This video from The Onion describes me all too well:

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

No doubt. I mean, what the hell do I blog about now? It was so easy just to repeat all the stuff I read on Daily Kos. And it helped me stay in denial about my obsessive computer use and nagging sense of loneliness. Time to develop a World of Warcraft addiction and give myself a renewed sense of purpose.

America, for all its many and well-documented flaws, can be pretty great. Only a few decades ago, the circumstances that made this photo possible would not have existed. There’s no way that someone like me would have gone to law school, found a job, and traveled to Washington, D.C. as part of a leadership training. And there’s no way that a black man with an exotic-sounding name would have been elected senator from a Midwestern state. But in this country, things are impossible until, one day, they’re not. Separate paths of hard work and serendipity led us to this brief encounter: two somewhat geeky lawyers who don’t look like most of the people around us. Two guys who could not have gotten to this moment in time without the support of so many others.

In President-elect Obama, I see elements of my own story writ much larger. His election also reminds me that I shouldn’t spend so much time believing the myth of my own outsider status. The future is here and I’m so excited to discover my place in it.

Image description: a February 2005 photo of me and then-Senator Obama taken in the tunnels under the Capitol building in Washington, DC. Obama is standing to my left in a charcoal suit, leaning forward slightly and smiling at the camera. I’m wearing a leather jacket over a shirt and tie, my facial expression entirely too serious.

I’m probably going to be too preoccupied tomorrow to do much blogging. But since a bazillion other bloggers are posting their electoral prognostications, I might as well do the same:

• Obama will win the Electoral College 338-200. Virginia will be called for Obama soon after the polls close, setting the tone for the evening. Florida and Ohio will follow suit, as will Colorado and Nevada. McCain will eke it out in Missouri and North Carolina.
• Obama will win the popular vote by 6%.
• Dems will control 59 Senate seats. In Minnesota, Franken will pull out a win on the strength of Obama’s coattails. 
• The Dems will pick up 22 House seats. In Minnesota, Madia will win in the 3rd. I’d love to see Bachmann go down, but the 6th is probably the friendliest territory in the state for her brand of fringe conservatism.
• In state races, Dems will get a veto-proof majority in the House. The constitutional amendment to raise the sales tax less than one percent to fund the arts and outdoors will narrowly pass.

Of course, my readers reserve the right to mock me if my predictions prove wrong, but I feel pretty good about them.

I sense that most of my readers share my political sympathies, but please do inform yourself and vote, even if it’s not for my guy. This election is too important and too historical to sit out.

How’s this for environmentally-induced cognitive dissonance: it was almost seventy degrees and dark by six in the evening. It’s like I was magically transported to some bizarro version of Minnesota.

For Halloween, I dressed up as a lawyer–complete in suit and tie–and sponsored my sister’s admission to the Minnesota bar. Over 600 hundred attorneys were sworn in at today’s ceremony. Having four law schools in the Twin Cities ensures that the supply of freshly minted lawyers always exceeds demand. I had friends who were still waiting tables after they passed the bar, and this was in the halcyon days of the late nineties. The job market confronting most of today’s new attorneys is much grimmer.

But I have more immediate concerns, like wondering whether the dry cleaners can get the sacrificial goat’s blood out of my tie. Those arterial sprays are messy.