Hard work, vision and frothy mixtures

John Kerry has just made a speech from Massachusetts, where he's been campaigning for incumbent Democrat Sen. Edward Kennedy. "Whether you're rich or poor, you can be sure that America is a place where hard work and vision mean you can realize your dreams," he says.

"And privilege!" calls out a frustrated grad student, Mai Hariu.

Ah yes, hard work and vision ... unless you're one of those kids that didn't study hard and ended up in Iraq instead.

Mark Christopher GS has his feet up in the graduate lounge of the Wilson school, where a bunch of MPA students are watching the results roll in and hurling jibes at the TV screen. Mark is fairly happy with the results so far.

"I'm not a big fan of that whole project Lieberman," he says. "I'm thrilled that Tom DeLay's seat looks like it's going to a Democrat. And I love the fact that Santorum got his ass kicked by Casey."

Mark then told me a little story about controversial arch-conservative Santorum, which I'd also heard earlier in the evening from Arielle Lutwick GS, the Democrat poll monitor. Many of you may know it already, but it was news to me as a Brit and to others in the room, so why not share it, since we're here for an evening of politico fun?

Back in 2003, Santorum compared states' rights to legislate on consensual homosexuality with their right to regulate bestiality or pedophilia. Openly gay newspaper columnist Dan Savage, who writes a column called Savage Love (syndicated by a variety of newspapers and The Onion), thought he'd get his own back. So he organized a reader competition to come up with a new sex-related term for "Santorum" that meant something other than the good Senator's name. The winning answer makes me blush, so I won't repeat it, but you can read it for yourself here.

I'll never look at Santorum in the same way again.

--Victoria Whitford