Eight Years?

A jarring thought just hit me: it has been eight years since the disputed 2000 presidential election. This is jarring to me because I remember that election night like it happened last week.

I was a junior in college at the time, and I watched the results come in with two of my fellow student council members/political junkies. We watched CNN until pretty late at night. I had guaranteed to my more skeptical friends that Al Gore would thread the needle by carrying Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida. One-by-one these keys bricks fell into place, and when Florida was called, the whoops rose from my friends' third-floor apartment and the vodka flowed freely. However, when the Florida call was rescinded by the networks, confusion, then anger, then sadness, then despair, and then depression came and went in rapid succession, followed by more vodka, this time for a different purpose. I remember distinctly walking home along the Arts quad, with one of my friends it tow, blaming me for the loss because I had not "delivered" the states I promised would go blue. Silly me. When I got home, I flopped immediately into bed. I woke up around 4 AM, and checked CNN.com which said Bush won Florida, and went back to bed. We all know what transpired over the next month.

Anyway, I just can't believe it has been eight years since all of that went down. It seems like election night 2000 was more recent than election night 2004, though that may be because the latter was so awful it is worth suppressing from the Democratic perspective (in 2000, Democrats did have a fantastic night in the Senate races). Maybe all of this just means I am getting old.