Jay Maynard

We won't know the outcome for a couple of weeks. Ohio looks like it'll decide the election, and Bush has a 125K vote lead there - with 250K absentee and provisional ballots that won't be counted for 11 more days, by law.

I'd been telling everyone who asked me about the election that I didn't think we'd know the results on Wednesday morning. I'm not going to claim any special insight. That was just too easy a call to make.

I decided not to post this in howardtayler's journal, but bluerain, in this comment, said that "I refuse to live in a country that would even consider what presently looks like the likely outcome." All I can say to that left-wing fruitcake is: Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out. I stayed through eight years of Clinton's incompetence, and if I could put up with that, you can damned well stick it out.

I wonder if the likely result of President Bush winning the popular vote will silence the Left's calls for abolishing the electoral college...should Kerry win Ohio, and thus the election, he will have done so despite a worse result in the popular vote than Gore in 2000. The Electoral College will thereby have been the only way he'd have won.

I'm more than a little surprised by Senator Kerry's decision to concede the election. I fully expected his camp to drag out the process with challenges and lawsuits until, as in 2000, we all got heartily sick of the whole thing. In fairness, I was expecting the Bush camp to do the same thing had it gone the other way.

I lamented in a comment to rillaspins's LJ that we've become polarized and I see no way out of it. Perhaps this will prove me wrong. Heaven knows we need healing, as a country, from the past 4 years or more of partisan bickering.

...and I don't understand them.

I've spent the day reading LJ comments from lots of folks I know and like and respect, full of what appears to me to be serious overreaction. They speak of literally shaking with terror, or sobbing helplessly, or simply being fatalistically depressed.

I don't get it.

They wonder aloud how anyone could possibly support that guy in the White House after all he's done and knowing what he plans to do.

They don't get me.

At this point, I'm not going to attempt to explain my side of the equation. Many folks have tried, only to be blown off by the other side (no, I'm not saying any of the folks in my friends list have done so; I speak in general terms). If you want to understand why I voted for President Bush, along with a majority of my fellow voting Americans, there are words aplenty to explain it.

I can understand bronxelf_ag001's concern over the prospect of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. I can understand jmthane's nervousness about the dim prospects of a reasonable definition of marriage (mine matches hers, FWIW). I can understand yakko's disappointment.

I can't understand the level of emotion that goes with it. I don't know if I ever will. I do know that we must understand each other if we have any hope of overcoming the deep division we face now. I also know that electing Kerry would have done nothing to heal that division. It would have merely had the other side complaining and feeling badly treated. The problem goes much deeper than that.

I don't know if I'll ever be able to truly understand the problem. Some of it, I'm sure I won't, not a viscerally. I do, however, think we've got to try, and I will if those opposing Bush will. Fair enough?