Me and O on Election Night at the Hard Rock in Lisbon

During the 2008 campaign I was living in Portugal and spent way too much time on the beautiful train ride along the Tagus River peering into the inch-square screen of my Blackberry, reading Andrew Sullivan and TPM and other bloggers’ accounts of that amazing season. I made calls into Pennsylvania and Virginia, including one election eve call to an older African-American man in Newport News who said he was going to ride his bike over to the synagogue to cast his ballot for Obama (that’s America, baby!). And when they called it at around 5AM local time, I totally lost it. It was such a catharsis after the shame and fury of the Bush years, and seemed to promise a new era for the country.

Nate Silver, statistics dude, “America’s Boyfriend”

I’m still totally behind Obama this time around, but with what Jim Fallows calls the marriage-vs.-first date awareness of his goods and bads rather than starry-eyed hopefulness. This Presidential election has been all about Nate Silver for me: what does the data say about the results of campaigning, not how do we all feel about it. Well, I guess I still tuned into Andrew Sullivan, who after the first debate chronicled one man’s descent into the O-byss in somewhat alarming fashion. I had to turn the dude off for a while.

But I also took a tip from a friend who is a fellow Obamanaut, but had also gotten out to work for local candidates. I worked for the Elizabeth Warren Senate campaign and found a very different connection to her message, which grabbed a lot of Boston-area people in a kind of unrepentant, “f@#k yeah, we are Massachusetts liberals and Scott Brown is NOT OUR REGULAR GUY” way. I made calls and on Election Day was a poll observer, watching my precinct neighbors check in to vote, ages 18 to 87. The idea was to update likely Warren voter lists in real time to allow efficient get out the vote efforts throughout the day. In the end, it was probably overkill (but good database development for the next time), as Warren won handily on an amazing night for female Senate candidates. Living in a blue state, it felt good to work on a campaign on the neighborhood level rather than just hoping to convince New Hampshire voters to grace my candidate with their favour.

His Seitanic Majesty

And now the election is over. We’ll see if evidence of the continued, dramatic transformation of the electorate can make a dent in psycho Republican obstructionism in Congress this time around. I’d like to think that these Ohio Romney supporters will wake up to realize that Obama’s second term does not, in fact, promise an America turned into a “bleak hellscape.” But, not to freak them out further, I did make what I’d have to say was truly a Great Seitan just a few days before the election. I boiled up the flour with some choice organic kelp and other gloop, made a vegan but unspeakably rich sauce, whipped up some creamed spinach and mashed spuds, and the Lady Seitan made her badass roasted veg (for our school’s progressive dinner). This was from the Candle 79 cookbook, by the chefs at a terrific NY vegan restaurant. I’m not saying this was a Seitanic ritual heralding an end-times scouring of meat from our diets, but if that’s the way you want to take it, I can’t stop you.