Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

03 Nov 2004, 8:31 a.m.

Election Night, 2004

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2004 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

Things to remember about the several hours after that last hope:

Pizza, booze, CNN, increasingly grim jokes. I couldn't believe that Coburn won, Bunning won, that the GOP would be consolidating its control of the Senate. Obama was no comfort at all.

I talked on the phone with a few friends and found some solace in conversation. I talked to my parents a little bit; they're BJP supporters (!) and feel the same way about the recent Indian elections as I felt about yesterday's results.

I slept under my desk with a pillow of free promotional t-shirts, ate a mockmeat breakfast, read some blogs, did some work, and then found out that Kerry had conceded. My stomach fell. I confirmed it on TV, swallowed my dreams, congratulated the one Republican watching with me, started to cry, and called Leonard.

Now, work.