The greatest cheer went up at tonight's election party when Lincoln Chaffee was dealt a humiliating defeat in Rhode Island. Chaffee was a decent man, like his father, but although he struck a middle-of-road stance, more often than not he caved in to the Republican Party's wishes on crucial votes and thereby became the victim of the repudiation of all things Bush.

There has been a Chaffee representing Rhode Island for nearly half a century; they are members of a family of landed gentry and revered as much as the aristocratic (but Democratic) Claiborne Pell of Newport. But enough was enough and off went his head. The thinking was if you could get a Chaffee out in Rhode Island, anything was possible, and--what do you know--it was.
Rhode Island is a quirky state; as Chris Matthews pointed out, "Rhode Island is a practical state", but it goes even further. The state was always a lightening rod for pragmatic radicalism. It was founded on the notion of religious freedom by Roger Williams for the quakers in Providence and Anne Hutchinson down in Newport and saw the establishment of the first Jewish temple, Touro Synagogue in Neport. It was the first state to declare its independence from England and--ever mindful of its independence--the last to ratify the Constitution (and only did so when threatened to be treated like a foreign country by the other 12 states). It may be the only state that had an armed rebellion called the Dorr War when another patrician politician, Thomas Dorr, tried to seize armed power and give the right to vote to more than landed males. It is a state that has always defied outside influence and no more vividly by the fact that it was the only state not to ratify the the 18th Amendment prohibiting the consumption of alcohol.

Tonight it sent a favorite son to the gallows for complicity in the lies, corruption, and bankruptcy of the Bush administration. That makes Jeremy very happy for he despised Chaffee. I remember his father, John Chaffee and sister, Libby, as a child; they lived near my aunt and were such gentle and well-liked people that we actually cried when Libby was killed by the kick of one of their horses, so I always was a little soft on Lincoln's inexplicable membership in the Republican Party.

Now he's been kicked out, too; this time by a donkey. May the investigations begin and the heads start rolling.