DEALING WITH THE PAIN. My UW colleague, socprof Jeremy Freese asks “is the gravity of the situation really well-served by a graphic that makes the two candidates look like they are shooting eye beams at each other?” and generally displays pain on his always cool blog. Here in Madison, I’m surrounded by overwhelming numbers of people who voted against the President and must be horrified at the prospect of four more years. I was just saying yesterday afternoon, as I was reading the exit polls that so favored Kerry, that it might be better for the national psyche, at least, if Kerry won, that it would be much harder for Kerry supporters to tolerate more Bush than for Bush supporters to accept giving the other party a chance for a while. But, despite some lingering denial among Kerry supporters (including some MSM outlets), that is not to be. Those of us who are happy with the outcome would do well to resist gloating. There is a lot of pain out there, and perhaps setting an example of graceful winning can help inspire some graceful acceptance of loss.