9:38PM Update: President GoObama!

Spearfish, South Dakota

Live blogging through Election Day (and night):

9:40 P.M. (MST): We can’t remember anything like it.

My political involvement began with black voter registration in Nashville, Tennessee, and fighting the electrical violence of lunch counter sit-ins.

Yes, we did!

And now this.

We’ve been laughing through our tears since he went over the top.

Not because he is black. But because he is a magnificent political talent who happens to be black.

(Note to John McCain: You were way off base in your concession, speaking about what Obama’s election means to blacks. The point is how he has liberated whites.)

Now we’re waiting for The Speech. And we’ll bawl like children. And go to sleep. And wake up in the morning to find the world covered with dew again.

7:38 P.M. (MST): YEESSS! Ohio goes blue!

6:15 P.M. (MST): CNN just released the first trickle of returns from Ohio. Obama had 67 percent of those returns. Sue and I did a quick calculation. Those votes came from every county we stumped in. Right.

4:01 P.M. (MST): CNN just broke a report that the McCain Campaign is robocalling bile in Cuban precincts in Florida, telling voters that Fidel Castro has just endorsed Obama. The calls were not made by an independent “swift boat” campaign, or the Republican National Committee, but the McCain-Palin campaign!

“Country First,” John? “Straight Talk Express?” Sit down.

3:48 P.M. (MST): I’m so fidgety, waiting for the first returns from Indiana, I went to the Obama website and started calling voters in Missouri and North Carolina to remind them to vote and give them their polling place.

Amazing political use of the Internet. I get the email “Action Alert” with a map of key state. I click on one and a list of names and phone numbers and ages comes up with the address of the voter’s polling place. Once done, I indicate if the voter has voted, if the line is busy, if the number is wrong, and so forth.

A woman in North Carolina gasped when I introduced myself as a former congressman from Oregon.

1:40 P.M. (MST): One smart aleck-my former congressional chief of staff, Bob Crane–wanted to know why we are heading West before the returns come in, suggesting that the post Baby Boom Obamaiacs had no need for a gray beard in the clutch.

In fact, that’s about the size of it. After Saturday, there were no speaking further opportunities to fire up these Obama volunteers. They were “pre-fired” and too busy working on get-of-the-vote to listen to a speech (except that of their candidate, who wowed a crowd of 90,000 last night in Manassas, Virginia.

Um, Sarah Palin, that would be in your “pro-America” part of Virginia.

So, we are back here again in Spearfish. (Careful readers of this journal will remember Spearfish, South Dakota, as the location of our first overnight stop en route to Ohio. I still can find no spears here, or fish.)

Over at FiveThirtyEight.Com, Nate Silver, has aggregated the last of the national and state polls and, on the strength of them, projects a 349-189 electoral vote landslide for Obama.

More later.