Victory

I've been meaning to do a post-election wrap-up and comment on a lot of stuff but, as Nathan put it, "Time is a bitch."

So far we've won 29 seats in the House and lost none. Six races are still outstanding. We'll most likely lose all of those. There's so much backstory to all 35 of those seats that I can't blog about but hopefully I will see all of you over the next month and can give you the rundown on those and the other trife of the last few months. I just got confirmation that I can leave town so here's the plan for The Victory Tour:

Wednesday, November 22: Fly to Cleveland for Thanksgiving
Saturday, November 25: Fly back to DC to move out of my apartment
Saturday, December 2: Fly to Providence for my triumphant return to Brown
Wednesday, December 13: Fly from Providence to San Francisco

Adjust your plans accordingly.

In order to whet your appetite, here's a good account of what went down from the Chicago Tribune reporter at the DCCC on Election Night:

A large erasable board, divided into some 80 squares for various House districts, dominated one wall in the DCCC offices on election night. Interns rushed to update results, prompting cheers or moans from the assembled staffers.

When a winner was declared in a race, the interns outlined the square in red marker. As the number of red squares grew, the magnitude of the Democratic gains became clear and an unfamiliar mood of jubilation overtook the staffers.

For Emanuel--ensconced in an office with friends and family--the board represented the culmination of two years' work. Every number reported the fate of a candidate he had recruited, cultivated and come to know.

Televisions were scattered throughout the DCCC offices and common areas. At 11:08, CNN's Wolf Blitzer intoned, "We can now project that the Democrats will be in the majority in the House of Representatives." Emanuel seemed momentarily dazed, hugging his brother Zeke and kissing his wife. Six minutes later, Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi, looking jittery and happy, walked from the room where she had been watching the returns into Emanuel's office.

Emanuel roared, "Fellas--Madame speaker!" Pelosi and Emanuel hugged, rocking gently together for a few seconds. Brian Wolff, a staffer who worked for both Emanuel and Pelosi, called out, "Mission accomplished!"

At that moment, Sen. Barack Obama, who had campaigned relentlessly for House candidates, called to offer congratulations. "Barack," Pelosi said. "Thank you, thank you, thank you for all that you did." She walked back to her office muttering, "I gotta call my brother."

As Pelosi made her way through the DCCC staffers, some applauded, then more joined in and everyone rose in a whooping standing ovation. "This is so much better than losing," a staffer said to no one in particular.

Emanuel walked out of his office into the ecstatic throng and hopped on a desk.

In a few minutes, in front of the cameras, he would strike a conciliatory note about his opponents, and in the days that followed he would stress how both parties needed to work together for what was best for the country.

But at that moment, Emanuel would not, could not censor his glee, or restrain his distaste for the defeated Republicans.

For weeks they had been boasting that their program for turning out voters in the campaign's final 72 hours would swamp all his work. The voters had made those statements look ridiculous.

"I'll tell you this," Emanuel shouted out to his staff. "The Republicans may have the 72-hour program. But they have not seen the 22-month program!"

"Since my kids are gone, I can say it: They can go ---- themselves!"

On an unrelated note, a couple things I found blogworthy:

I saw this in the NY Times and thought of Adam:

Thomas Pynchon’s new novel, “Against the Day,” reads like the sort of imitation of a Thomas Pynchon novel that a dogged but ungainly fan of this author’s might have written on quaaludes. It is a humongous, bloated jigsaw puzzle of a story, pretentious without being provocative, elliptical without being illuminating, complicated without being rewardingly complex.

The novel plays with themes that have animated the whole of Mr. Pynchon’s oeuvre: order versus chaos, fate versus freedom, paranoia versus nihilism.

and from realityblurred.com:

Mo’Nique will host Charm School for former Flavor of Love women
Flavor of Love is getting yet another spin-off. VH1 will air Charm School, a competition between women from both seasons of Flavor Flav’s show. The winner will win the title of "Charm School Queen" and win a to-be-determined cash prize.

[...]

The show does not yet have a debut date, so it’s unclear whether it will air before or after Flavorette (which is apparently now called I Love New York) the spin-off that will follow New York as she chooses a suitor from a group of crazy men.

This reminds me of a classic headline from The Onion:

Mo’Nique Know She Look Good