Of all the states I waited on with baited breath on election night, the Commonweath of Virginia filled me with the most anticipation and anxiety.  It's a state I know passingly well, for never having lived there -- my grandparents were career army who retired to Alexandria.  My father lived and worked for a few years in Roanoke when I was in high school.  I spent many years visiting my widowed grandmother at her assisted living community near Fort Belvoir.  Monticello has always been a sight of personal pilgrimage for me--so beautiful, so clever, and yet so stained by the legacy of slavery.  I always had a sense of Virginia as being a both a smart, ambitious, even multicultural modern state and the historic capital of the Confederacy with a palpable presence of racial bigotry.

That's why I get tears in my eyes as I review this county-by-county map of Virginia's election results.  I still cannot believe it.  All those blue cities and counties strung across the red state like precious sapphires--Winchester, Harrisonburg, Covington, Lexington, Staunton, Albemarle, Nelson, Buckingham, Martinsville, Danville, Prince Edward, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Norkfolk, Newport News, Hampton, Petersburg, Northhampton!!!!  Heck, I'm even surprised by Loudoun, Prince William and Manassass!  Barack didn't win Virginia ONLY because of Arlington, Fairfax and Alexandria.  He won all across the state.  He only lost Lynchburg by about 1,400 votes!  Jerry Falwell's Lynchburg!  I can't stop using the exclamation points!  My heartfelt thanks and congratulations to the staff and volunteers in Virginia.  What an amazing job you've done.  And I'm so grateful to the citizens of the great Commonwealth of Virginia.  Well done!