Forty-second street pre-election diary

[While friends and colleagues are engaging in a pre-election pundit-o-mania, replete with predictions, ballyhoos and attacks on the Enemy Candidate, I thought I’d retreat to the sidelines and comment on what’s it like to go through this process as a non-pundit. More than ever before, I believe this election to be a defining moment in history and I want to remember what it was like in the days immediately preceding it, in the same way that historians now analyze what it was like in Poland on the days before September 1, 1939. How was it then, when we still had Hope?
The way to identify my pre-election posts is to look at the title, of course. It will always have the name of the street which actually also happens to be the number of days remaining before the election.]

Today, I am on 42nd street. The day started off with great equanimity. A friend down the street has organized an election day party for Democrats only (hey, if you can arrest a person wearing an anti-Bush t-shirt to a Bush rally, you can hold a Democrats-only party, right?) and he sent forth invitations early in the morning. That may have been the high point. Immediately after, I get this email from another friend who writes that the state bearing my initials (NC) “now appears certain to go for Bush.”

Thanks, pal, for the note of cheer.

Not to despair. I am on 42nd street. Didn’t this place get a face-lift not too long ago? Still, it’ll always bring to mind the days of seedy movie houses. Which reminds me of another upbeat moment (yes it does!) from this morning. I read another email from a friend who refers me to his most recent post (here), all about strange bedfellows. Notice in it a plea for sanity in the way we pick our leaders. Of course, it recalls for me of my own post before the primaries when (on February 3rd) I wrote the following:

How can you explain the slanderous reporting that blasts away at the warm and fuzzy traits of tall people?? The NYT today says this about Kerry: “He will still never be cuddly. He is too tall, too gaunt, too lantern-jawed, too serious for that. His Iowa caucuses victory speech was solemn and windy, and he sat watching the Super Bowl on Sunday night with a band of firefighters from Fargo, N.D., whose union has endorsed him, tapping his right thumb and forefinger nervously against his teeth without making much effort to converse or connect.”Is there an expectation that he should have been warm and cuddly with the firefighters?

Already I am thinking, those were the good old days when one bickered about Kerry and Edwards and Dean and Clark and Sharpton and Lieberman and… who was that other guy? Kucinich! Once so memorable, now so forgotten.

Such Nostalgia!
I’ll have to end with another nostalgic recollection from the Ocean blog, this one from January 23 when I wrote:

(from a list of important presidential traits identified by the voting public):
He must be someone most Americans would enjoy having over for dinner. [Time after time I have this conversation: “why don’t you like him?” I ask. “I don’t know, he’s just not someone I would feel comfortable with; I wouldn’t enjoy having dinner with him” goes the answer. Is this an outgrowth of viewing this country as a land of opportunity? For the record, Americans please take note: 99.999999999999% of you will NEVER HAVE DINNER WITH THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 99.98 % will never even see him eat on national television.]

The day is bright, so bright, great weather. But it can turn nasty pretty quickly. After all, look at what seems to have happened in North Carolina.