Too Sad

Several election-related deaths today are making me sad.

Terence Tolbert, the Obama campaign's director in Nevada died yesterday of a heart attack. He was on leave from his position as a New York City Department of Education official, and was only 44.

Christine Durbin, the 40-year-old daughter of the senior senator from Illinois Dick Durbin, died today from congenital heart disease. Senator Durbin, who is up for re-election tomorrow (which he will win easily) has been a major supporter and mentor of Obama since he entered Illinois politics.

Finally, word that Madelyn "Toot" Dunham, Barack Obama's grandmother, who had an enormous role in raising him, died this morning in Hawaii. This was obviously coming soon, but how I wish she could have held on just another couple of days. I'm sure she did, too.

Call Now

I just got my first Obama-related robo-call of the election, from Jon Carson, the Obama campaign's national field director. He was urging me to spend the next 24 hours helping with the get-out-the-vote effort (print shorthand is GOTV, which always makes me think it's a Republican television station we're talking about).

Look, I know none of the stars could campaign in NYC these last few months. There's nothing to be gained from our little city everyone takes for granted, other than big bucks and comedy show audiences. But they couldn't have gotten Barack himself on a robo-call asking me to help out the day before the election?

(Voting starts in about 20 hours. I CANNOT WAIT.)

Barack Obama Hates Me

From this coming Sunday's New York Times Magazine article "Working for the Working Class Vote"

“I am convinced that if there were no Fox News, I might be two or three points higher in the polls,” Obama told me. “If I were watching Fox News, I wouldn’t vote for me, right? Because the way I’m portrayed 24/7 is as a freak! I am the latte-sipping, New York Times-reading, Volvo-driving, no-gun-owning, effete, politically correct, arrogant liberal. Who wants somebody like that?

OK, so I like a latte occasionally, and you pretty much have to sip it, because Starbucks coffee is always really hot. I read the New York Times (self-evident by the fact that I just quoted from it). I don't own a car, but my husband has a fondness for vintage Volvos, so if I did, it might be one of those. I don't own a gun. I wouldn't describe myself as effete exactly, since that adjective is generally applied to girly men; maybe I skate by on that one. Politically correct? I'm sure when I don't laugh at the sexist jokes my boss tells during staff meetings there are one or two people who think so. Arrogant? Yes, about certain things. Liberal? Definitely.

Does that mean I shouldn't vote Obama now?

Things Are Not Looking Good for Our Dow

As of this writing, the Dow is down 694 points, or 6.72%. Don't they halt trading at some point if it goes down far enough? Yes.

In a nutshell, it's too late in the day for them to halt trading, unless it drops another 3,306 points, which does not seem plausible. However, before 2:30, it only -- only -- needs to drop 1350 to trigger a half-hour pause.

If Obama Loses

With six weeks before the election, and the silliness of the post-convention weeks behind us, it seems a good bet that Obama is going to win this thing. The country's focus is now on the tanking economy, and that's usually good news for the Democrats, particularly when it's increasingly clear that the Republican candidate has no idea what to do about it.

(Of course, now that Bush appears to be going after Osama bin Laden in a big way, there is the possibility of an October Surprise that tips the election towards McCain, though I don't know why it would. It'd be great to eliminate bin Laden, but seriously, seven years after 9/11 and we're supposed to be impressed by this?)

If Obama wins, though, it's not going to be the unqualifiedly good thing his supporters are hoping for. Treasury Secretary Paulson is about to bail out Wall Street using close to a trillion dollars of tax payer money, and it's unclear to everyone whether it will even solve anything. Whoever is president in January 2009 is going to have to deal with the mess for a long time, and it seems fairly certain that very few of the big-ticket items on Obama's to-do list -- health care, energy research, tax cuts -- are going to be easily achievable.

If McCain ekes out a win, though, because of his "experience", because of Palin, because of the Bradley effect, he will be the one who is stuck holding the Bush bag, and there will be little danger of the Democrats getting the lasting blame for it. Of course, that's what we all thought about that other close-to-a-trillion-dollar expenditure Bush foisted on us -- the Iraq War -- but somehow, Bush got a second term, and McCain is still competitive.

Single Issue

I'm not a single issue voter, and I don't know anyone who is. Except, by proxy, my friend's 70-year-old neighbor who told her that, though she'd been planning to vote for Obama, with the addition of Sarah Palin to the ticket, she's going to vote for McCain. Despite against everything they stand for. She's old, she doesn't think there's enough time left for her to see another woman in the White House. She's been fighting for abortion rights all her life. She's not going to need one anymore; let the young women take over.

If I were a single issue voter, I might, for instance, object to the fact that Obama voted to authorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, with its provisions for warrantless wire taps. In fact, I do object to it, but not enough to keep me from voting for him. I have to hope that as a former constitutional law professor -- one of his former jobs you didn't hear mocked at the RNC, I guess because it's kind of hard to make fun of someone for being an expert in the document that guides, or at least is suppose to guide, the way our country is run -- that he understands that FISA can never be allowed to become part of the landscape.

The only issue that comes close to singularity for me is homeland security. By which I don't mean building more walls to keep out undocumented Mexicans, though I accept the fact that terrorists could be intermingled with those future landscapers and restaurant workers. (Remember, however, the 9/11 hijackers came in not over the fence, but through the front door, step right this way, sirs, and please do attend all the highly unusual, but apparently not at all suspicious flying lessons you like.)

Homeland security means one thing to me: preventing another attack on my and other big cities. America may be voting small-town values this election, but oddly enough, 70% of us live in urban areas. A New York Times op-ed yesterday talked about the high likelihood of a nuclear attack on Manhattan in the next ten years, and how each of the candidates are likely to prevent it. The author was not particularly sanguine about either Obama or McCain, but did say that of the two, Obama understands the threat better.

That's what I want. Someone who understands first, then acts. Not someone who, like John McCain, believes the 9/11 terrorists had ties to Iraq, then gets us into a long war with massive casualties and distracts us from the real tasks at hand: finding Osama bin Laden, dismantling his organization, and preventing a new al Qaeda from forming.