I protest.

Hanging in there.

I have never been this anxious about an election. My first vote for a President was in 1980 (when I took the very bad advice of my father and cast it for Reagan) and I've voted in all Presidential and most off-year elections since. Never before has there been this much riding on the outcome, though. As so many have said, this is almost certainly the most important election of my lifetime (I was born in 1960) and one of the two most important of my mother's lifetime (she was born in 1930 so she was around, although not aware, for the 1932 election of FDR).

Still, despite the overriding importance of this election, I have done all that I can do. I've contributed to the various campaigns as much as I could afford, I've encouraged all those I could to get out and vote, I've expressed my concerns and views here, I've participated in all the activities my circumstances allow. And I cast my vote a few hours ago. Now, no matter how anxious I am, it is out of my hands. I have found myself watching the polls tonight, checking the various maps over and over, but all it has been doing is to increase my anxiety. Steve Gilliard is right:

Remember one thing: no matter what happens, you did the right thing as a citizen. Not only in voting, but participating. You took a stand, and no matter whether we were right or wrong, we did our best as citizens.

Nineteen months ago I started this weblog because I was furious and horrified at the war in Iraq and at what George W. Bush and his cronies had been doing to the country that is my home. I hoped to do two things: Give vent to the frustration and anger that had no outlet at the time, and maybe, just maybe, make a tiny difference in the way things were. Little did I know that so incredibly many shared my rage, horror and frustration, or that so many would take action to put their anger into action to make the change for which we all hoped.

Today is the first major culmination of that action. No matter what happens, or who wins (and I'm still convinced that it will be Kerry, in the end, all the Republican dirty tricks and intimidation notwithstanding), we have won, in the sense that we have made a basic change, we have taken part in our democracy in a way that none of us now living have ever done before.

Of course, this is just the first major battle. We will have many more before we have finally won our country back from the liars, swindlers, cheats, demagogues and scoundrels who have taken it from us. And with a Kerry win tonight, those scoundrels will be even more vicious than before. Ultimately, though, we will win. The truth will always defeat a lie.

Eventually.