Now I lay me down to sleep...

As I get ready to turn in for the night (about 10:00 West Coast time), Kerry seems to be taking Pennsylvania and it's tight in Florida and Ohio.  According to Steve Gilliard, who has been a determined optimist on this for weeks, a lot of the precincts not reported yet are in heavily Democratic areas.  The Republicans have been filing lawsuits all over Ohio to monkey with the results.  There, they've been trying to force as many voters as possible to cast "provisional" ballots pending resolution of challenges to their eligibility.  Then they're preparing to spread the idea that "provisional" ballots are presumptively illegitimate.  And there have been some aggressively nasty voter-suppression tactics directed against minority areas in a number of states. 

One hopeful sign in Florida, not just for now but longer-term, is that the Latino vote there seems to be going for Kerry, versus 65% for Bush in 2000.

Ohio and Florida.  Little Brother Jeb could be ready to throw another presidential election to the Scalia Five.  If that happens, I hope to see Kerry and the Democrats wage an all-out campaign to demand that Antonin Scalia, crassly partisan Republican and huntin' buddy of Dick Cheney, as well as William Rehnquist, who got into the voter-suppression business early with the Goldwater campaign in 1964, from participating in any voting cases this year.

It's also being reported that the expected youth vote didn't turn out in any noticeable higher numbers this year.  Well, folks, people who choose not to participate in the process gamble on becoming victims of the process.

Hey, being drafted into the Army could be exciting!  And since we still have the "don't ask, don't tell" rule, if there's a new draft, we'll probably all be surprised and how many gays and lesbians there are among the Young Republican set.  (Oh, yeah, they'll have to take women this time around, too.)

Pete Seeger could probably have a new hit reissuing this song:

I'm just the typical American boy
From the typical American town
I believe in God and Senator Dodd
And in keeping old Castro down
And when it came my time to serve
I knew "better dead than Red" ["red"used to mean Communist, not Republican]
But when I got to my old draft board,
Buddy, this is what I said:

Sarge, I'm only eighteen
I got a ruptured spleen
And I always carry a purse
I got eyes like a bat
And my feet are flat
And my asthma's getting worse
Oh, think of my career
My sweetheart dear
My poor old invalid aunt
Besides, I ain't no fool
I'm a'going to school
And I'm workin' in a defense plant
                                        - "Draft Dodger Rag" by Phil Ochs

Steve Gilliard was still optimistic at a quarter after 11:00 East Coast time:

Well, if it holds up, and everything is flying now, Kerry is getting close to victory while Bush needs a miracle win in one Dem-leaning state as well as Ohio.

I think you can walk back from the ledge and plan your trip to Holland, to catch the war crimes trial.

By the wee hours, he was still optimistic, but a tad more worried:

Folks, I thought it would be a little less close, but I was wrong. However, I think this could get ugly. ...

If I'm wrong, ... our lives go on. God, another four years to fight Bush is not my idea of good government, but if it has to be done, we WILL do it. We will stop Bush's war, we will do what we have to do.

But this could be messy.

However, I think Kerry has a slight edge in the states left. We expected Florida to go, didn't like it, but not shocked. But it's all down to Ohio. And that might not be resolved tonight. Or this week.

But unless Bush pulls one out of his hat, Kerry should win the states left. His decisive win in Penn should, hopefully, be mirrored in the upper midwest.

And if it winds up in court, the immediate question becomes, how bad are the records of Antonin "the Constitution says Bush has to win" Scalia and William "we don't want no minorities voting" Rehnquist?  Does Scalia really believe that Mussolini had the right idea about government?