Aside from those more obvious considerations…which could not but occasionally awaken in any man’s soul some alarm, there was another thought, or rather vague nameless horror concerning him, which at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest; and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost despair of putting it in comprehensible form.

–Herman Melville

Bad taste is real taste, of course, and good taste is the residue of someone else’s privilege.

–Dave Hickey

We liked the same music, we liked the same bands, we liked the same clothes…

–Bruce Springsteen

I asked MoveOn to send me a free Obama sticker. I’ll try and convince the few friends I have who may not vote for him that they should. Here’s a sampling of reasons why: He is a Democrat and I tend to vote for anyone with a (D) by his or her name. Policy-wise, he hasn’t said enough innovative things to really catch my attention yet, but he seems as liberal as can likely be elected and a talented enough campaigner to get the win we so desperately need. I admire the fact that he doesn’t come from a wealthy family and owes much of his success to his own abilities. He’s well spoken and a very good writer for a politician.

I have been surprised to hear many discussions fearing for his assassination and, worse, what would tragically become of us were this sad event to take place. I fervently hope Senator Obama is our next President, but he is not a savior or messiah, and I don’t think he pretends to be. All successful politicians are able to have people project their hopes and dreams onto them, and if Obama can articulate the desires of a great many people, then this should help him get the votes I need him to get, but let’s worry more about sending him money or, better, volunteering for the guy before we spend too many sleepless nights worrying for his safety. I don’t want to see him hurt, but too much of this kind of talk almost seems a creepily self-fulfilling prophecy of martyrdom that ties to a bunch of Kennedy worship and liberal guilt that I think we’d do better to try and leave behind this election.

My wife offers that I’m getting older and perhaps disillusioned by the stolen election of 2000 and, to me, the even more incomprehensible “re”election of 2004. She’s (always) right to a point; Obama isn’t “my guy” like Bill Clinton and even Al Gore were, and though I would have been happy with literally any one of the Democrats who participated in the primaries, I voted for Senator Clinton in the primary and wish I had the opportunity to do so again. But my reticence is based mostly on concerns that I don’t see or read about often enough…which then causes me to doubt myself even more and just want to wake up on November 5^th (notice that I’m so scarred that I can’t even visualize a clean win called by the networks that same evening) with the good guys finally winning again. You see, Obama needs a whole lot more than our positive energy or our prayers; he needs our votes, 270 electoral ones to be exact, and I’m not sure how he’s going to get them.

I won’t spend too much time going over what you can find elsewhere, but let’s direct our attention away from the charisma of our candidate or the perfidy of the old bad man and look again and again at that daunting map. We’ve got 157 safe votes in 11 states and the District of Columbia. Then you’ve got six “swing” states that in reality are must wins unless he can pull off some huge upsets somewhere else. This means that Michigan (17 votes and a disputed primary which leaves polling even more up in the air than usual), Minnesota (10 votes), New Jersey (15 votes), Oregon (7 votes), Pennsylvania (21 votes), and Washington (11 votes) can get him to 238. Where do we get the next 32? North Carolina (15 votes), Virginia (13 votes), Colorado (9 votes), Nevada (5 votes), New Mexico (5 votes), Iowa (7 votes), Missouri (11 votes), Florida (27 votes), Ohio (20 votes), New Hampshire (4 votes), and Wisconsin (10 votes)? Which do you feel overly confident about? I’ll crunch some numbers and with some degree of audacity say that Obama wins Iowa, and Wisconsin–now he’s at 255, only 15 more to go. But I see Florida and North Carolina as a loss so we have to peel some more off elsewhere. How about Nevada, New Hampshire, and New Mexico? Brace yourself, that only leaves him with 269. Of course, winning Ohio alone wins it, as would picking up a bigger state or two that currently leans Republican such as Colorado, Missouri, or Virginia. I don’t know much else about Ted Strickland other than that he’s a popular Democratic governor from Ohio, but based on hard numbers alone, he may suddenly be my new favorite Vice Presidential candidate. I realize that Obama has a bunch of money and says he intends on running a 50-state campaign but, given how low the current administration’s approval ratings are and the weakness of our challenger, I still see a disturbingly tight race.

The 800 lb. Yeti in the room, of course, is that I don’t even trust any of the polling that I pore over to make my hoped for projections and vote totals. It’s June and while Obama doesn’t have too much of a voting record to attack, he will be subjected to the standard right wing smears and mischaracterizations. He’s a liberal, after all; oh yeah, and he’s black. I’ve lived in Southern California my whole life and still remember what happened to the popular mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley, when he consistently polled well but suddenly lost the governorship in 1982. Will the fine people in enough of the states listed above go into the privacy of their voting booth and elect the first person of color President in our history? I hope so but am already agonizing about the better angels in the nature of many of my fellow citizens.

I’ve been reading Bishop’s The Big Sort, and he points out that in the 1976 Presidential election just over 26 percent of the nation’s voters lived in landslide counties, landslide counties being defined as one where one party won by 20 percentage points or more. In 2004, 48.3 % of voters lived in communities where the election wasn’t close at all. Living in a solid blue state is one thing but to realize that it’s not even entire states in the Rust Belt and South that determine my family’s fate but a handful of potentially swing counties that are legitimately in play makes me worry even more about the disconnect that characterizes much of our current political discourse. In the coming months try and remember to not be either frightened or triumphal; we’ve got a long way to go and should be able to pull this thing off, but it will be better for us all if we remain clear eyed and perhaps add a bit of caution to our optimism instead of congratulate ourselves on preaching to the already converted. It’s not us we have to convince, it’s them, and I’m not always sure how we’re supposed to do that when we spend a great deal of our time in comforting echo chambers of our own making.

But enough of my doom and gloom; listen to my secret weapon. I’m not cutting my hair until we have a Democratic President. Shhh, don’t tell my lovely wife, who, inexplicably, doesn’t care for the flowing locks. She thinks it has to do with an upcoming birthday, but my Samson-like mojo is wholly directed at earning votes for the cause of social justice. America, I’m putting my suburban shoulder to the wheel.