It’s hard to find a Democrat who’s not devastated by election results
Was it all a dream? I know it really happened. I know I was actually standing on that pier in Boston Harbor four months ago, shoulder-to-shoulder with an ecstatic crowd, watching as John Kerry’s boat approached us.
We were listening to Bruce Springsteen’s song "Waitin’ on a Sunny Day," and Kerry and his mates grew ever larger.
Gathered alongside him on the vessel, waving to us, were 13 of his former crew from their service days in Vietnam.
They docked and Springsteen’s "No Surrender" began to blare, on its way to becoming the theme song of the Kerry campaign.
When Kerry, arriving to be nominated for president at the Democratic Convention, walked past the crowd, I shook his hand and wondered if he was going to make it.
"We are going to win back our democracy and our future," he told us.
All things seemed possible then.
Now the music has faded, the hopeful voices fallen silent. Mourning in this part of America.
You can feel the despair in my neighborhood, East Rock in New Haven. You can see it on people’s faces.
"I started to cry today in my shop when I was talking with a customer about this," said Lulu de Carrone, owner of Lulu’s European Coffeehouse on Cottage Street.
She told me she had never done this before, but she couldn’t help herself. She felt sick to her stomach.
"I’m mourning for democracy," she said.
Everybody who walked into Lulu’s Thursday morning seemed to feel it.
"I’m so angry," said a gray-haired woman. "If I were in my 20s, I’d move to Canada."
"I spoke yesterday with a friend of mine from Canada," de Carrone said. "He told me people there think Americans have gone nuts."
"I worked hard for our rights when I was in a younger generation," another customer said. "I don’t want to see them all eroded."
The people in Lulu’s and elsewhere are asking: Who will be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court over the next four years? Will the Roe vs. Wade decision be overturned? Will abortion become illegal in this country?
While I was talking with two of my neighbors outside our homes Thursday morning, one of them told me, "This is the first time I’ve woken up in the middle of the night, dismayed to think who our president is."
"So many things I care about are endangered," said my other neighbor, who is an educator.
He went down the list: school funding, the environment, separation of church and state, international relations.
We stood and wondered how "gay marriage" had decided this election.
When I was at the Democratic Party’s "celebration party" on election night, a gay man I know said he was deeply concerned that state amendments banning same-sex marriage were passing by overwhelming margins in 11 states (including Ohio).
"Moral values." That’s what voters in a nationwide exit polls survey cited most frequently as the key issue.
Some of these voters praised President Bush’s "integrity."
I’m trying to find the "moral values" in killing tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and sending our soldiers over there to die and not telling the truth about it.
But I guess "gay marriage" is more important.
After I voted with my family Tuesday morning, we saw Bob Voght of New Haven at the Pantry Restaurant on State Street where many people had flocked for breakfast. There was hope in the air.
I spotted Voght’s "Kerry" button and he told me he had just returned from New Hampshire. He had been there for a week, working to convince people in that "battleground" state to vote for Kerry. (He did win New Hampshire.)
When I called up Voght Wednesday, he said quietly, "I’m down, but I’ll survive."
Voght, who served in Vietnam, said, "I took personal umbrage from those ‘Swift Boat veterans’ trying to distort Kerry’s record. They did a tremendous amount of (political) damage."
Bush’s "integrity" wasn’t strong enough for him to speak out against those ads and those lies. Kerry and those other heroes who got off that boat in Boston fell victim to the big lie. Unbelievably, it worked.
Addressing the "moral values" question, Voght said of Bush, "I think his morality is highly over-rated."
What a bunch of losers
Thanks so much for posting all of it.