Well, I’m just now beginning to wrap my mind around what happened yesterday. When I turned off the television last night a little before 12, the sheer exhaustion of being up for 20 hours, much of that standing in the rain (and, later after the cold front moved through Cincinnati, the biting wind), meant that I was only dimly aware of exactly what was happening. Only this morning, in the (all too early) light of day did I begin to assess how we got from the positive expectancy of exit polls putting Kerry up in PA, FL and OH (which we eagerly followed on my Blackberry throughout the day - thanks, Hogan) to staring down four more years of… (I can’t yet bring myself to fully write that out.)

Much of this processing occurred during my drive back to Dayton to catch my flight. Of course, the initial reaction was sheer astonishment — how, exactly, is it that I live in the same country as people who, in 11 states, overwhelmingly voted to deny homosexuals the same rights to love and build a life together that the state affords to the rest of us? How, exactly, is it that I live in the same country as people who approve enough of these past four years to sign up for four more? And what on earth happens next?

Astonishment gradually gave way to determination. Determination to spend the next two years devoting whatever resources I can muster to helping the Dems take back the House, in an effort to restore at least that one small bulwark against an unchecked Republican “mandate.” (Can it really be that a 1% win, with no electoral votes from wide swaths of the country really constitutes a mandate?) I’ve heard Kerry’s call for cooperation, for “healing the wounds” that divide the country. While I respect Kerry for finding it within him to make that plea, I fear for the Democratic party if it grants Kerry’s request. Certainly, Republicans have shown no inclination towards going along to get along — just look at the agenda Bush pushed through, even before 9/11, despite the fact that he lost the popular vote, and, by any recount standard applied, the electoral vote. I’m afraid that any cooperation will inevitably end up being on the Republican’s terms, which will get us nowhere. Time and again the Republicans have played hardball, and the American public has consistently rewarded them with a greater consolidation of power in Congress. Let’s face it — the public doesn’t reward those who play the role of the nice guy. It’s time to dig in, and accept the role of the vocal opposition.

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While a key focus of the party needs to be building the infrastructure and raising the funds to pick off the most vulnerable Republicans in the House (while shoring up any vulnerable Democrats), my few days on the front lines tell me that we can’t stop there. Something is wrong with our system when, at 6 p.m. the Saturday before the election, I’m taking a frantic call from the mother of a first time voter, worried that her daughter won’t get a chance to have her voice heard because Broward County failed to mail her absentee ballot on time, and then to compound the error failed to send it out overnight mail on Friday despite promising both her mother and an attorney from the ACLU that it would do so (Florida requires that all absentee ballots be received by the election board by 7 p.m. on Election Day, so that, even had the ballot been sent out overnight mail on Monday when the office reopened, there was no way to return the ballot in time). Something is wrong when minority voters receive calls on Election Day telling them that, because of heavy voter turnout at the polls, voting has been extended and they should wait and vote tomorrow. Something is wrong when a college student sends in his registration application six times, never receives a voter identification card, and is then dismissed with a racial epithet when he calls to request that it finally be sent to him. Something is wrong when poll workers send an 84 year old woman to three different polling places, leaving it to an attorney from hundreds of miles away to finally put her in contact with the county board of elections, so that she can finally be told that she’s registered to vote in yet a fourth polling location. And, frankly, I think something is wrong when a graduate student with two children, 14 and 3, is concerned about accepting a teaching position in Florida out of fear that a decades old felony conviction for marijuana possession would disqualify her from having the right to vote should she move there. (And for you “source” sticklers, no, I can’t point you to articles for each of these, but yes, I personally talked to each of the people involved.)

Certainly, we made a start this year. In Cincinnati alone, Election Protection had hundreds of people, from all over the country, crammed into the library of a church-turned-community center, all ready to be dispatched to over 40 precincts in the city. At my polling location, I was joined by five poll monitors from the Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless (who came in shifts), one Democratic attorney from Kentucky (who, like me, was there from the time the polls opened — late — until the time the polls closed), and two poll monitors from the Bloomington, Indiana Coalition for the Homeless, who drove all the way to Cincinnati that morning to put in a three-hour shift. But that still wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough because there were precincts in Cincinnati we didn’t have the manpower to cover, it wasn’t enough because there were entire counties in Ohio we didn’t have the manpower to cover, and it wasn’t enough because there were dozens of states we didn’t have the manpower to even begin to cover. And it wasn’t enough because poll monitors on Election Day are too late to get the Miami student her absentee ballot on time, and too late to inform the lady working as a janitor that under Ohio law she has the right to vote despite the fact that she was convicted of a felony in her youth. But that is definitely not to disparage the role we did play. Tonight my mom asked me if I would do it again in four years. And as dispiriting as it was to spend all that time and money traveling to Ohio to help ensure a fair election, only to have it be the state that puts Bush over the top (not to mention the fact that I had the great “pleasure” of sharing a hotel with Bush my first night in Cincinnati, and of sharing a hotel with the Bush/Cheney Cincinnati victory party my last night there), I have to say yes. Yes because it was amazing to stand there and have person after person tell me that it was their first time ever voting, and to see how seriously they took it, despite the fact that many of them surely had more pressing concerns, like worrying about how to feed their family and how to keep a roof over their heads when their lease is up and they are booted out of their affordable housing so that the complex where the polling place was located can be torn down.

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One last thought. I’ve had this discussion several times over the past few months, the most recently tonight. And for the longest time I could never understand it: how is it that the Republicans continue to garner such huge support down south, merely by framing the election around abortion, gays and guns, despite the fact that voting Republican is likely not in the financial best interest of many of their constituents? One would think that pocketbook issues would trump someone’s concern about what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedroom. But then tonight it hit me: I’m quickly moving into a tax bracket where voting Republican would be in my economic best interest. And yet I cannot even begin to fathom voting my financial interests over my conscience. And I think that explains much of the Republican base. Too many in the Democratic party (and I always counted myself among them) seem to assume that the way to cleave off some of the Republican base is to focus on populist messages that appeal to the pocketbook of the lower middle class. And that probably has its place. But we must begin to reframe the moral debate, to eliminate the perceived Faustian bargain many believe voting for the Democrats to be: voting for economic concerns at the expense of upholding personal moral values. Unfortunately, I don’t know how we do this without turning our back on traditional liberal values of equality and equal protection. But we need to find a way.