Yesterday the ground moved.  The tectonic plate that is the American geopolitical landscape shifted.  People are talking in high pitched squeals about tsunamis, or earthquakes, or hurricanes.  They are throwing around words like historic, unprecedented and amazing.  They speak histrionically in familiar terms about important names like Reid, Pelosi, Obama and O’Donnell.  I’d like to talk about Ahmed.  

Yesterday, I had the honor of voting for my preferred candidate in freedom and peace, and then serving my party in the evening as a poll watcher.  Important, inglorious jobs that are the grass roots of our democratic system.  One of my duties was to cross off names of the voters one-by-one as they came through – for use in the future to know who are the likely voters.  For somebody who has studied (and worked on) democracy for so many years, this simple act held a special meaning.  We talk about percentages, about perceptions, about voter turnout, and about the electorate in broad, sweeping terms of generalities.  Yet this simple task, of looking each voter…