btw, I wanted to mention that yesterday I managed to miss the fact that the exit polls had called a sweep for Kerry!

I chalk this up to the same survival instinct my 84-year old dad used to survive 8 days on his basement floor.

I was frantically upset entirely because I’d heard about the huge turnout in NJ breaking 2-to-1 for Kerry, and because I’d read on Kerry Spot that 57% of the national turnout was women.

But my poor husband. What a nightmare his day was.

First he gets interviewed at length, as an American pundit and expert on the U.S. elections (!), by French radio. Important French radio; French radio on the order of NPR radio.

Then he gets calls from Important French People who’ve heard him on French radio.

He said he can see why pundits are pundits; it’s a total high.

So next he learns that John Kerry is mopping the floor with George Bush. The exit polls say so, the media says so, and the White House isn’t not saying so.

He thinks, “That’s crazy.”

But then, after awhile, he thinks: HEY! JOHN KERRY IS MOPPING THE FLOOR WITH GEORGE BUSH!

He’s already on a high, so why not?

So 5 o’clock comes, and he’s supposed to go to the French embassy ‘for election night’ (I didn’t ask), and apparently no one there is watching TV or cruising right-wing blogs, so no one gets the word that the facts on the ground are starting to change.

Of course, neither do I, since I have no idea that the Bad News of the day was the exit polls. I’m still crushed by the NJ turnout, and no one’s on TV saying, ‘Don’t worry folks, we got the NJ turnout figure all wrong.’

So my husband, by the time he gets home, around 10:30, has still heard nothing about the returns. He finds me in a state of obvious despair, which he logically interprets to mean that John Kerry is still mopping the floor with George Bush.

I log off rogerlsimon, and drag myself back into the bedroom, which is now the home of PBS & Gwen Ifill instead of Fox News and Brit Hume. My husband takes a look at me and offers to turn the TV off & go watch downstairs.

“There’s no reason for you to lose any sleep over this,” he says.

He’s being chivalrous, and I don’t have a clue.

I climb in bed, will myself to sleep, and dream that George Bush has lost, John Kerry has won, and I’m screaming at my husband. The dream is so bad it wakes me up and I’m flooded with relief that it was a dream.

Then I fall back to sleep and have another dream in which George Bush has lost and John Kerry has won.

So in the morning I open my eyes and just lie there for a minute or two, gathering my courage.

I’m thinking: It’s over, and I have to go find out that it’s over.

The rest is history.

When my husband gets up I find out he has stayed up until NBC called Ohio, at which point he knows it’s over.

He’s completely blown away.

He always knew a Kerry win was a long shot.

He got his hopes up when Kerry tied up the race; he thought it was possible.

Then he had the entire universe telling him it was not only possible, it was actually happening.

Let me tell you.

If you think those exit polls were hard on Bush supporters, they were hell on the other guys.