Clearly there’s reason for optimism, but this thing isn’t over til it’s over. In four days we find out if the country will be led by the thoughtful intelligent guy who might possibly be able to begin repairing the complete disaster of the past eight years, or by the guy who will continue on the same path, with the help of his dimwitted reactionary sidekick, until there is no hope of ever finding our way back.
If McCain manages to pull out a squeaker somehow — well, I can only quote Lou Reed:
Americans don’t care for much of anything
Land and water the least
And animal life is low on the totem pole
With human life not worth more than infected yeastAmericans don’t care too much for beauty
They’ll shit in a river, dump battery acid in a stream
They’ll watch dead rats wash up on the beach
And complain if they can’t swimThey say things are done for the majority
Don’t believe half of what you see and none of what you hear
It’s like what my painter friend donald said to me
Stick a fork in their ass and turn them over, they’re done
It’s like waiting for the results of a biopsy, where the doctors think it will probably turn out okay, but there’s at least some minor chance that you have terminal brain cancer.
I assume it goes without saying to readers of this site, but … be sure to vote on Tuesday.
… adding: when Bill Clinton was elected, the eventual weaknesses of his presidency were already common knowledge: his penchant for triangulation and his history of extramarital activity. The former would ensure that health care reform would be shot down for a generation, and the latter would give Republicans the wedge they needed to completely disrupt the final years of his presidency. And we could have predicted it all from the moment he was elected. With Obama, I just don’t see any similarly grand Shakespearean flaws being foreshadowed in the first act. We’re in an entirely different moment.