PARTING THOUGHTS

As I head home to vote tonight, I'm overwhelmingly positive about Kerry victory tonight.

I don't believe it will go into recounts and lawsuits, as worst-case scenario preparations have suggested. We will know tonight that Americans have rejected the regressive, reactionary, right-wing exremists tactics of fear-mongering and abject failure of Bush administration policies abroad, in Iraq, on terrorism, on a dismal economy, on tax cuts we can't afford, on privatizing Social Security, on reducing a woman's right to control her own body, on robbing our children of their education.

And so on.

At this point last time around, Gore was behind in the polls by 4 percent. This time, Kerry is tied. Once you count minorities, first-time voters, immigrants, mobile-phone users and those enraged by an administration that was appointed by a partisan Supreme Court — Chief Justice William Rehnquist aided 1962 Republican efforts to disqualify black and Hispanic voters — there is a far greater number of Americans who are outraged that they were denied their majority choice of president.

Bush has awakened the sleeping giant of American democracy, and for that he'll pay dearly.

On that note, I urge you to vote if you haven't already and provide this late-breaking development from blogger John Marshall, who cites late Gallup statistics:

According to Gallup's mega-final-ultra poll out Sunday evening, 30% of registered voters in Florida have already voted, either through early voting or by absentee. Of those who have already voted, Kerry leads President Bush 51% to 43%.

According to the Des Moines Register poll out late Saturday evening, 27% of Iowa adults have already voted. And among those Kerry leads 52% to 41%.

Both numbers seem good for Kerry — though they may mean a lot of different things.

Good night, and see you on the flip side of Election Day.