John Kerry's concession speech sounded to me like every other concession speech given by anyone who loses an election, regardless of the situation. I don't think I want to ever see a candidate come out and yell, "The voters are idiots," but there are other things that could be said in what should be a moment of candor, not political niceties. I didn't catch the Alan Keyes concession speech — if, indeed, he's even given one — but I have a hunch he didn't talk of linking arms and working together with people he thinks are destroying America.

My friend Shelly Goldstein phoned me just before the speech and said, "No matter what he says, everyone will say it was his finest moment and "Why couldn't he have spoken like that during the campaign?" Given the few moments of post-concession analysis I caught on MSNBC, I'd say she was right. But really, it was the same Kerry and the same speech everyone else gives.

One other thought I had during Kerry's speech: I'm sick of people talking about fighting for me. No one who ever promised to "fight for me" has ever won anything for me and some have done me damage. What I want is a guy who'll promise to fight people who want to fight for me. And then I'll probably have to get someone to fight the guy who's fighting the guy who's fighting for me. And then…

I want to quote this paragraph from the Zogby Poll website, just so I can link back to it easily in the future…

"We feel strongly that our pre-election polls were accurate on virtually every state. Our predictions on many of the key battleground states like Ohio and Florida were within the margin of error. I thought we captured a trend, but apparently that result didn't materialize. We always saw a close race, and a close race is what we've got. I've called this the Armageddon Election for some time — a closely-divided electorate with high partisan intensity on each side."

Okay, he's right about that last part. But if a pollster can say, "X will win big" and then X loses and the pollster is still to be considered accurate…well, then that poll wasn't good for much of anything, was it? A saner view would be that he called a lot of states for Kerry that were within the margin of error and so should not have been called for anyone.

Couldn't sleep. Got up about an hour ago to see if somehow America had suddenly realized last night was a huge miscount. Instead, I heard someone calling on all Americans to "get behind our President."

I never know what that means. Seriously. When someone says "support the President" (whoever it is), I never know what they're expecting me to do or not do.

The only thing I can think of is that they don't want to hear negative comments or criticism. This is generally for their own benefit, not the country's. The right to say you think any elected official is a liar or a cheat or an idiot is one of our most sacred rights in America. It's much more important than any right they may have, or think they have, not to hear words that distress them or call their views into question.

Honestly, I can't think of any other thing that "support the President" means, other than to shut up about him. And let's be honest. People who didn't like Bush yesterday will, if anything, like him less today. And they won't shut up about him any more than all those people who loathe the Clintons have ever shut up about the Clintons.

A friend this morning wrote me that he thinks I understated how much Democrats are still questioning the legitimacy of the Bush election of 2000. Yeah, maybe. But it mostly came down to little snide comments about "Our Commander-in Thief." This time, I think the anger is going to be such that it will have to turn into something more palpable. This is not necessarily what I want…just what I think is going to have to happen with so many Americans out there feeling that we have a very bad man (bad in terms of values but also in terms of competence) in the White House.

As I was writing the above, someone called to say Kerry had phoned Bush to concede and will soon make a public statement. Not surprising, of course, and I'm sure he will be gracious and say things intended to bind wounds. I don't think it will help. I think there are too many people out there who were once unfairly accused of being "Bush-haters" who will now embrace that label; who will feel that the way to win elections in this country is to lie about the other side as egregiously as they think the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" lied about John Kerry; who will think not that every Bush supporter was stupid but that the Republican margin of victory consists of people who believe we found Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, Saddam Hussein was the mastermind of 9/11, and that there was something "French" about John Kerry.

When Bill Clinton won, there was a lot of rage at him…people who felt that even though he might have won by the rules, he had not won in a moral sense. To them, he lacked any higher entitlement to the presidency. That rage had to come out in some form, and it came out in books and talk radio hosts claiming he'd had people murdered or was running a cocaine-smuggling operation. It came out as a large chunk of America saying, "He's not my president." It came out as an impeachment that, whatever you think of its merits, sure did a lot of damage to a lot of this country. Today, you have what is probably a larger group of citizens who have a rage at George W. Bush, and also the very real fear that a guy who's driven up the deficit to record proportions, harmed the lives of folks at the bottom of society and made the whole world a more dangerous place will now feel he has a mandate to do a lot more of all these things.

I'm not saying all those fears are justified but they're there, and so is the rage. It's got to manifest itself somewhere, and it won't be pretty.

Assuming Ohio goes the way it's likely Ohio will go, we're going to be reading articles for months on why John Kerry lost. There'll be dozens of reasons, most of them probably valid to some extent. But I suspect the conventional wisdom will boil down to two reasons, one being that Kerry was not a very appealing candidate to most people. Even supporters found him long-winded and he somehow managed to sound inconsistent even when being consistent. To a lot of voters, he was just a skinny Ted Kennedy: Massachusetts Liberal. Rich kid. Thought he was better than all of us. That he was also a war hero didn't resonate with a lot of voters who considered Bill Clinton unfit for the presidency due to supposed draft-dodging. Somehow, Bush — though born into privilege — convinced a lot of people he was a down-home Texas rancher…and one of them.

The other reason, I'm afraid, will be that the Democrats weren't mean enough. I know a lot of Republicans think the Dems were plenty rough on Bush but it was not as bad as it could have been. Next time, I'm afraid, it will be.

As I think I said here a few weeks ago, it was always destined to be a sad election, no matter who won. No matter who it was, we were going to wind up with a president detested by about half the nation. In 2000, I think Democrats were better sports than the Republicans would have been if their guy had lost with a minority of the popular vote and so many very real questions about uncounted ballots and suppressed voters. This time, Bush's win seems cleaner but I think this country will wind up more divided than ever…and to the extent that happens, we all lose.

Presidencies have a way of not going the way we expect. No one who voted for Bush four years ago thought he'd drive up the deficit and get us deep into "nation-building" in Iraq. His second term may be equally full of surprises for all. At the very least, he's the one who got us into debt and Iraq and now, he's the one who's going to have to figure out how to get us out of both. I sure hope he succeeds.

Well, it looks like Mr. Zogby's projection of 311 electoral votes was way off the mark. Let's all remember that the next time pollsters tell us who's going to win in some election, month after next. Zogby blew it after the voting had already started.

Needless to say, I'm not happy about how things have gone tonight. I don't have any feelings worth posting here…just the obvious unhappiness. More later if I think of anything.

Ralph Nader just gave a very sad, rambling speech which I guess was a concession (I didn't hear it all) but he did not look well. I don't mean he looked like a man who was depressed at losing. He looked like a man who was ill. He was talking about how the American people will not stand for the kinds of injustices they presently endure, especially in terms of health care and folks living below the poverty level. I'd like to think he's right but he sure didn't sound like the kind of person who can help make that happen.

One question that I wish some interviewer had put to Ralph Nader is: "If we asked John Kerry and George W. Bush what they'd consider a failure on November 2, we know what they'd have said. They'd have said, 'Losing the presidency.' What would you, Ralph Nader, consider a failure on November 2?"

He probably would have denied any outcome would be a failure but, of course, that option does not exist in politics. If there's something to be won, there's something to be lost. An honest answer would probably have been that a "loss" would have been such a poor showing as to lessen the credibility of all independent candidates, and especially his own for the future. That's pretty much what's happening. He hit 2.7% last time and he'll be lucky to make 1% this year. Remember when he used to be a force for good?

C-Span 2 is running a cavalcade of old presidential victory and concession speeches. I'm watching Bill Clinton thanking supporters in 1996…waiting to see if they run Al Gore's 2000 concession speech or his 2000 non-concession speech or both. Both would be a good reminder of how you should never count your chickens until they're recounted.

Major upset.

"This presidential race is hotter than the devil's ankle!"

I love it when news commentators have nothing to say but plenty of time to fill. Jeff Greenfield and the boys on CNN are telling us that money is important in winning an election.

The CNN Election Night set looks like the producers of Tron had a garage sale.

At this moment, it's all still too close to call. We have a lot of news sources tossing out exit poll data along with the caveat that it doesn't mean a lot. Hey, if it doesn't mean a lot, why are you reporting it?

Part of me hopes that the winner, whoever it is, wins by a large enough margin that no one can say he didn't win for real. But another part of me kinda hopes that one guy wins the electoral vote and the other guy wins the popular. Maybe if it happens again, it will finally rid us of the silly Electoral College and move up to just awarding the presidency to the guy who gets the most votes.

The Zogby Poll has just predicted Kerry will win with at least 311 electoral votes. I don't particularly believe that number and I'm wondering why Zogby made such a call at 3 PM on Election Day. Were any of his clients asking for a projection only hours before we have actual numbers? No other pollster seems to have made a "final call" after late Monday…why did Zogby put his ass on the line like that? Is it just that the stats he has are overwhelming and he wanted the prestige of being the only major pollster to forecast a Kerry landslide? Perhaps…but doesn't he run the risk of being laughed out of his profession if Bush wins?

I'm not saying he's right or wrong…though if he's right, it will mean enormous bragging rights. There have been others, of course, who have been saying for days or weeks that Bush can't lose or that Kerry will win big, but those all strike me as voodoo projections. If they're right, they'll be right the way one of those Magic Eight Balls is intermittently right. Years ago, I worked on a "reality" TV show that occasionally gave air time to people who claimed, via psychic means or otherwise, to be able to forecast the future. We were lobbied many a time by someone who had proof they'd correctly predicted the scores of all seven World Series games or the Dow Jones closing numbers for the last month. Closer investigation revealed that they were operating on Dumb Luck. The lady who called all the World Series games was part of a "Psychic Society" where several thousand alleged seers each predicted the totals…and she was the one who was right. (She thought it proved psychic powers. We thought it proved The Law of Averages.)

Zogby isn't quite in that category. He's using actual polls and voting models and a methodology built on science. Still, I can't help but think it's not as exact a science as he makes it out to be…so if he's right, there'll be a certain amount of luck in there. And whatever Internet sites prove to have gotten it right will have been even luckier.

I'm almost disappointed: No long lines, no exit pollsters, no poll watchers, no Michael Moore cameramen, no excitement. Guess this is what happens when you live in a non-battleground state.

One lady was ahead of me, and she wasn't even a voter in our precinct. She was a caregiver for a local resident who's recuperating from a recent heart attack. It was so recent that he wasn't able to request an absentee ballot but he was, nonetheless, determined to vote that day. She brought down his driver's license and asked if there was any way she could take a ballot to him, let him mark it and then bring it back. Getting out of bed and down to the polling place might, she said, be bad for his health. "He says he's going to vote, even if he has to crawl here on his hands and knees."

The precinct workers told her they were sorry but there was no way they could let her take a ballot out of the building…especially someone else's ballot. She sighed and said, "Okay. I'm going to have to rent a wheelchair and I'll bring him here in an hour or so." (Handily, there's a place that rents and sells wheelchairs two doors down from where we vote.)

I voted. It was odd, the other day when I marked my ballot and again today when I voted, to take my attention away from Bush vs. Kerry and to focus on propositions, judges, etc. I think I voted to okay a bond issue to raise money to do stem-cell research in Indian Casinos.

On the way out, I told the folks working there I'd expected to wait in a long line. One said, "If you'd come in at 8 AM, you would have. All those people, stopping on their way to work…"

Another precinct worker said, "I'm telling you, it wasn't that. It was all those stories on the news about how you'll have to wait in line two, three hours to vote. Everyone wanted to get here early."

As I left, a man was picking up his ballot and I heard him mutter, "Wish I could cast this back in Ohio where it'll do more good." He should be glad he didn't have to crawl to our polling place on his hands and knees.

For those of you interested, here's what's up with the broken battery door on my Nikon Coolpix 990…

I called the Nikon company. A guy there said, "Yeah, those break a lot." Said to send it in for repairs and they'll give me an estimate, which will likely be in the $150 range. With no guarantee it won't break again tomorrow.

I called the local Nikon authorized service shop. A guy there said, "Yeah, those break once in a while." If I drive it out to Encino and then come back a few days later, I can get it fixed for around $90. With no guarantee it won't break again tomorrow.

I called a large camera shop that's just down the street and has a repair division. A guy there said, "Yeah, those break a lot. If you bring it in, we can fix it for around $90 but it really isn't worth it. That camera's getting to be obsolete and I wouldn't put any more money in it. We sell a black paper tape for around $5 a roll that people have used to hold the camera door shut. It's not perfect but it'll let you use the camera.

Guess what I'm considering.