In honor of the recently hott BizCazh.com, and in final comment on the Great ‘Lection of 2004, I submit “The Morning After”:

The Country is bound for one LONG walk of shame. America, the once beautiful, is slowly making its way back to its apartment, still wearing last night’s clothes. The country has sex hair, and can taste its own breath.

Parental advisory — exteme lyrics, visceral imagery, rank partisanship, &c.

Kevin Drum nailed it, I think. Scandal earns the day. History, the President’s first term, and the current political dynamic are brimming with evidence for this, as Drum points out:

Consider the highlight reel of reelected presidents over the past 50 years. Ike won a second term and watched in dismay as his chief of staff was forced to resign over a vicu

OK, it’s essentially official. Even if, by some miracle, legal battles in Ohio throw the outcome of the election into question, President Bush will remain President Bush until the year 2008. Half the networks have called Ohio for Bush, enshrining him as the victor in the sleepy minds of many. And as my one true love, the Supreme Court, informed us in 2000, we mustn’t disturb our fragile national psyche with silly questions of absentee whozits or civil rightamajiggies or provisional whatnots. If the people think Bush won, he won.

And they do, so he did.

I had expected this outcome long ago, but there’s one disappointment I wasn’t numb to. Justice Rehnquist. The evidence suggests his thyroid cancer is fatal. I can’t imagine he’ll be returning to the Court for any real tenure. Sure, he’d love to attend to his legacy, but you know, can’t cheat death and taxes ‘n’ all.

To me, the Supreme Court is a fragile miracle. It’s my favorite thing in our entire government. Even Scalia and Thomas, the big lugs. After all, lose them, and you lose the legitimacy of the Court in the eyes of much of America. And America, despite its lack of faith in all else, somehow continues to believe in the Court.

I don’t think the Court will turn drastically conservative or anything, but I think it could lose its progressive edge if the balance is tilted by a Bush nominee. And then it would become just another muddy, stale brick in the wall.

Aww. Soon our “Election 2004″ category tag will be obsolete. (Well… I better not say that yet. But seriously, I think it will be.)

NPR this morning was doing a cool thing where they’d just play the raw, unfiltered voices of voters and poll workers — it sounded almost as if these people had called and left messages on some big NPR answering machine, e.g. “Hi, my name is Chet, and I’m workin’ the polls here in Shreveport this morning… it’s a cold day… but let me tell you, the line is out the door!”

Anyway, it was really cool: Everyone sounded excited and, well, surprised by the long lines of voters.

I still think E-Day ought to be a holiday — in fact, it ought to be the holiday, a national celebration of democracy replete with parades and BBQ chicken.

But barring that, it’s nice to feel a sense of enthusiasm and engagement.

Can’t wait to tune in tonight. Kerry by 2.

From Slate’s Today’s Papers, penned today by David Samo:

The WP also fronts a piece that claims the election will “amount to a great national Rorschach test” where voters will choose their leader based on whose psychological profile they prefer. In troubled times, do they value Kerry’s discerning and nuanced approach to complex problems or Bush’s forceful and unwavering conviction? Or as pundit David Gergen puts it, do people want “fact-based [or] intuition-based policies”? The LAT also points to Bush’s hedgehog mentality (vs. Kerry’s fox) as the dominant factor in the electorate’s bitter polarization.

Wait, isn’t that just a choice between good policy and bad policy? Who says, “Yeah man, I love intuition-based policy”? Ohhh, wait, I know: People for whom “intuition” is a code-word for “faith.” Rats.

I was just talking with Aaron the other day about how intractable this big secular/religious divide seems. If somebody is basing their voting decision on, say, a belief in the rapidly-approaching end times (Rapture-based policy?) how do you engage with that?

I’m not saying, “religious people are scary”; I mean, come on, give me some credit here. I’m just asking, if religion is the animating force behind someone’s policy preferences, how can I even hope to deliberate with her? (Or she, for that matter, with me?)

In other news, I find this “fox vs. hedgehog” thing to be the lamest and least informative analogy ever.

But bring on the election! Foxes 4-eva!

So Election Day is just around the corner. We’ll* march to our polling places and make our voices heard.

*For all values of we where you ≠ disenfranchised

And then we’ll turn on the TV to see what happens!

So… here’s the question… which network should I watch?

I ain’t gonna do the clickmaster-exxxtreme channel-surfing thing. I just can’t handle it. I want to pick one channel at 8 p.m. and leave it locked in ’til midnight 4 a.m. (I will of course be scouring the internet like a hellion at the same time. But that’s a different issue.)

So which do you recommend, Snarkreaders at large? I’m seriously looking for suggestions here; I have no established preference.

Last week’s PIPA survey has gotten quite a bit of play in the press. In short, red and blue America live in different worlds. Red America (that is, over three-fourths of President Bush’s supporters in this election) sees a world where Saddam Hussein was the shadowy figure behind al Qaeda and 9/11, where somewhere in the crannies of Tikrit there sits a yet-undiscovered stash of weapons of mass destruction, and where most of the world cheers our efforts in Iraq. Blue America believes the opposite on all counts.

When it comes to what people believe about their candidates, majorities of the President’s supporters misperceive his foreign policy positions, while majorities of Kerry’s supporters perceive his positions accurately, weeks before an election where foreign policy is supposedly the biggest issue on the table.

But the survey respondents who give me the most hope for democracy are the 18-Percenters. Eighteen percent of Bush supporters still believe Iraq had WMD or a major WMD program even though they know that the Duelfer report concluded otherwise.

Hans Blix. David Kay. The Senate Intelligence Committee. Charles Duelfer. Either invisible to faith-based America, or simply wrong.

So this is what it comes down to. We march to the polls a week from today armed with completely different truths, answering completely different realities. How are we supposed to build a democracy together? And what could possibly be done about this divide?