Democracy is Coming Tomorrow

And so here we are, after months of blog posts, debates, live-blogging, tweets, fundraising, old-school ground game. The election is, at long last, upon us.

I have friends in both camps, although I am an ardent supporter of the President and of the Democratic Party. Especially in this climate, where the Republicans offer up a chameleon who has shifted from "Moderate Mitt" to a "severe conservative" back to the middle--a man who has, as far as I can see, no core convictions at all, except that it is his Right to Rule, and that his taxes, his beliefs, his policy agenda, are none of our business.

In the primary season, I actually felt for conservatives, with a choice between the bizarre (Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann), the orgulously egregious (NEWT!) and the unflappable con-man, Romney. Sane? No doubt, but what underlies this confidence man's masquerade?

I've seen liberal purists carp at the president, but have seen no plausible option fro a progressive voter that makes any sense. (The left-leaning argument for a third party has been eviscerated many places, but here's a good start.)

I've seen the church in which I was raised definitively align itself with one party, and do so based in part on a blatantly distorted vision of what religious liberty has meant in the United States.

I've seen the Party of Lincoln embrace vote suppression as a tactic.

The President has not been, by any means, perfect. But he has been unflappable, reasonable and reasoned, and has consistently appealed to the better angels of our natures. He has striven to govern.

And it may even be enough.

We'll see soon, because tomorrow we vote.

Democracy is, once again, coming:

It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.