Ever since I watched “The American President” for the first time, I’ve wanted to make one of those big boards where you can slide people’s names across from “against us” to “undecided” to “with us.” As Kodak says:
You. New guy. “Jarrett, Democrat,
Minnesota.” Slide his name on over
to “for.”
(to Lewis) We just had his name laminated under
“Undecided.” How’d you get the fence
pole out of his butt?
Since I don’t run a policy shop, I had to tweak the board for election purposes: “Waiting”, “Winning” , “Tied”, “Losing”. After printing a 2′ x 3′ poster at Kinko’s I taped it onto my magnetic white board and bought some small magnets off of E-Bay. Here’s the board on Tuesday afternoon, with all the races on “waiting”:
I took the board over to the pro-choice party at 7:30pm and starting shifting the early races. After we were certain we had won the race (or after CNN had called it), we would take off the magnet and color in the appropriate box either Blue or Red. I don’t think I took out the Red marker until after 10:30pm. Here’s the board at 10pm: check out the 2nd column (Dem winning) — we’ve won the House!!
But the Senate wasn’t looking too hot at that point. Webb was behind Allen in VA, and McCaskill’s St. Louis vote hadn’t come in yet. We kept waiting for the St. Louis vote….and waiting….and waiting…and, back in VA, Webb was still trailing. The crowd began to thin at midnight, and then more so at 1am. Anne (Missouri native) and I were sticking around to cheer on our home states though. And then….
Between 1am and 2am, the St. Louis vote comes in and McCaskill takes the lead! CNN calls the race shortly after 2am, and back in VA Webb catches up….and five minutes later, the Fairfax absentees come in and Webb takes a 16,000 vote lead!!! WE WIN THE SENATE! As Anne and I are the only two people in the entire building, I feel no compunction for jumping up and down and yelling like a maniac.
A few minutes later, I calm down and realize that Montana is actually getting a little close….we wrap it up at 2:34am, with one last picture of the Big Board. (I didn’t actually go to sleep until 4am.)
You can see the lone Senate magnet left there for Tester’s not-quite-finished victory. But, of course, that would eventually come and Bush’s “thumping” would be complete. What a night!
