MORNING IN AMERICA

It's not quite the morning in America that the Reagan campaign used to such great effect during the 1984 election, but I'll take it. Even though Kerry still refuses to concede at this hour, and the networks refuse to put Ohio and New Mexico (and probably Iowa) in the Bush column, it seems clear that George W. Bush has won re-election. Fortunately, the nightmare scenario I envisioned has not come to pass. While there are hints of 2000 in the talk of provisional ballots in Ohio, the President has such a large lead in the Buckeye State (over 130,000) that it doesn't seem possible he could lose even after all the provisional ballots are counted. More importantly, from a public relations standpoint, Bush is leading by a significant margin in the popular vote (almost 4 million). It's only a matter of time before Kerry reads the handwriting on the wall and officially brings this race to a close.