Three weeks ago I had a moment of conversion. Of course I'm a hard-core skeptic, and I was still in my Anyone But Bush stage. The polls still sucked. None of the evils of this administration seemed to stick with the public--not Condi asleep on the job in August 2001 or Rumsfeld oblivious to torture at Abu Gharaib or Ashcroft suspending the Constitution without a single terrorism conviction or W himself, mixing up Sweden with Switzerland and running up deficits our great-great-great-great grandchildren will be paying for. If our government had taken us to war under mistaken or misleading pretences, no one even cared.
John Kerry was still stumbling all over the place, as the Clinton people scrambled to work out a coherent answer to his position on Iraq and abortion. He'd taken August off to go windsurfing, while the rest of us had been out campaigning, and we were sick and tired of hearing what a good closer he was. I just needed him to rise from the dead...
It was midnight on Sunday, and I was reading the NY Times and watching a rerun of "The West Wing" and worrying about the latest hurricane about to wash away my family in South Florida. I'd just finished an article about record voter registrations in Ohio and Florida. It was the episode where Bartlett's just disclosed he has MS, and Mrs. Landingham is killed and a hurricane is blowing in and there's a coup Haiti.
After a conversation with the ghost of Mrs. Landingham about the percentage of uninsured and the number of children living in poverty and the number of unemployed, Martin Sheen decides America is still too fucked up, puts his hands in his pocket, and announces he's going to run. The goosebumps rose on my arm, and I knew it, without the doubts that had plagued me for the past year. We were going to win.
As any mathematician will remind you, the millennium began in January 2001, and for three dark years, everyone I know despaired. We protested pre-emptive war in vain and then went to Europe last summer, where friends from Switzerland--Switzerland!--took me aside and demanded to know what the hell was going on in our country. The Dean campaign failed to give me hope. No one else watched the Democratic debates last fall, broadcast at 1 a.m. on Saturday from South Carolina, no one except a couple of insomniac political junkies with blogs and William Safire and me.
But something changed in January 2004. I saw John and Elizabeth Edwards on "60 Minutes" riding the bus with their children in Iowa and New Hampshire, and I began to have hope that someone could speak the truth but also give Americans confidence in the future, a future beyond the Bush administration's endless war and disastrous policies. I found myself writing to voters in South Carolina and calling democrats in Wisconsin, encouraging them to rise up and support John Edwards.
Something else happened: I had a vision. I had the news on TV one night, and there was George W. Bush, at the bottom of the stairs leading up to Air Force One, waving. And suddenly I realized: I was seeing into the future, January 2005. George was waving goodbye.
And this is the image that's sustained me, all year on the campaign trail. I've embroidered it a little. Now George and Laura are there together, bundled in their coats, smiling. Perhaps they're even a little relieved--they won't have to worry about civil war in Iraq or balancing the budget any more or pretending they give a damn. For a while this summer I couldn't see it any more. And then I had my West Wing moment, and it's clear as day.
As for me, I'm finally planning trips that aren't to swing states. I look forward to reallocating that part of my brain that's been devoted to calculating winning combinations of electoral math. (I didn't get much sleep the night I came up with Bush and Kerry tied at 269 a piece.) For a while I despaired at the thought of Kerry winning the popular vote by an even larger margin than Gore but still losing.
But I no longer worry, because I have complete faith, and that's the place I've campaigned from for the past month. Conviction is contagious. Besides, history is on our side. Incumbents are either reelected easily. Or they lose.
Kerry finally did show up at the debates. At the town hall, I finally saw a man I liked, a thoughtful, serious man whose tolerance is defined by his contradictions. So I can actually campaign for President Kerry, not just against Bush. But the race is not about John Kerry and John Edwards, although they are fine men and they will need our support to begin rebuilding our country after the damage of the Bush & Cheney years. This race is about us.
Get out and feel the energy on the street from Portland to Detroit to Manchester. A pilot for United admired my shirt. Janitors at Florida International University asked where they could buy Kerry gear. Mexican immigrants in a trailer park in Sparks assured me that Bush meant only "mas guerras" and took all our Unidos con Kerry stickers.
My mom called with good news and bad news from Miami Beach. The bad news was my grandmother was in the hospital. The good news? She was giving out a lot of Kerry-Edwards pins in the hall.
This is the year of the unlikely voter. It's about much more than polling people with cell phones or those ridiculous undecideds or even the Nader debaters (if you want to waste two hours, find a Naderite who will spout the usual about there being no difference between the major candidates). It's time to shoot all the undecideds and move on.
In 2000, 50 million Americans who were registered did not vote. So the race boils down to turnout. On November 2 and every day until then that the polls are open, I predict students and people of color and people of limited means and single mothers will vote in record numbers. Yes, the GOP will find ways to shred reg cards and leave John Kerry's name off absentee ballots and unplug electronic voting machines (oops!). They will do everything they can to intimidate citizens.
But there will be lines on November 2 until well past closing time. And this time, we're going to stay and fight.
This is the last paragraph about George W. Bush that I intend to write. In your mind's eye, think about George taking his last flight back to Texas on Air Force One. Close your eyes and wave. The plane's taking off! Wave with all your might!
Next Tuesday, we take back our country. I'll see you dancing in the street.