Sob, Etc.
By Sam Bakken in News on Nov 3, 2004 9:52PM
Chicagoist has a friend that is known to hack away at G-Dubs for hours on end. This normally happens at night when he has been drinking. You can tell him over and over that you agree or you're with him or he's preaching to the choir or you hear him, but you just can't stop him. You have to leave the room and even then he will continue to seethe and spit and scream.
We hoped for a Kerry win for many more important reasons, but we were very excited to find out if there was anything left of the friend we had known in 1999. We were hoping to find out whether this friend had anything else to talk about, and to see if he rode Kerry as hard as he rode Bush, excruciatingly examining every action for mistakes. Now we have to wait another four years.
He has lost a bit of his repertoire ("illegitimate president"), but we haven't called him yet and frankly we're scared.
This whole thing is a bit of a blow. But now all we can think about is that every state we've lived in during and since 2000 has elected the Democratic candidate. We're having serious thoughts about launching a secession campaign and fighting for a return to the city-state. Viva Chicago! It may not be practical, but it's the day after. We'll probably (hopefully?) wise up in a couple of weeks.
We know, waa waa, so here's some results from other races we've previously discussed. You can see them for yourself here.
Instead of typing it in every projection below we'll tell you right now that 97 percent of the precincts are in, so we feel confident in our projections. (On a side note, NBC was the only network last night that called Ohio. They called it for Bush obviously, but when ABC and CBS called Nevada for Bush, because of a fairly large margin in Bush's favor, NBC wouldn't give the state to Bush. We assume it was because they were sticking by their Ohio call, but didn't want to project Bush as the winner of the 2004 election before a concession from Kerry. It doesn't really matter, but it was interesting that they were so cautious about calling a winner. They would have given Bush Nevada earlier had they not called Ohio.)
It was close, but with 99 percent of precincts counted in the 8th Congressional District Democrat Melissa Bean squeaked (man, was squeaker the word of the night last night or what?) by 36-year incumbent Republican Philip Crane 52 percent to 48 percent.
Representative In Congress for the 4th Congressional District Luis V. Gutierrez received 84 percent of the vote and will serve another term.
All three Democratic incumbent commissioners of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District were overwhelmingly re-elected. Even if you combine the votes for all three Republican challengers it doesn't beat the total for any one of the three Democrats.
Voters re-elected Democrat Richard A. Devine as State's Attorney. He received 87 percent of the vote.
Cook County Recorder of Deeds went to incumbent Democrat Eugene "Gene" Moore. Running for an office that he wanted to eliminate (though it made sense to us) didn't work for Republican John Cox. Moore received 83 percent of the vote.
Dorothy A. Brown was re-elected as Clerk of the Circuit Court with 85 percent of the vote.
Democrat Michelle Jordan will fill Nancy Sidote Salyers' vacant seat on the Cook County Judicial Circuit. She received 84 percent of the vote.
All 71 Cook County circuit court judges were retained. We didn't think Susan McDunn had a chance, but 68 percent of voters gave her a yes. That's quite a bit more than the 60 percent she needed .
The Treatment On Demand referendum passed with 84 percent of the vote.