What happened? Couldn’t have expected it, but I feel like Election Night 2002, squared. Yesterday’s Republican stranglehold remains, only given a stronger mandate after a long record of running from the far right. All that time and energy and money and hope simply wasted.* Instead of changing horses mid-apocalypse, we’re charging into it even faster.

As Michelle Cottle writes over at TNR:

Good Lord. Are these guys really going to behave as though they didn’t just survive a down-to-the-wire squeaker against a seriously mediocre challenger?… [T]his isn’t some Reaganesque landslide. And gloating conservatives would do well to keep in mind that an impressive number of Americans also turned out to vote against this insufferable administration.

Knowing this White House, the tendency to become even more arrogant will be overwhelming (especially with the Senate even more solidly red). But for once in his life, it would be nice for W. to show a little humility and graciousnes for the sake of the republic. The country is raw.

It’s at times like this that I wish I were religious–I’m at a loss for a belief system that could help me to comprehend the feelings of fear and pain and helplessness that come from watching a quasi-Fascist (militarist, corporatist, totalitarian, idolatrous, jingoist, rightist, arrogant) tide sweep over the land. God save us, indeed.

* yes, Kerry seems to have won Wisconsin by a hair, but every ward I worked in Fond du Lac went for Bush by big margins — even the ramshackle precincts down by the river.