Odd girl out

It's election night in America. On the television are alternating scenes of happiness and devastation, and yet I sit here feeling empty. I voted for one of these tickets but was never happy with my choices and I think on some level I was still hoping for a viable third choice up until I walked into that voting booth and had to mark my choice. I can't celebrate with the Obama supporters because I'm too moderate for them and I can't mourn with the McCain supporters because I'm too moderate for them...when will there be a candidate for President that I can believe in? The "big tent" apparently doesn't have room for me or those like me. Somehow, that just leaves me feeling sad.

Additionally, can I just take a moment to rant about the national coverage of today's activities? They had freakin' called the presidential race hours before our polls closed here in California, before I even got home from work, for goodness' sake. I'm a firm believer in voting the entire ballot, so the fact that my vote for President won't count didn't deter me from standing in line in the rain, but I know for a fact that there were people throwing their sample ballots in the trash and walking away after it came over the radio. Thank you, CNN and MSNBC and CBS and all of the rest, for not being able to wait a short couple of hours to start congratulating yourselves so that the west coast could finish voting before you called it. Seriously, if this cannot be stopped then we need to align the voting hours across the country and not announce any results until each of the states are finished voting because we Californians get fairly sick of being the largest state in the union and yet completely superfluous to the choice of a President.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to bed.