Electional Affective Disorder

Tonight it has reached a climax.

My usual voracious reading/listening/watching of all things media has not led me to anything satisfying. Its the calm before the storm, nothings happening, the candidates aren't doing much worth noting and no one is saying anything about them worth listening to. The satisfaction of reading an article about Obama's lead in the polls has melted away. The same stories that made me elated mere weeks ago now just make me a little more on edge, a little more panicked. I go from moments of blissful excitement to fear and panic and stress. Unfortunately my life of late has been teaching me how to dwell in that stress. I can feel each muscle in my back tighten notch by notch. I need to do something.

I find myself trying to connect, to find ways of passing these next 24+ hours that will make me feel apart of history. I'm throwing a party. Today I've spent all afternoon cooking and cleaning and preparing. I find myself working with a focus and a drive that is so unusual to me in these activities. This is the first presidential election since I aged into the right to vote that I haven't been able to volunteer for my candidate. (Medical School will do that to you.) I tried to make up for this by giving money and telling my friends and family to give money, but all the emails in the world from Barack (who has become my most persistent correspondents) fail to make me feel connected in the same way. This year I feel detached from history. I read to feel empowered but when that failed this blog was born. But whoever said "knowledge is power" really must have been doing something with it. Knowledge without action or voice is impotence. And that's how I've felt through much of this election. Even voting was so unsatisfying, filling out the absentee ballot at my kitchen table. At least I'm voting at home and not here in Vermont, I thought. At least this way my vote might get noticed.

In these past few weeks I've become superstitious. Of course I'd never admit to actually believing that sleeping every night in an Obama t-shirt will hold any sway over things, but it seems the right thing to do. There is an L word I won't say but which I fantasize about. And no it's not 'lesbian.' And yes I do think it really could happen. I think Obama is going to take this thing home. I'd say 'I know' but that too might jinx it. I want him to do this early and I want him to do this big. I want there to be no question that the country is behind him.

I cringe when people say his lead is just about the economy. The last two elections should have been about the economy or we might not have ended up in this mess. I hope this crisis teaches people the folly of 'values voting' and that 'fiscal conservatives' are never what they claim to be. But more than anything I hope Obama lives up to the dreams that I have for him. I was so comforted on this front when he was on the daily show the other night and talked about this moment in history as a time when a leader like himself has the opportunity to make big substantive changes. Those aren't exactly his words but the ones he chose surprised me in their scope. This wasn't the centrist timidity of elections-past. This was what I was voting for. The left has such a bad rap in this country. Sarah Palin tosses the word socialist about like an slur and yet she gives everyone in her state a check from the profits of their shared natural resources. We need a new left. A left that isn't communism, and isn't socialism, but where those words can be used in a conversation of ideas without striking fear. We need a left where belief in the free market isn't as ubiquitous a part of a candidates platform as belief in god. Indeed where either of those are not a prerequisite. And even as I sit, with the happy ending yet to be written, Allan Greenspan doesn't even believe in the free market anymore. I never thought I'd write that, and I've been believing in change now for a long time. I don't think I'll be disappointed.