TGIT

How have I let three critical days lapse since my last posting? Let me count the ways. First, and probably most real: My job is getting in the way of my blogging time. I'd say I need to adjust my priorities if only I weren't self-employed. Pesky income needs...

So, yeah: I'm having a damn hard time getting anything done in this, the supposed final week of Good vs. Excess of Evil. I was feeling sheepish about this. Why am I so obsessed? Am I using this election as some sort of transferance of other angst? I've really been wringing my hands over this. ("Is there something wrong with me? Hold me.") So, imagine my glee to discover that EVERYONE ELSE IN MY MIDST IS EQUALLY OBSESSED. My inbox overfloweth with great e-mails from friends proclaiming their own brand of obsession. Titles I awakened to this morning: "Fuck Florida," "Hello Darkness My Old Friend," "Rebel Yell," and "At Least We Can Laugh About It." I'm never around people who are as brow-furrowed as I. I... feel... at... home... Group hug!

I had a really great experience volunteering for the Kerry/Edwards campaign on Tuesday. HQ is great. Bustling. There is a tangible energy there - open the door and the ions shift, I swear. I haven't felt anything like this since my childhood days in the newsrooms where my parents worked, or my early days at RealNetworks. It's an addicting feeling. I got ushered to the back ("Ooh, I get to go behind the doors!") to a row of computers, where I was seated and instructed on my data entry job. Wait. This isn't the phone answering I signed up for! I want to say, "Victory 2004, how can I direct your call?"! I was entering info from the weekend's canvassers. Hit '1,' return. Repeat. So, I did what is of expected of me: I started asking my fellow data enterers some questions. I mean, why not pry? Totally amazing people, amazing stories. Frank, seated two computers away in a wheelchair, took a week and a half off from his hi-tech job to volunteer at Kerry HQ. "I just can't concentrate, so I thought I'd just take the week off." Carolyn, the white-haired retiree to my left, told of her two weeks in Africa earlier this year. She went there with a group of Seattle African-Americans who were making a pilgrimage to the place their ancestors were abducted from in the shameful era of slavery. Carolyn ("Call me 'Kerrylyn' until Tuesday!") spoke solemnly about being a recovered Republican. Frank, too! Oh, and then I met a volunteer staffer who said, "I'm from New York. I'm between jobs, so I decided to come out here a few months ago to help on the campaign. A family here has been putting me up the whole time. I really just wanted to help in a swing state." SO. INSPIRING. Of course, I couldn't let an opportunity to hand-wring pass me by, so I self-flaggelated for a while about not having gotten my nap-ridded ass to HQ earlier in the campaign.

Tonight I go to my training about driving voters to the polls on Tuesday. I'm pretty excited to help on Tuesday, but I'm torn - I sort of want to sit and drool in front of the TV all day. I've had a number of loved ones mention that helping out on Tuesday won't accomplish anything. Maybe that's true, but I have to do something. I want to interact with voters on Tuesday. I'm terrified that if this election lands in the courts again the newly registered, newly concerned will feel somehow emasculated. I want to help humanize the process, and if that means picking people up and shuttling them to the polls, I can't not contribute.

I finished The Press Effect. Get it. Read it.

I get my CNN at the gym. There's nothing better than squinting over sweaty treadmillers at Anderson Cooper parroting campaign messages. In my Monday post I mentioned that Gillespie was greasing the wheel with mutterings about "improper registrants." Imagine my surprise (ahem) when Mr. Cooper made the same mutterings, without attributing the news to the GOP! I would've stumbled had I not been on the elliptical cross-trainer. Whew. But I digress. The Cooper moment was a picture-perfect illustration of the points made in The Press Effect. And here's the sad part: The press said they'd avoid the mistakes of 2000 after the FL debacle. They promised! If the historians don't even learn from history, we're screwed.

Here's the deal: we're in a ridiculously close race (if the polls and press are actually reflecting what's going on. Are they?). It's a classic horse race, and man, the ratings must be going crazy. I'd love to see the cable news ratings, and the national paper's circulation reports for October. Here's my question: If the states are as close as they are (+/- 3%), and the polls' margins of error avg +/- 3%, HOW CAN A SWING STATE BE BLUE OR RED? On the one hand, it makes for great TV and totally enables obsessive blogging (oops). On the other hand, is it responsible to call a state if there's not really a call to make? Hello, Hawaii? Let's consider Hawaii. HI entered the swing state (if I call it "swinger," I may get more hits to my blog) column this week, after registration closed. Discuss.

Lest you think I have nothing on my mind but politics, I will say this: Julia Roberts is in the hospital!

Okay, back to the good stuff. When I ponder the polls, the press, the campaigns, the ads, I start to feel the stirrings of my old high school-era existential confusion. The BIG chicken-and-the-egg. The polls effect how the campaigns conduct themselves. The news biz needs the polls. A tight race is good for ratings. Where is the policy discussion? The campaigns look to the press and the polls to build their policy and stump speeches. What is real?

I'm going to Mexico.

Great, great links:
Video of Dubbie flipping the bird! See, he is an ecologist!
Photo of actual GOP ad-tampering! See, they can use Photoshop!