Regrets

I'm really hoping that all the bile spewed by the sore losers on the left this election is nothing more that the equivalent of a night drinking followed up by a nasty hangover and regret the next morning. In this case, liberals drunk on their own self importance are still riding their intoxicated high courtesy of the legitimacy given to them by the Howard Dean campaign and its adoption (along with all the kooks) by the Kerry campaign. Now that election is over (that's right, deal with it), I would hope that the effects of this momentary boost of ego wears off, and some of the people currently talking revolution or succession, and heaping contempt on their "stupid redneck" brothers and sisters return to sanity and regain some perspective. Shake your heads a couple of times to clear the cobwebs. Let's hope there are a lot of people soon exclaiming:

"Good Lord, what have we done?"

UPDATE: Things are really bad here in Chicago, at least according to the disenchanted voters of the city:

The economy has worsened since the Clinton years, said Atiya, who, like 55 percent of Illinois residents, voted for Sen. John Kerry in last week's presidential election. But he said he wasn't surprised to find the state out of step with the American majority that elected President Bush.

"Illinois has it worse than other states," Atiya said. "In Chicago, a lot of factories closed, a lot of people lost their jobs."

Illinois' unemployment rate was 6 percent in September, lower than previous months but above the national rate of 5.4 percent that month, according to U.S. Commerce Department figures.

This, of course, has nothing to do with the fact that the city and the state are governed by a full slate of Democratic politicians.

And even though over 59 million Americans voted for the Republican candidate for president, and that candidate won the election by more than 3.5 million votes, the evidence apparently isn't enough to show that Republican voters are the mainstream:

But for many in Illinois, especially in Chicago, it is natural to be a more liberal bastion.

And it is Chicago's dominance that makes the state blue.

"I don't think Chicago is out of step with the rest of the nation," said Don Tanagi, 63, who sells George Bush playing cards ("Carefully Stacked Deck") and books such as "Banana Republicans" at the City Newsstand on Cicero Avenue on the Northwest Side. "I think the rest of the country is out of step with us."

Why did the Republicans win? Because those dirty Republican campaigners tricked people into voting for them, not because the majority of voting Americans evaluated the facts and made a rational choice. By "dirty Republican campaigners," I probably mean Karl Rove. What's that, Karl? I mean, no I don't. Sorry, this mind control stuff is hard to shake.

One possible reason Illinois parted from national results is that it wasn't exposed to the same presidential campaign intensity that swing states saw, said Ed Sadlowski, a retired steelworker and union official from Chicago.

Sadlowski went to Wheeling, W.Va., to ring doorbells on behalf of Kerry, and the campaign there centered on matters such as abortion rights and same-sex marriage.

"There was just massive playing on people's emotions, scare tactics--almost disgracefully bad," he said. "In Illinois you weren't seeing that--television ads just day in and day out. Scurrilous damn things."

In other shocking news, a group of Northwestern students couldn't believe that Bush won because everyone they know voted for Kerry. Why do I keep hearing that darn echo?

At Northwestern University on Friday, about 200 Kerry supporters held a rally to console each other. Many of the students wore "Kerry-Edwards" and "No War" buttons.

"It's hard to realize the level of conservatism in this country," said Sarah Sullivan, 20, a junior theater and English major who helped organize the rally, "because most of my friends feel the same way I do."

Three things give away Ms. Sullivan's politics: 1) college student, 2) theater major, and 3) English major. Not surprising that all of her friends voted for a certain liberal senator from Massachusetts. Echo! Echo! Echo!

Those Democrats are compassionate, too. Their billionaire, windsurfing, Italian-villa-vacationing, Swiss-educated, not-SUV-owning-because-that's-Teresa's-not-mine, jenjiss-khan-talking presidential candidate may not have been inspiring, and although he loopholed his way into paying fewer taxes on a higher income than either the president or vice president, Dem voters still pulled the lever for Kerry because he's "for the working people."

At Taqueria Los Primos on the West Side, Teresa Valenzuela, 39--who emigrated from Mexico when she was 6--said she cast her vote for Kerry. The senator didn't inspire her, she said, but she isn't surprised that Illinois bucked the conservative trend.

"Democrats are more for the working people," she said.

Oh, and as for those innocent Iraqi citizens who are getting murdered daily under Saddam's rule? Democratic voters also would have been fine with the status quo. F 'em Iraqis.

On a down-and-out stretch of North Laramie Avenue, Randy Scarver, 37, a self-employed home remodeler, said he is bewildered by the national vote.

"Me personally, I don't know why Bush is back in there, because a lot of people were so [angry] about the war," he said, referring to the fighting in Iraq. "Saddam Hussein wasn't doing nothing to us. He was killing his own people. Let him kill his own people."

Now that's a compassionate sentiment to vote for.