Let's Go Vote!

Or as they said back in Chicago when I was a little kid, "Vote early and often!"

Today's the big day.  Let's hope it's a good one.

Let's think about the guy or gal who was working at that Romney fund-raiser in Boca Raton and had the chutzpah and smarts to video the Romney 47% speech.  This unknown person is an unsung hero of this election cycle.

So many memories of the far-less-than-heroic.  The weird lineup of GOP primary contenders.  "Nine, nine, nine."  The unending jerkiness of Romney.  The rabid far-right with its racism and its smirking spokesmen.

Better memories are those of the Occupy Wall Street folks who lit up the real issue of this campaign:  the 99% v. the 1%.  They gave Obama his pathway.

And there's the man himself, bounding up the steps of countless stages all across the country to ask people to do what was best for themselves.  It was never about him.  It was about us.  And the children.    Poor exhausted skinny and smiling man.

I love him.  Shamelessly and abidingly.  I hope this blog has served him well.  I wish I could have done more.

I guess we all do.

Because he did so much for so many.  The auto workers, the immigrant young people, the gays, the women workers, the environment.  And he made us laugh.  And he sang for us.  And he rid the world of Bin Laden and brought our folks home from Iraq.  He even helped the Native Americans, more than all prior presidents put together.  There was no political mileage in that.  He did things because they were the right thing to do.


But it's more than what he did.  It's his decency and his honesty, his calm in the storm and his intelligence.  He is in many ways like my other darling, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.  Steady and sure, charming and good.

I hope he makes it tomorrow.  For his sake and for all of us and especially for that little boy who reached up and touched Obama's hair because it was like his own.

Oh, my children, I have seen many beautiful moments in my long life, but that was one of the very best.

And tonight I think of Obama's mother, dying of cancer and fighting the insurance company.  Small wonder he risked all to get us health insurance that cannot be clawed away from us.  May her sweet soul rest in peace, the good lady who brought this remarkable person into the world.  And the grandma and grandpa who raised him and whom he saw work so hard all their lives.  His values are built on the rock-solid foundation of these good people.

"I have been to the mountain top,"  Martin Luther King said the night before he died, "and I have seen the Promised Land."  May the good people of this land embrace the chance we have in this election to affirm goodness and reject the passions of hate, greed, and duplicity.

It is devoutly to be wished.

Blessings on you all.