Eight years ago Tuesday I was at special committee meeting to decide data elements for a National Post-secondary Education Data Report. The meeting ran until 7 p.m. and was scheduled to start up at 7 a.m. the next morning. We were a small group and we were meeting in the Mayflower Hotel in Washington D.C.. It was a really swanky place, but had a bunch of "small" room clustered on one floor that used to house the servants the guest brought along with them. That was where we were housed. As it turned out the Mayflower was the site of the DNC's scheduled Victory Party. The VIPs were in one closed access ballroom and the worker bees were in a more open access, cash bar, free food, ballroom. So after dinner, three other data geeks and I wandered into the Worker Bee Party. Man everybody was feeling good. About 9 p.m., the Democrats decided they had won and paired up and went towards private places. My little group continued to graze the cheese and crackers and bummed a couple or four of "open" bottles of wine from the cash bar as it closed up.
We were still watching the big screen TVs when things began to get hinky. All of a sudden Bush had won. Then maybe he didn't. Maybe they tied.
The open wine attracted a half dozen of 40 type worker bees that had not paired up and we kind of created a "group" of moaning, pissing, cussing, Democrats.
This went on until 11:00 when the clean up staff swept us out into the hall. The hard core, went into the Hotel Bar and I went up to bed. I Turned on the TV to hear the latest while I got ready for bed. I shouldn't have ought to have done that. At 12:30 I got dressed and went down to the bar so as to have company during this morbid wait. At 1 a.m. the bar was supposed to close. It didn't. There we were a dozen hard core DNC staff, a few errant Democrats form wherever, the hotel cleaning staff, the night doorman, the night desk people etc.. At 3 a.m. I gave it over to history and went to bed.
In 2004 I went to a watch party at a neighbors. It was over quicker.
Even with the corruption and death involved America chose the path of Cheney and Bush again.
Now here we are in 2008. Wife and I will most probably watch the election returns alone this time.
We expect the best and fear the worst.
All I know for sure is that what ever happens, America will NOT wake up on November 5th and say, oh well, maybe next time.
This is a definitive historical moment.
From here forward we will not be the same.
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