wistful for the painful shackles of junior high and life as an erstwhile Bomar.

I couldn’t figure out how to work this reference into the post below. M. and I have been talking about many of the same things the last couple of days. All of us hope this loss galvanizes the left to reclaim voters and a political future.

Maybe Kerry was just the wrong man, wrong time and the wrong battle. Maybe the Democrats have to be more confident, more focused, more honest with ourselves about what we need to do and maybe we need to take something from Karl Rove’s playbook. (In re Rove, though, I disagree with M. I don’t want to see the left become street fighters, because I don’t think we have to go as low as Rove.)

I would amend Baratunde’s essay to address a couple of other groups. Just as Blacks should not hate gays, homosexuals have to find some rhetoric that doesn’t automatically shut down a good chunk of the public. All legal rights for equality are important, but something is not working in the battle when union is seen as erosion of society by so many. Sure they are wrong to think gays are ruining the world, but we got to find some way of addressing that worry.

The same goes for feminists and pro-choice advocates. Personally, I think birth control and abortion can be choices that fall on the side of being moral. But, we need to work on getting people out of the narrow, baby-killing framework and offering them a new way of thinking.

Finally, you know what else isn’t working? Chanting “Hey, Ho, anything.” It’s fun to be out in the crowd with your friends, but protesting 60s style now just makes you a goofy and easy target for derision and mockery. God love you for trying, but you’re not changing any minds to your side or making your side seem viable. (This last bit comes from the number of people outside Fanueil Hall yesterday laughing at and making cracks about the protesters there.)

I’ve been doing a lot of, as the cliche goes, naval-gazing in a post-Election Day daze. I’ve been thinking over and thinking over the exit poll data indicating the importance of “moral values.”

That focus, coupled with the stereotype of progressive liberals, such as I am, makes it hard for me to comprehend how divided we are as a country. In truth, after thinking about it, I think it is not so much that we are that different. “They,” the people who did not vote with me, are not prima facie stupid, uninformed, rubes, unable to discern obvious truths. (OK, maybe some of them are.) We all just want to get through our individual days and feel good about the people closest to us and our lives.

I don’t myself understand how, but I think Bush & Co. just sold their message of “morality” so hard and strong and with an air of such supreme confidence and rightness that they convinced people literally and figuratively that theirs is the side of light, truth, morality, values and God. The GOP has developed a PR arm worthy of the tobacco industry in the 1940s.

I can almost understand voting for GW if you believe in his evangelical agenda. If I were born again, it would be appealing, just as I know that many people voted for JFK because of his Roman Catholicism. But, I have a lot of trouble understanding how you could view GW as a true-believer when his main advisors, especially the likes of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, show absolutely no evidence of godliness in their ways or thoughts. They are cynical, political, powerful men, as driven by venal, earthbound urges as even the most unrepentent sinner.

While they have been hard-selling their moral superiority, we, the left, have become our own worst enemies and given them ground to expose our “sinning” ways.

The hard part for me personally is that I consider myself a moral, ethical person. I was brought up by one of the most scrupulously honest people I have ever met. (By that I mean honest to the point of getting home from the store, realizing that you got too much change and driving back to the store to return it honest. Yup, getting in the car to give back a dollar, Pat would have done that.) She was also an unbelievably compassionate (in a fucked up, bitterly sarcastic manner, but no less compassionate) woman, who would quite literally give you the coat off her back.

And, as a kid, I was part of a religious group that really seemed to embody what was being sermonized each week. To this day, I have a profound imprint of Mr. Boyce. He taught CCD classes, and each week he appealed for donations to, I think, help children in Appalachia or maybe the inner cities. In a time when more formal church appeals went overseas to help “starving children” in Africa or Asia or missionary work, our community raised money for domestic causes, because it was important that we face our own troubles at home.

Every week, when it was time to offer call and response prayers freestyle, Mr. Boyce always had something or someone to pray for in the community or in the wider world. To my childish ears, it was always very sincere and not just public speaking showboating. Most of all, I remember Mr. Boyce during the “sign of peace.” His right hand was missing fingers, but when he shook your hand and wished you peace that was a mighty firm handshake, and it really felt that, by god, he wished you peace and all spiritual gifts out there in the world.

In this group and in all of my childhood, families were central. Family values, honoring the folks before you, turning to and supporting the people around you, helping when you can and being helped when in need, births, marriages, baptisms, deaths, and an abiding idea that there are people in your life that are not transitory but are integral and solid, all of these concepts have influenced my morality and, I think, are quite mundane when compared with the “moral values” being discussed in today’s news.

If the above is true, and in fact, we all share some very basic beliefs (leaving god aside), how is it that the Democrats cannot seem to find a way into the conversation and bring that other half of the country a long?

Some blurry shots from Wednesday’s concession speech. (All photos in crowds are thoroughly hampered by (a) my height; (b) my not great eyesight and (c) movement and my slow reflexes. Good thing I never actually pursued the photo-journalism dream I had at one point.)

John Kerry

Teresa Heinz

Edward M. Kennedy

Vanessa Kerry

I hate this so much! Four more stupid years of that bad, bad man.

I truly believe history will show him to be the worst president in the history of the country. Now he will be the worst fucking TWO-TERM president.

I truly want to cry.

I should have gone to sleep, but now, CNN is saying the raw numbers they were getting from the Associated Press may be wacky. So, now they are re-assessing and calling a bit more “too close to call.”

What the hell happened in New Mexico? How did the Dems let it slip?

Alright, CNN just called Wisconsin. Tomorrow I will eat some cheese to honor the 10 more electoral votes for Kerry.

At 254 Electoral Votes for Bush and 252 for Kerry, I am turning off the lights and television. As I sleep, there will be visions of Cleveland and Dayton and Toledo and other mysterious lands that will apparently be deciding our national fate.

Why can’t Ohio at least start counting provisional ballots before 11 days? You know, just start.

It’s 4:20 a.m. I can’t stand the agony of waiting any more. I hope to awaken to happy news.

VOTE

After the Series was won by the Red Sox, I wandered back down to Fenway Park and took a few last shots of the same place I had experienced maybe next time. Here’s a sample:

I just want to point out that since Bush has been in office, besides 9/11:

What more proof do people need?