I don't have a great deal to say today. But I will post the text of an e-mail I wrote in response to a very generous e-mail of solidarity and support from Julie Dill:

Hi Julie,

If you weren't a friend of mine before, you are now. Thanks for your note.
Obviously we're heartbroken here in Ithaca. But I also feel a strange kind
of quiet resolve today, even a sort of relief. Because now, at last,
finally, Democrats will HAVE to have the serious conversation about what
they stand for that they mostly didn't have in the past four
years--largely because we could tell ourselves that we didn't really lose,
that the election had been stolen. Well, this time we lost. We really,
really lost. And that's GOOD--because only a loss that we feel to our
bones is going to make it possible for a real Left with its own vision of
"moral values" to rise again in this country. It wasn't enough to be
against Bush. It's certainly not enough to blame Kerry. We need to look at
ourselves, and then come out fighting again in two and four years time.

Sorry to preach at you--it's a tone that's coming easily to me these days.
But yeah, thanks for supporting what I and others tried to do. We're going
to go on doing it.

Best,

Josh