Of course my worries seem small compared to the apocalyptic emails I've been getting from right wing dead-enders. They can't quite figure out what went wrong. They'd become used to getting their way by just elbowing their opponents aside, like schoolyard bullies. Suddenly they are the ones being elbowed aside, and they don't like it. So, as the game clock ticks down the final seconds, they madly email, predicting nothing short of the end of life in America as they know it. Which, I hope, is true. Life in America as they know should, might and must end.
Come January the neo-conservative/neo-fascist/anti-intellectual knuckle-dragging demographic will have some pretty startling realities to come to grips with. (And coming to grip with reality, is not something this group is known for being very good at.) You can expect, for example, the Joe the Plumber types among them channeling their fears, prejudices and paranoia back into the farcical militia movement we saw spring up in rural areas during the Clinton years. You remember those guys... the pudgy little Walter Mitty types running around the woods in their Army surplus cammies, practicing defending their little piece of America from the one-world-government types in black helicopters coming to take away their guns and rights.
Well, rather than imaginary black helicopters, those guys will have to adjust to something even more jarring than imaginary black helicopters – real black people, in "their" White House. And (gulp) this time they won't be there just to serve coffee and crumpets to the white folk either. No. This time they'll be in charge.
Ah, but I gloat. And that's always a mistake. If I've learned anything in my 63-years it's that pride always precedes certain self-inflicted humiliation.
I want to admit something -- I was wrong earlier in this race. I among those Democrats who chaffed at Obama's low key manner. After the eight year horror show that has been the Bush administration, I was itching for a fist fight. Many of you were too. I wanted Obama to get down in the gutter with those gutter snipes and kick some serious ass. Each time I contributed to Obama I threatened it would the last time unless he got tough with those little shits.
But Obama never did. And he was right not to listen me and others encouraging him to scratch and bite and hit below the belt. He rose above my anger and lust for vengeance and stuck to the issues. Obama ran an honest and clean campaign. He didn't Tony Rezko McCain, or Rev. Wright him, or Marxist him or anti-American him. There was none of that, though so many of us demanded it. Shame on us and good on Obama for not listening to my spite-filled and immature counsel.
Instead Obama displayed the stuff of leaders who make history – the good kind of history. If Obama wins tomorrow, it will be a clean win, something we haven't experienced for so long I can't exactly remember when it might last have happened last.
Of course the other side will cry "foul." The cheaters of yesterday will claim they were cheated tomorrow. And, they'll feel like they've been kicked in the nuts. Well, I feel their pain. Losing is never easy, and who would know better than we democrats. We're so used to losing we've made a virtue out it. Democrats could write the book – Losing for Dummies. We've been beaten so many times we've become like abused dogs, we cringe even when someone is just trying to pat us on the head. So, even with the polls pointing to victory tomorrow, most of us will remain locked in a permanent cringe until at least Wednesday.
Nevertheless all indicators are that it'll be different this time. Winning is in the air. Something cosmic clicked during this campaign. My only frame of reference for such a thing is the summer of 1967. (Yes, I'm that old ;-)) Back then nearly my entire generation seemed to spontaneously connect to a common alternative vibe. There was no Internet back then, no viral marketing, no YouTube. It was simply "in the air," a harmonic convergence. All of a sudden, we all just "got it." Whether we were from California or Iowa, New York or Kansas, change was in the air, and a once in century social and political and geographical migration was sparked -- spontaneously.
And, four decades later it seems something similar has happened again. A collective consciousness has emerged from 8-years of smothering anti-intellectual and amoral accumulated muck -- with an audible gasp. Suddenly another generation just, "got it." Suddenly, America is again on the brink of another seismic social, cultural journey. And so many of us are packed and ready for what could well be the trip of our lives.
Tomorrow we'll elect a young man who triumphed by, once again, making a virtue out of being virtuous.
Imagine that.
