The morning after the night before

'Democrats take House.' Three words which feel....good. Very good. Better than I had thought they would. And the Senate is still possible. That would feel even better.

I want to simply enjoy that result for a while. Before the disillusionment sets in; before the Democrats again demonstrate their unerring ability to disappoint. No, right now, I just want to savour the sense of not being completely alienated from the place I come from.

These sorts of things sound hopelessly sentimental, I know. But I remind myself of what I felt like two years ago, on what turned out to be a very unpleasant early morning in the Franconian town where I was then living.

Central European Time may have meant that the results could be digested as part of an early breakfast, but in the morning darkness it was easy enough to switch over to CNN and briefly have the feeling I'd never left. Indeed, it was too easy. As my feelings went from anxious optimism (as early word of heavy turnout was confirmed and exit polls were giving Kerry Ohio and Florida) to frustrated anger between 5am and 7am, there was something increasingly preferable about following events through the German media. It was easier to face the news interpreted through the bewildered eyes of my adopted homeland, and I found a (perhaps imagined but nonetheless comforting) solidarity in the long faces and muted tones of the reporters from ARD and ZDF.

It was bad enough, way back in what seems like another era, to have to go to bed with the news of a Bush "victory" in 2000. The clear illegitimacy of that result left a bad taste, but supplied a steady, sustaining anger. It was infinitely crueller to have to absorb the blow in 2004 in the cool light of day and without the comfort of a popular majority. There is a particular pain in being robbed of the mantra that has kept many of us going over the last four years: Bush is an illegitimate president without a popular mandate. I'm going to miss this line, as it's become well worn with use in assuring people around me that Bush doesn't represent the “real” face of America. Although that is still partly true, no amount of rationalization and differentiation can soften the rude awakening of 2004.

Nonetheless, despite the sense of media-driven, globalised immediacy, America seemed a long way away. The word “mandate” has never sounded so vile, so threatening. I couldn't answer the bemused question that the weekly newspaper Die Zeit put on their cover, Warum wieder er? (Why him again?) After the collapse of all the putative reasons for invasion? After months of demonstrated incompetence? After reams of worrying, or even outright bad economic data? After three mediocre debate performances? After the disgusting – yet carefully calibrated–intolerance toward gays and lesbians? I realized that I had difficulties answering these questions for Europeans largely because I couldn't answer them satisfactorily for myself. Of course, the language of the pollsters became an easy refuge: Bush had energized his base, painted Kerry as indecisive, used the advantages of a wartime incumbency, benefited from voters' fears about terrorism, etc., etc., ad nauseam. All of this has a certain anaesthetic quality but focuses merely on the symptoms. What it can’t do is diminish the creeping sense of not understanding my own country anymore.

Yes. That was a very bad day indeed.

It is too much to expect that a single election means anything has fundamentally changed in America.

But after the relentless rightward march over the past couple of decades, I'll take what glimmers of hope (and comprehension) I'm offered.

Such victories should be celebrated.

And I sincerely hope that all my Democratic friends back home are enjoying their hangovers, which, for once, are not the legacy of drowned sorrows.