3:33 p.m.: Went to vote up by Ina and Shannon as snowflakes danced in the air. Snow on November 7. Good thing I don't believe in omens.
5:31 p.m.: Picked up my son from basketball practice. He asked me who had won the election. I told him to ask me again on Thursday. Or Friday.
5:55 p.m.: Got home and turned on the TV. They said that Gore had won Florida. That's huge! It could be a good night for people like me. Over the past 20 years, I felt we were in danger of becoming extinct. During that time, many people who had basically been "born" Democrats had been smelling the money, selling their principles and drifting over to the Republicans. During that same time, almost nobody went in the other direction. If Bill Clinton hadn't come along and dragged things toward the center, the Democratic Party might well have gone the way of the Whigs. As it is, considering how well things are going in the country, Gore should be winning by a landslide. If he wins at all, it'll be a squeaker.
7:01 p.m.: Pennsylvania goes for Gore! Michigan goes for Gore! Bush goes for a beer. Seriously, I thought that Bush DUI story was much ado about almost nothing, with two small exceptions. One thing is that Bush kept talking about how he "made mistakes in (his) youth." The dude was 30 years old at the time! Since when is that "youth"? Then, he talked about how that DUI incident was like a wake-up call. He must have hit the snooze button a few times since it took him another 10 years before he quit drinking. Good for him for quitting, but you have to wonder whether the only reason he did so was that, as he got older, the booze was dulling his response to the cocaine.
7:32 p.m.: At the radio station where I spent the evening, we had a TV set that only got CBS, and then only when we had an intern stand with one hand on the rabbit ears and the other pointed toward Mecca. CBS had the cheesiest thing I've ever seen. The way they're showing which states have gone to which candidate is by pointing a pencil at a computer monitor. What the heck?! What did they do with all that Survivor money?
8 p.m.: Hillary won in New York. She had all but dropped the "Clinton" from her name after Labor Day. It's a pretty good bet that the first business day after she's sworn into office, she'll drop it legally altogether.
8:10 p.m.: What a nightmare! Florida, which had been called for Gore by all three major networks (and ABC), has now been downgraded to "too close to call." This hurts in too many ways to count. Gore winning Florida had all but sealed the deal. It could still go for Gore, but now the night is fraught with danger. I feel like I'm watching a UA football game and all of a sudden it's the fourth quarter. The Cats are leading by three, but Ortege Jenkins is at quarterback.
8:22 p.m.: Bush wins in Tennessee. That really can't be good.
8:44 p.m.: We still don't have any results from Pima County. The new computerized system is way better than the old one. Not any faster, just better.
8:55 p.m.: The idiots on CNN keep talking about how historic it is that Hillary Clinton is the first sitting First Lady to be elected to the United States Senate. She's the first First Lady to do anything other than sneak a few knick-knacks into the luggage on the way out of the White House.
8:58 p.m.: The ultimate image of a surreal day: Al Sharpton endorsing Ralph Nader. So much for the whisper campaign. Nader isn't gay; he's the Devil himself.
9:01 p.m.: Gore wins California. Too little, too late, or so it appears. Bush wins Arkansas. I still believe that Clinton would have won handily had he been able to run again. Even Republicans would have held their noses and voted for him. Politics sucks.
9:49 p.m.: Bush is winning a bunch of small states, including small (-minded) Arizona.
10:02 p.m.: Prop 301, which would pump half a billion dollars into Arizona's schools, is barely passing. I swear, I love the state in which I live, but I hate about half of the people with whom I share the place.
10:11 p.m.: I know I write for the Weekly and all, but let me be the first to say that the Green Party is a bad joke. It's not a party and it's not a movement. It's more like a fraternity prank gone terribly awry. I want to see their convention; it'll probably look like a Halloween party. There's a witch, there's a forest ranger, there's a hermit. It's like a freakin' Village People revival. Ten years from now, the Green Party will be a $1,000 question on Double Jeopardy. Ralph Nader's protestations notwithstanding, their only discernible national platform this year was "Let's Dick Al Gore!"
10:22 p.m.: Bilingual education is a thing of the past. I live in a state of haters.
10:24 p.m.: Because of that whole alt-fuel furor, that jerk Jeff Groscost is losing in Mesa. His Democratic challenger used the slogan "I Drive A Gas-Guzzling, Polluting Vehicle." Hey, they talk about money in politics. It took $450 million to defeat Groscost.
11 p.m.: I remain an optimist. As a child, I lived through a period in which we had Madman Sam Yorty as mayor, Ronald Reagan as governor and Richard Nixon as president. I felt like I had lived and gone to Hell. Even if Brainless Bush wins the race, we can look at the bright side. Alec Baldwin will be leaving and he'll take Cher with him!
