Fifteen days from now we will all be up at the crack of noon to see a new era...it can't come too soon.
Well, it's two weeks out and the old obsessive-complusive election disorder (OCED) is acting up again. There’s been a slight tightening in the polls, the RealClear averages are down to 5.5%, and the agida is back.
I can’t help it. It’s a presidential election and I’m a Democrat. Some way, somehowi we’re going to blow this thing. Lord knows, I hope I’m wrong. I know that my precognitive skills stink, and I should have nothing to worry about, but we’ve done it so many times in the past, something is going to happen. (now where’s that Pepto-Bismol®?)
If it’s not one thing, it’s another. Going back two generations, it was Eugene McCarthy’s people sitting on their hands when Hubert Humphrey was briefly third behind George Wallace and was clawing his way to what almost became one of the great comebacks of all time (last Harris Poll: HHH 43%, Nixon 40%, Wallace 13%). Then it was Eagleton. In 1976, Carter blew a 33% lead! and was something like 3300 votes from going down in flames. He would have if not Eugene McCarthy been thrown off the ballot in New York! Then there was that accursed debate in 1980. Carter was SEVEN points ahead with just a weekend to go. But he just had to go to that debate he was so successfully avoiding! Ooooooooooo!
Dukakis. I worked for the Duke in the primaries…he would have made a great president, but Bush’s father went around acting like a schoolyard bully (I actually called Duke “the Ice Man” in the second debate) and what did Duke do? Nothing. He blew a 12-point lead and then some. Someone probably smacked him after he lost. At least I hope so.
Then there was 1996. It was OUR year. Some polls in mid October showed Clinton getting 57%, that’s right fifty-SEVEN percent. There were coattails, too, and it looked like the Republican majority in the house was going to vanish like a bad dream. But then it was revealed Al Gore was raising money from impoverished NUNS in a Buddhist monastery. Ross Perot, who was getting something like four percent went up to seven and Bob Dole went from 33 to 40. Sure Clinton won, but we lost the House for another ten years. (where’s the TUMS®??)
Two Thousand? That was the worst! This time the October surprise happened to the other guy. W’s DUI charge was made public, and all of a sudden Gore’s seven-point deficit had vanished. Few knew that Palm Springs was using a butterfly ballot. Who could have seen THAT coming?
Last time I went to bed early. I knew that a winner wouldn’t be declared until morning and was sick that we had lost Florida AGAIN. The reason wasn’t the swift boat crap. It was John Edwards looking like a deer in the headlights when Cheney falsely claimed they had never met before. We needed to get rid of Bush real, real bad, but this pair deserved to lose.
This year we have a near-perfect candidate and a near perfect campaign. Obama is ahead in all the right states, a progressive president backed by a large congressional majority is well within the realm of possibility. Colin Powell has endorsed our guy and Sarah Palin is considered by all but herself to be a drag on the ticket. It should be a cakewalk. But then I’m a Democrat. I know better.
I know there are some out there who are thrilled that I've got indigestion over this (and you know who you are), but It's important that the GOTV effort is running perfectly, or everyone else out there will have it worse than I do.