I woke up this morning in a state of high anxiety.

I launched Facebook, and the first thing I saw was a post from MoveOn.org saying “The day is finally here. How are you feeling? Go!” and the comments were exactly my feelings – about half of them hopeful, and the other half anxious and nauseated!

And, now, it seems that they’ve called Ohio for President Obama, which means that he’s won the electoral college, but he can’t deliver his acceptance speech until Romney concedes.

I was talking with a friend at work about how hard it must be to go this distance in the election process and then finally have to accept defeat.  As I was coming in to work this morning, NPR was announcing that they would be later interviewing the speechwriters for each side, to discuss the strategy of each candidate having two speeches in their pockets – one an acceptance, and the other a concession.

How would that be?  To know that you had been rejected for the highest job in the land, by the population of the United States (let’s just hope that the popular vote and the electoral vote end up going the same way – I would hate to see the kind of angst/anger that would result from Obama losing the popular vote).

Romney, with his repeated threats in recent days of dismantling “Obamacare” on day one of taking office, has been making me tremendously nervous.  No, I’m not entirely happy with the Affordable Care Act, but the problems I have with it are more to do with the reluctance of this country to dispose of the insurance company middlemen who are syphoning off money from a process that I do not believe can ever be a “market-driven” activity.  Healthcare just doesn’t work as a market, IMHO.  For one thing, the consumers can never really have the information to make educated choices between options and providers.  I often find that patients choose providers who are not necessarily following “best practices” or “evidence-based medicine”, but they go for the provider who makes them feel valued.

We voted, as a family, just over a week ago, on the Sunday when Sandy was rolling in, and we didn’t know, yet, what the next few days would bring.  The dear husband didn’t want to wait in  line, but tonight he thanked me, as the lines today at our polling place were long, and we each had to work long days today.  We arrived at the early polling place in the late afternoon, as the rain started falling, and I got in line, while Dad took boys to the playground of the community center to play.  By the time the rain started falling heavily, I had gotten into the gym where the line snaked back and forth 5 or 6 times across the length of the gym, and I was about 1/3 of the way through.  We all waited, and finally got to the voting booths.  S went in with me, and J was with Dad, on his shoulders.  S pushed all the buttons for me, and was very excited by the process.

I am so happy that we were able to include them in this historic reelection (and i’m so that it seems to have been a reelection).  It will be interesting to talk with them tomorrow about the results.  J said to me this morning on the way to school, when I asked him who he wanted to vote for for president “I want to vote for Romney!”

I asked him why.

He replied, “Because Romney is fighting against Obama!”

I think the whole election took on the narrative of an episode of Power Rangers to him, and he felt that Romney’s hate of Obama represented the stronger side.  Huh.

We’ll see what they say…