A heartfelt tribute to the 18 to 29 year-olds who stayed home yesterday and didn’t vote, as written by Cake’s John McCrea (and pointed out to me on Tuesday evening by literary agent Victoria Wisdom):
“How do you afford your rock’n’roll lifestyle?
How do you afford your rock’n’roll lifestyle?
How do you afford your rock’n’roll lifestyle?
Excess ain’t rebellion.
You’re drinking what they’re selling.
Your self-destruction doesn’t hurt them.
Your chaos won’t convert them.
They’re so happy to rebuild it.
You’ll never really kill it.
Yeah, excess ain’t rebellion.
You’re drinking what they’re selling.
Excess ain’t rebellion.
You’re drinking,
You’re drinking,
You’re drinking what they’re selling.”

Oh, sorry….it’s not over. Provisional votes in Ohio are going to be fought over for the next few days, apparently. The bad guys haven’t won…yet. They probably will when it’s all said and done. I still feel as if I understand what the more strident types were feeling just before the beginning of the Civil War. It wouldn’t be very smart, but it would sure feel terrific to split this country in two and let the Red’s have their country and let the Blue’s have theirs. There would be a kind of satisfaction in that.

At roughly 7:55 pm Pacific, MSNBC’s Brian Williams announced that exit polls had determined that the 18 to 29 year-olds, who had the power to tip the election for Kerry, haven’t turned out in any stronger numbers than they did in 2000. MSNBC exit poll data says that this group delivered 17% of today’s total vote, which is exactly what the same youth-vote percentage was in 2000. As MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said right after this, young voters “will always leave you at the altar.” Two days ago I wrote that if the 29-and-unders follow previous election patterns and sit on their ass in front of the tube and don’t show up in sufficient numbers, they will be known Wednesday morning as the Generation of Shame. Thanks, scumbags!

And so begins November 2nd, almost certain to be one of the greatest television-watching days in the history of the medium, and certainly among the most dramatic in the history of the country.