Democrats are starting to feel like their old selves again, and that is just so wonderful, like when you've had the flu for a while and you suddenly notice you're better. The prophet Jeremiah wrote, "The summer is over, the harvest is in, and we are not saved," and maybe we aren't saved, but we are better. Maybe his beaten-down sorry-ass Old Testament locust-eating audience was without hope, but we aren't. We're getting our chops back, and our sense of humor: This makes us a major problem for Karl Rove. We're pushing back our sleeves and getting back to work, scooping sand in the old tribal ways -- bucket by bucket. We're taking care of the poor, protesting, registering voters, sending money for the ACLU.
I got up early on Election Day and turned on the news, secretly hoping there were exit polls to study, even though it was only 7. After breakfast, I walked to the senior center to vote. I love the intensity of darkness and light together: You wake up in the morning and it's dark, the sunrises so intensely surreal, like Hawaii, and then it gets dark when it should, at a reasonable time, for tired, middle-aged people like me. It reminds you to number the days, and the hours, to notice the light when we get it, slants of light, instead of blasts, and the comforts of the dark.
It was still going to be a long day, even though the sun would set so early. But we get to wear light sweaters again; this gives me a sense of quirky hope. If Davis won, he would be forced into becoming a good governor. If Schwarzenegger won, with his tiny groping and weinie issues, at the helm of an economy that has turned to shit, well -- it was hard to see Karl Rove making political hay of it. Believe me, more will be revealed. During the 2000 election, some of us said, "If Bush gets in, I'm moving; it's all over." And guess what? He won, we didn't move, and it's not all over. Rocks came tumbling down on us, and they continue to fall, but even when it seemed we were doomed, it turned out we were slowly being knit back together. Somehow, just in the last few months, against all odds, it's all but over for the Bush dynasty: The whole outfit has been coming apart like a $2 watch. And we've found an underground, wiggly strength again: You can feel it in the air, at rallies, at readings.
So, as we all know, Arnold is the new governor. But that in and of itself is so ludicrous, so absurd, so blatant -- that surely great change will emerge from his victory. Things always get more extreme when a government is about to come crashing down. Rot is exposed, and the men, with their terminal Delusional Dominance Disorder, all turn on each other. You can see it happening in the Rove White House. It's like an alcoholic family, everyone screaming at each other, trying to dominate, fix and control: "We were just trying to help ... and now everyone's dead." Everyone begins blaming, and lying -- like the great Bart Simpson said, "It was this way when we got here." But we know the truth, that, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/lamott/2003/10/10/election/index.html
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