Holding my breath

I am starting to believe Barack Obama is going to win this election. That's a hard thing for me to do, to give up my cynicism and allow myself to just straight-up believe he's going to win. Because elections rip your heart out. But he's polling 6-10 points above McCain in the national poll, and in every battleground state except Missouri, he's polling enough points ahead of McCain to be outside the margin of error. Which means if the election were held today and the poll numbers accurately predicted it, he would win something like 350-150 (by electoral votes). That's a pretty solid basis for belief, so I'm starting to believe he's going to win. (Now of course, I'm on to my new worry, him getting shot, since McCain/Palin seems perfectly comfortable inciting near-riots of hatred at their campaign stops.)

A black man is carrying the election, no one seems to care about McCain's swift-boat politics and war-mongering, and Connecticut legalized gay marriage, so the country seems to be tipping back to the middle, or maybe even left, or rather, it seems to be tipping back toward sane and kind and rational. The days of "kill the towel-heads" are receding into an embarrassing past.

Oh, except for that 10% of the country who actually believes Obama is the Antichrist. Ummm....

I guess what disturbs me is that it seems like about 35% of the country is voting for Barack Obama, 5% is voting for the Democrat in spite of the fact that he's Barack Obama, 5% is voting against John McCain, and 5% is voting against the Republican Party. Probably in the coming weeks we will see another 5% voting against Republican leadership during the financial crisis.

I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, but this country baffles me. If you run Obama-McCain polls in just about every civilized nation on earth, McCain's percentage of the vote makes him look like he must have been a write-in candidate. I feel much the same way I felt after the 2004 election. It was comforting to know that 1 in 2 people was just as angry as I was that George W. Bush was allowed to remain in office. But it was shocking to realize that 1 in 2 people said he should be there. I will cheer Obama all the way to the White House, no matter how he gets there. And I'm thrilled to see that a majority of the country wants that to happen, as well. But I cannot understand why, in the current political and financial climate, given the stark difference in their policies, 2 in 5 people want McCain, and only 2 in 5 are actually excited about Obama. The middle 20% is going to elect him as the lesser of two evils, however they define them. How did this country become so deeply and evenly divided along the liberal/conservative divide? Why do half of us persist in sticking by hyper-conservative values while the world looks on and scratches its head. Why aren't we all parading in the streets with huge posters of Obama? Why is it actually somewhat reasonable to worry that he'll get shot, in a way it wouldn't be in almost any European nation? Why, America?