I think this drawn-out election is having the same effect on me that it seems to be having on the Gore and Bush camps: the more it goes on, the worse a person I'm becoming. When the Miami-Dade canvassing board voted to stop the recount, my first thought was "I wonder who got to them?"
Then, today, when it turned out that Cheney's chest pains really were heart attack number four, it struck me that according to the Democrats' preferred rules for chad, we'd have to classify Cheney as "dead."
I am continuing to be very impressed by our nation's court system. Every single decision handed down by a judge in the many election-related cases of the last two weeks has been, in my non-expert opinion, entirely correct. The lower courts have avoided interfering with counties' decisions, the federal courts have stayed out of state-level decisions, and the Florida Supreme Court took a very reasonable position on both the meaning and the purpose of election statutes. All is not entirely lost.
I'm still looking for the right metaphor to talk about the Gore/Bush fight. The feeling I get now is that their antipathy for each other is a hatred on such a titanic scale that the election itself was insufficient to work it out. Even when it seemed their grudge match would have to finally be settled, they found a way to prolong it and strap the American people into chairs with eyelids taped open to watch them tear hunks of flesh from each other. While I recognize that it's been wholly in Gore's tactical interest to appear magnanimous and in Bush's to be snippy, I do actually like Gore more and Bush less as a result of these last few weeks.
In other election news, two weeks of sifting through absentee ballots have given us a new senator here in Washington: it looks like Maria Cantwell has toppled Slade Gorton in a .08% squeaker (pending the obligagory recount). Interestingly enough, .08% is also the legal threshold for intoxication in this state, as the big yellow signs on the roadside every few miles like to remind us (although I do have a friend who botched that question on his driver's test). Total coincidence, I'm sure. Cantwell's victory has inspired me to deliver the following message to one particular co-worker: in your face, rich boy!
Sadly, I don't think he reads this page. and neither does Gridlock Guy, who I'm sure is quite thrilled at the prospect of a 50-50 Senate.