Tues­day saw Obama shirts, but­tons, hats, sweat­shirts, signs, and mag­nets take over. Nary a Repub­li­can sup­porter was to be found. I sus­pect they were in hid­ing as usual around this school. But the mood was very pen­sive. I think we real­ized that the elec­tion would be over soon, yet we were (or I was, at least), run­ning over pos­si­ble sce­nar­ios: Would Obama and Rossi win? What if McCain grabs Ohio and Penn­syl­va­nia? Florida? Palin as vice pres­i­dent? Maybe Drudge was right after all?

Stu­dents and teach­ers were testy, cranky, and gen­er­ally pes­simistic. We’re elit­ist Seat­tleites who dis­trust any state that isn’t touch­ing an ocean, and gen­er­ally con­sider our red-state cousins as Repub­li­can peons. We’ve seen elec­tions in our grasp before… only to have it wretched away by some sus­pect voter reg­is­tra­tion issues in a swing state or a politically-charged and unusual supreme court decision.

As classes got out, we filed to dif­fer­ent par­ties, turned on MSNBC, and waited. With dis­be­lief in our eyes we saw Penn­syl­va­nia go for Obama, and then Ohio, and Vir­ginia, and Nevada. Then we added up the elec­toral votes, and saw that California+Washington would push past the myth­i­cal 270 which had eluded us for the pre­vi­ous two elec­tions. Stunned at what was happening–even thought deep down we knew it would happen–the net­works called the elec­tion for a demo­c­rat, and then McCain gave his con­ces­sion speech. The rest of the night was a blur of jubi­la­tion, par­ty­ing and eat­ing. My phone lit up with calls and texts from friends who were try­ing to con­firm they weren’t dreaming.

After every­one left and Eddy had gone to bed, I sat in my liv­ing room with the pro­jec­tor still on MSNBC look­ing at results on my lap­top. Out­side stu­dents, par­ents, and home­less were singing happy songs while wan­der­ing the streets drunk and happy. I didn’t want to go to bed–I wanted to let it sink in.

Today the mood on cam­pus was dif­fer­ent. No more Obama shirts were seen, but almost every­one had a lit­tle bounce in their step, they were look­ing up instead of down, and peo­ple were smil­ing again. I think they’re in disbelief–and that’s because I’m sure it still hasn’t hit yet.

Savour this moment.

No, they weren’t wrong. Matt Drudge.