After a couple of days of mourning and negativity, I sat down this morning and tried to find the reasons to keep trying. I've posted this on my livejournal, but I thought I'd also like to share it here. I'm sure all of it has been said somewhere or another, but here's my take on it.
So, it's bleak, but it wasn't an utter disaster.
The Democrats nearly defeated an incumbent war-time president who enjoyed 90 percent popularity at one point in his presidency. Almost every state mirrored the 2000 result. Things are still pretty much evenly divided, even in most of the red states there are a lot of blue votes. Bush received more presidential votes than anyone in history, it's true, but the person who received the second-highest number is John Kerry. Yes, Bush won many, many more counties, but I don't think we're likely to see "Votes for cows and prairie dogs" movements any time soon. The urban/rural split is as old as the country, and it gives a distinct land-mass advantage to the party aligned with rural voters. That's reality.
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