We won!

"Victory is mine! Victory is mine! Great day in the morning, people, victory is mine. I drink from the keg of glory, Donna. Bring me the finest muffins and bagels in all the land." - Josh Lyman

Well, now that I am well-rested and recovered from weeks of working long hours and no sleep, and the election night-well-into-the-morning celebration (I can't believe they made us go to work the next day!), I'm here for an update. The past few weeks have been a lot of fun. I really ended up loving working in logistics. We were all uneasy about it at first, but the office atmosphere was so much fun. I think we're all really going to miss the people at Marshall St., and I think we realized that, even though things got scrapped and things changed daily and we were still re-making maps on election day, the work that we did really was vital to the GOTV effort. We managed to pull off what seemed to be an impossible task, and Patrick (our boss) and all the staging site managers who used our maps told us that we did a fantastic job. So I feel like it was all worth it, the long hours and the frustration and hard work.

Election Day was pretty chaotic - I was in the Marshall St. office, coordinating vans with staging site managers and managing rovers (people who go to the polling places and get turnout numbers). Then I had to go home and get all prettied up so I could work the VIP room at the Election Night party. That was a lot of fun - I've never really watched election results with a group of that many people before. There's such an energy in the room (especially because we did so well overall) as the results come in, watching like, 3 different television channels at once, and people getting updates on their palm pilots and blackberries. Then, of course, after the official party at the Warwick, we all went out to the bar and continued the celebration until about 4am, lol.

Unless you live under a rock or were vacationing on the moon this week, you oughta know that the Democrats ("Laura's team," as Becky likes to call them) had a great day on Tuesday. We won back control of the US House of Representatives, paving the way for the FIRST female Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. That's historic, folks. And even though the Senate is still too close to call, we made a huge gain there, too. In the Virginia race (the single outstanding seat which will tip the balance of power to the Democrats), Webb is leading Allen by 7,200 votes, so even though Allen won't concede, that is looking good for us.

Here in Pennsylvania, the Governor was reelected (thanks to my superior efforts, of course), and Bob Casey defeated Rick Santorum for a Senate seat, both with close to a 60-40 margin. In several close, critical Congressional races, Patrick Murphy (I *heart* him), Joe Sestak, Chris Carney, and Jason Altmire defeated Republican incumbents. Also, incumbent Allyson Schwartz handily defeated that idiot Raj Peter Bhakta (which really wasn't in question, but I want to mention it anyway because I've mentioned him on this blog, and because him getting his ass handed to him makes me happy). Sadly, Lois Murphy received her second so-close-it's-painful loss to Jim Gerlach.

I like to think that the overwhelming Democratic victory in southeastern PA was due in large part to my superior fundraising skills, as well as my fantastic mapping effort. Do you realize how many paper cuts I got working on those maps? (I call them "paper cuts for Patrick." I also describe what I did as "mapping for Murphy," "logistics for Lois," and "coloring for Casey." I like alliteration.)

In other political news, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld resigned yesterday. Woohoo! 'Bout friggin' time. I'm still puzzling over the timing of the announcement. Wouldn't it have helped the Republicans more if he resigned, like, 3 weeks ago? Since many voters made decisions based on displeasure with the Bush administration, several candidates could have benefited from a Rumsfeld resignation. On the other hand, the administration may have been saving the announcement for right after the election because it changes the news story from "Democrats take over Washington" to something else. Also, it's possible that Rumsfeld wouldn't have resigned unless the GOP got its collective ass handed to it.

I think that's all for now. I'll post more later on all the non-political stuff going on in the world. (Really, apparently there's, like, other news out there.)