By Al Giordano

Regular readers of The Field have seen my comparisons of the 2008 presidential election to that in 1932 that resulted in the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Historian Howard Zinn sees the same parallel, in this new interview with The Real News.

He also touches on two other themes that will be part of my remarks tonight at the University of Wisconsin at Madison: The necessity that a president be "enveloped by a social movement, which is angry enough, powerful enough, insistent enough, that he fills his abstract phrases about change with some real content," and the failures of the Clinton administration being linked its lack of one.

The interviewer asks him about third party candidates, and Zinn, the historian, offers a very cogent argument that playing in electoral politics from a position of weakness - a specific reference to Ralph Nader's candidacy - tends to weaken the non-electoral social movements, too.

And he offers a very interes ting suggestion about how, during a possible Obama administration, local organizing to stop a single home from being foreclosed upon could shake the nation.

That's a great example of the kinds of ideas I'm hoping to mine tonight here in Madison. Again, here's the invite:

The Organizing of the President:

What's Next for the Obama Movement After the Election?

7 p.m. tonight

147 Education Building

University of Wisconsin at Madison

And if you're a Field Hand attending, please don't be shy: come up and introduce yourself to me before or after the event.

By Al Giordano

Everybody's wondering what the Obama campaign is going to do with its half hour buy of "roadblock" network TV for next Wednesday, October 29.

It will essentially be his closing argument as for why you would vote for him for president of the United States, and what he said in Richmond yesterday - adding some new words for the stump speech - seems to me to be as good a prediction as any of what he'll say during his nationally televised closer:

There are no real parts of the country and fake parts of the country.

There are no pro-America parts of the country and anti-America parts of the country.

We all love this country, no matter where we live or where we come from: black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, young, old, rich, poor, gay, straight, city dwellers, farm dwellers, we're all together...

People will say that this is one of those moments when America rose up, when we overcame, when we battled back from adversity, when we recognized the common stake we have in each other, now this is one of those moments.

Richmond, I realize many of you are cynical. Many of you are fed up with politics. I understand you're disappointed, even angry with your leaders, and you've got every right to be.

But despite of all of this I ask of you what's been asked of Americans throughout our history. I ask you to believe. Believe in yourselves. Believe in each other. Believe in the future we can build together. See, together we can't fail, not now.

Do those words remind you of any others? Perhaps... these words?

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America - there's the United States of America.

The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too:

We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States.

We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we've got some gay friends in the Red States.

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.

We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

That's from his 2004 convention keynote speech. You can see: Obama's closing argument is one and the same as his opening one.

There's little mystery here about what kind of person he is and what kind of president he would be.

In chemistry, the catalyst is the element that changes everything around it while remaining unchanged. Obama - the human catalyst - is closing this campaign exactly as he introduced himself, four years ago, to the nation. He's gone through this grueling process without being changed by it. He'll land in his boyhood home of Hawaii today and be able to look himself in the mirror of his grandmother's eyes and know that to his own self he's been true.

Obama ended his remarks yesterday with these words:

Everybody in this auditorium, at some point, somebody stood up for you.

Some of you had parents or grandparents who, they couldn't go to college but they fought so you could go to college. You had parents or grandparents, they couldn't start their own business but they struggled so that you could start your own business. They might not have been able to vote, but they marched and fought so that you could vote.

Maybe you could run for the United States Senate, maybe you could run for the presidency of the United States of America. That's what this election's about. That's what we're fighting for. And in thirteen days, if you fight for me, if you work with me, if you make phone calls with me, if you organize with me, I promise you we'll win Virginia. We'll win this election, and you and I together will change this country and change the world.

The irony of the week is that with their recent divisive statements about "pro-American parts of the country" and "anti-American parts of the country," about "real Virginia" and "fake Virginia," and an assist from that whack-job Congresswoman in Minnesota who wants an investigation of what she calles "anti-American" members of Congress, Obama's rivals have served up the perfect introduction to the return of his 2004 convention speech, making it seem new and fresh all over again.

The chatter by McCain (and others) about "we don't know who Barack Obama is" rings false now to almost everybody: his supporters know, even his detractors know very well who he is. Obama, by now, is the most known and familiar quantity in American presidential politics in a long, long time.

In four long years, Obama hasn't changed his message or let it blow with the wind. He's said it with almost the same words over and over and over again and it's so familiar now as to be like part of the national wallpaper. You don't necessarily notice it as you wake up and step out onto the street each day, but it's there, everywhere, in the air we breathe, in the panorama we see, in the people we meet, in the collective soundtrack of our lives, the seeds of a new America being born from the ashes of the old.

By Al Giordano

A quick shout out to all Field Hands.

At dawn I roll out: various thousands of miles toward Madison, Wisconsin… then to Chicago… then to Gary, Indiana, and then to Florida for the final stretch.

Thanks so much to all that made this voyage possible.

Enjoy this musical interlude from Willie, Waylon, Kris and Johnny, and consider this an open thread.

I'll check in with y'all when I land, and will likely have news to report.

Field Hands in Wisconsin and Chicago, check with your local chapters for updates and invitations...

By Al Giordano

John King at CNN reported yesterday afternoon that the McCain campaign has all but pulled out of Colorado.

Jonathan Martin at Politico then quoted the Republican presidential candidate's advisors insisting that it's not the case, that they're still on the airwaves to the tune of half-a-million dollars a week there.

(And, after all, wasn't that Governor Palin campaigning in Colorado Springs, Grand Junction and Loveland just yesterday?)

True or false, the McCain camp has to push back and deny it, or face a backlash - as it did when word leaked out it had abandoned Michigan - from local GOP leaders and voters, making defeat in that state a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Colorado, of late, has consistently been among the top three "tipping point" states listed by 538 based on the results of 10,000 scenarios being hashed by computers and analyzed by Nate Silver. So what's the deal?

First of all, any strategy leaked or pried from the McCain campaign is suspect because its strategy keeps changing. Suspending one's campaign in Colorado may just indicate another erratic mood swing - like last month's announced "suspension" of the entire campaign and the first debate, which never really came to pass - to be flirted with only to fickly go on to the next new "strategy" a couple days later. Strategic flailing seems to be the norm at this point (and it has poisoned the "maverick" message because people start to observe that, in this case, maverick equals an unsteady hand in the face of adversity, or, "maverick = flake").

But here's what I think is going on at McCain strategy central: They're getting tired of the daily drumbeat on cable TV news and by newspaper pundits that says things like, "here are the six or seven swing states, all of them voted for Bush in 2004, Obama is winning or tied in most of them, and for McCain to win he has to run the table, taking every single one of them or it's over."

That message - that there is only one narrow Electoral College path to victory for McCain, while there are multiple ones for Obama - has cast a deathly spell over the GOP base's enthusiasm, which is now being reflected in paltry early voting numbers by Republican voters, especially in Nevada and North Carolina. And so they're trying to offer the faithful a belief in the suggestion that McCain, too, has multiple paths to win.

The senior staff seems to think it has convinced McCain to drop his reluctance to play the race card, with trial balloons afloatin' that Obama's ex-reverend will get an encore in the coming days in negative ads and such.

And if they're really going to go there - to try to make the campaign about race and, specifically, some white people's fears of pigmentation - then it would make total sense for McCain to temporarily ignore Colorado, where that message ain't gonna hunt, and shift focus to Appalachia and the South: Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio and, yes, Pennsylvania and even Florida being the swing states where racially charged politics have sometimes, in the past, worked for the Republicans, or, in Appalachia, where they worked for the Clintons during the primaries.

Here's the McCain map that such a strategy would try to create:

That would give McCain 286 Electoral Votes to 252 for Obama... and the presidency.

And it the scenario includes some padding, in that it allows Obama to win one of the states in play without winning the Electoral College. For example, if Obama were to win Virginia's 13 Electoral Votes but McCain took the rest of the "red" states in play, that would bring Obama only to 265 - five EVs short of the 270 needed for victory.

However, those five votes are there for Obama, waiting for the end of Election Night when Nevada comes rolling in: because if McCain is really going to try to make the final stretch of this campaign an orgy of race-baiting and code-speak, that's just going to piss off enough voters in the West (and as we mentioned yesterday, new voter registration and early voting in Nevada makes it more likely an Obama state).

But let's say that happens, that McCain pulls off the upset in Pennsylvania but Obama takes Virginia and Nevada - it's then Obama 270 to 268 for McCain, right? Not so fast: What if McCain then wins Maine's Second Congressional District? I've argued all summer and fall that it's possible. Then you have a 269 to 269 tie in the Electoral College:

The US House - with each state's delegation having a single vote - would then pick the president and the new Senate would pick the veep: a scenario that invites chaos and would make it substantially more difficult for a President Obama to govern if he were to be chosen by the Congress instead of by the people. I can just imagine Schmidt and Davis and the rest of the wiseguys at Camp McCain sneering with delight at such a scenario: well, we couldn't win, but we sure did screw them for governing!

Of course, McCain would still have to win Pennsylvania (and Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Missouri and Indiana, each and every one) to accomplish that. (Or somehow pull off a victory in New Hampshire - a dangerous state for either side to take for granted, as we saw last January - which would provide a couple more "tie" scenarios in the Electoral College.)

But here's what the McCain campaign might be up to: It may be trying to create an undue focus on Pennsylvania, as if it is the most important state, more like a primary, putting the spotlight of the national media upon it. There, particularly in the western part of the state, you have those voters Jack Murtha called "racist" and "elderly" (a gaffe is often a gaffe because it suggests an uncomfortable or taboo truth), but also in places like Northern Philadelphia and Bensalem, where McCain was this morning.

Basically, McCain will try to relive the April 22 Democratic Primary in Pennsylvania: a reappearance by Rev. Wright and Obama's "bitter" comments in paid TV ads combined with a tightening of poll numbers (Obama is unlikely to remain at the 15.3 percent lead that he enjoys in the Pollster.com average, so it will tighten up even without a push by McCain.)

So here is the narrative that McCain will try to compose: His folks have leaked to the media that they're abandoning Colorado (while not abandoning it) and putting all the chips down on Pennsylvania. He and Palin will barnstorm the state while some 527 group puts a Rev. Wright "god damn America" ad on the air and the polling numbers will begin to close, if even just a little bit, providing the media with a red meat storyline that the descent into nasty is "working" in PA.

That scenario - while it still might not mean that McCain wins Pennsylvania - would galvanize morale among his troops nationwide, including in places like Colorado (and perhaps even Minnesota and Wisconsin).

It would be very similar to how McCain skipped the Iowa caucuses - letting Huckabee beat Romney up there - and focused on the New Hampshire primary five days later.

It's a risky strategy (to which Rudy Giuliani - who skipped Iowa and New Hampshire to put all his cards on Florida - can attest), because it relies on generating some buzz that McCain would be closing in on a possible victory in Pennsylvania. But there are enough gullible and insincere political reporters out there in need of a storyline, and Ron Fournier - McCain's pro-bono-almost "senior advisor" at Associated Press - could still be brought up from the bench to apply his signature racial arson to the circus.

On the other hand, such a scenario would invite an equal and opposite reaction from Obama supporters: If they became convinced that Pennsylvania was in danger of going "red," you'd see the "flake rate" lessen very quickly and busloads of supporters from NY, NJ and MD flock into the Keystone State to staff the trenches.

The other thing that I'm sure the McCain strategists are banking on is a repeat of what happened regarding polling in 2004, where, particularly East of and along the Mississippi, Bush overperformed polling results. Dkos diarist ystasino did a nice recap of this factor the other day:

The Republican ticket in 2004 overperformed the final two-week polling average by 3.68 percent in Florida, 2.25 percent in Virginia, 1.53 percent in Ohio, and two percent in Missouri, whereas Kerry, the Democrat, overperformed the polling average by 2.89 in Nevada, 0.7 in Colorado and 0.49 in New Mexico.

What power, if any, do you, as a rank and file person, have over this scenario? The answer is simple: That narrative depends on your panic and the reappearance of Chicken Little-ism on the Obama side of the barricades, and on his troops taking the election for granted and not redoubling efforts for the final push, particularly in Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Missouri, Ohio, Florida, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Indiana, and, yes, even in Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Maine's Second CD.

In other words, the gambit may get some media traction, but it can't work unless it instills panic and anger (over the heightened racial arson to be attempted) in Obama's supporters in a way that knocks the field organization off it's game. It can only work if you fall for it and become its unwitting dupe and participant.

By Al Giordano

This photo - make sure to credit photographer Lisa Bocook and The Field - is so about go viral.

It comes with a dispatch from North Carolina Field Hand Mark Tyson, in the western mountain region:

The guy who created these signs is named Clinton Slagle. He's got a confederate tattoo on his arm. He strolled into our headqtrs back during the primary looking for a sign, saying Obama was the only person who made any sense to him....

Mark adds:

In the meantime, we're still focusing on early voting. I'm tracking our local early turnout numbers vs overall turnout in 2004 for Swain County.  My private target is 50% early vote vs 2004 overall, and so far, we're tracking slightly ahead of the pace needed to hit that. We'll see....

NCDem at DKos sees a potential for banking as much as half the North Carolina vote prior to Election Day:

I predict that we will approach the 70% mark in total votes, which will be a huge destruction of previous marks. I'll also predict that we have almost 50% of the total votes completed before November 4th.

And early voting is now spreading to other swing states. From Chuck Todd and company at NBC:

Over the weekend two states -- Texas and Nevada -- started voting without excuse. And today, voters in seven more states -- including battlegrounds Colorado (where Palin is today) and Florida (where Obama and Hillary Clinton are together) -- can go to the polls. Also, Nevada political guru Jon Ralston noted that the early-voting returns in his state seem to be in Dems' favor. "Of the 25,000-plus who voted early, 15,644 were Democrats and 5,721 were Republicans, according to Clark County Election Department records. If that trends holds, this won't be a wave; it'll be a tsunami. Republicans had a lead on the first day of mail ballot tallying -- 5,407 to 4,947. So overall, it's 20,591 to 11,128." 

Ben Smith notes - and it's true - that Democrats always boast about early voting, citing a 2004 Las Vegas Review News story:

In Clark County, Democrats voted in greater numbers than Republicans on each of the first three days of the 14-day early voting period. Overall, Democrats had a lead of 2,104 voters.

Democrats increased turnout on each of the days, edging Republicans 45 to 41 percent Saturday, 45 to 40 percent Sunday and 46 to 40 percent Monday.

I'm surprised, though, that the usually observant Smith missed two illuminating points:

1. The statistically signficant gap between the '04 numbers in Clark County and the '08 numbers today: Democrats have gone from 45 percent of ballots cast by Democratic voters on the first two days of early voting four years ago to 62 percent on Saturday and Sunday. That's a Democratic advance of 40 percent over its '04 numbers. And GOP voters don't seem to be too motivated in Greater Vegas: they went from 40.5 percent of ballots cast in the first two days of '04 to just 23 percent this past weekend (apparently Palin has not, contrary to the spin, "fired up the base" in that part of the country; maybe it's not "pro-American" enough, Governor?). And with Democrats tied with Republicans in Clark County absentee ballots - that's the senior citizen population, mainly, where McCain does better on paper - I'd agree with Ralston's sense that there's an upset brewing in Nevada.

(Update: Smith has added a second post on the matter, making that very point.)

2. The first two days of early voting in Clark County were prescient indicators of the final result four years ago. Think of it this way: the earliest two days of early voting in Clark County four years ago showed a five point advantage for Democrats, and Kerry won 52 percent there to Bush's 47, a five percent margin. More than 60 percent of the Nevada vote comes from Clark County (Las Vegas metropolitan area).

So, Kerry lost Nevada by about 22,000 votes, while winning Clark County by 26,000. That means that in the rest of the state he had a deficit of 48,000 votes.

Even if turnout stays only at 2004 levels (about 800,000 voters, 500,000 of them in Clark County), if we project the difference between early voting by party affiliation onto the eventual result, that means potentially that Obama might rack up a 150,000 vote margin of victory this time in Clark County. To offset that, McCain would have to win 75 percent of all votes in the rest of the state, where Bush got about 58 percent. And my informed guess is that upstate Obama will over-perform the Kerry results (just as he over-performed in the upstate caucuses last January).

Nevada is one of the swing states that I have considered to be closest - like Ohio and Florida - and most likely for a long night of counting before it can be called. These early voting tallies are causing me to reassess that, and suggest a final statewide result in Nevada closer to Obama 55 percent, McCain 45. (I'll do a more exhaustive math prior to Election Day, but that's the thumbnail version of what Nevada looks like to The Field right now.)

I can't wait to see and compare today's early voting numbers in Florida and Colorado to those four years ago. It won't shock me at all if they're similar to the voting storm that is inundating North Carolina and Nevada.

Also: Wisconsin Field Hands are organizing to leaflet the long lines into Thursday's noontime Obama appearance to invite people to our talk on Thursday night: The Organizing of the President: What's Next for the Obama Movement After the Election? 

Contact Field Hand Kurt Squire to join in that organizing. And if you have a blog or an email list with Wisconsin readers, please plug the event.

(Update: The Obama campaign - likely figuring that Wisconsin is his anyway, and that the candidate would spend his time better in other states - has just cancelled the Thursday Madison event. That means Obama's upcoming schedule has him 100 percent in "red" states won by Bush in '04. The show goes on, of course, with our own event later that day.)

And I'll be meeting with Chicago Field Hands on Friday evening in the Windy City. They're busy organizing the venue for what will be both social event and organizing session. If you're in the area, do join the conversation.

Update II: We need just $108 dollars to go to meet our Florida reporting goal. Who wants to be the one to put us over the top?

Update III: Thanks everybody who donated. We've now met our goal and will be reporting from Florida starting next weekend.

By Al Giordano

(Photo: Hat tip to Jill Tubman at Jack & Jill Politics.)

Colin Powell, today on Meet The Press:

"I'm also troubled by - not what Senator McCain says - but what members of the Party say, and it is permitted to be said: such things as, "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim."  Well, the correct answer is he is not a Muslim.  He's a Christian; has always been a Christian.  But the really right answer is, "What if he is?  Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?"  The answer's "No, that's not America."  Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be President?  Yet, I have heard senior members of my own Party drop the suggestion he's Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists.  This is not the way we should be doing it in America.   

"I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine.  It was a photo essay about troops who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.  And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery.  And she had her head on the headstone of her son's grave.  And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards - Purple Heart, Bronze Star; showed that he died in Iraq; gave his date of birth, date of death.  He was twenty years old. And then at the very top of the headstone, it didn't have a Christian cross.  It didn't have a Star of David.  It had a crescent and a star of the Islamic faith.  And his name was Karim Rashad Sultan Kahn.  And he was an American.  He was born in New Jersey, he was fourteen years old at the time of 9/11 and he waited until he could go serve his country and he gave his life."

It's becoming evident to almost everybody on all sides that America is at an historic threshold: this is very much like that moment in a wedding when it comes time to say, "I do."

Except that the next two weeks are the part where those who might object are encourage to "speak now or forever hold your peace."

We've already seen today various wedding crashers: Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan outright seethed that Powell endorsed Obama only because, they say, he's black. There is an uptick of anecdotal information - in the media, from canvassers and volunteers, etcetera - of increasingly ugly statements of naked racism and aggression against Obama and his supporters.

It's exactly what happened late in the primaries last spring, only now that the prize is not just a nomination - a mere step toward state power - but state power itself, a certain segment of the population is beginning to freak out and blurt out its racist ideations and fears in public.

I'll argue, based on my own experience, that this is not bad news, strategically and tactically, nor a moment for panic: We've always known these people and that they exist. The academia-fueled "political correctness" wave since the 1970s has not served to change them, or society, one iota. It has, rather, repressed such expressions deeper down, turning them into a more compact and explosive compound, which will come spewing out now at the moment of greatest pressure. As Lenny Bruce said, "it is the suppression of the word that gives it its power."

And we all ought to know that very similar person deep inside every one of us, no matter what pigmentation is our personal wrapping paper.

Universal racism is the result of 5,000 years of social engineering: the powerful have always sought to divide and conquer the workers along such superficial lines, and the toll has been heavy on all. It's the dirty secret of America - and, frankly, all lands - that festers in the collective closet: fear of The Other.

It is a free-floating fear that attaches itself alternately to different targets, which is how the guy who hung an Obama ghost in effigy in his yard in Ohio this weekend, according to his local evening newscast, also put a Star of David atop it. Got that? He's afraid of blacks and Jews. And that has - if used effectively - the potential for reassuring elderly Jews in Florida about a President Obama!

And there's some blogger that published that hateful guy's home address and phone number, urging vigilantism against him. I think we need a little self-policing in our own ranks with hotheads like that, to talk them off the ledge, or, if that doesn't work, to build a firewall around them.

Panic is a vicious cycle that can be ignited by a stray spark almost anywhere. It's a first cousin, inbred, of race hate.

As the openly racist proclamations become louder in the coming two weeks, and you're offended by them, you have to take a deep breath and ask yourself - yes, even though it sounds cliché - "how would Martin Luther King respond to that?"

I'm serious.

Listen and learn to how Obama himself responded to such publicly stated ideations today in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Campaigning in a traditionally Republican state, the Democratic nominee found lots of supporters of John McCain, at least one woman who believes the Illinois senator is a "closet Muslim" - and another who repeatedly shouted "Socialist."



The following is a compilation of pool reports from print, TV and wire reporters who accompanied Obama to the diner:



Obama arrived at the barbecue joint around 12:30 p.m., where an older and majority white clientele of several dozen were eating lunch after church services. Many patrons applauded as he walked into the diner, but Diane Fanning, 54, began yelling "Socialist, socialist, socialist - get out of here!"

So how did Obama respond? He engaged the accuser, respectfully, on her terms:

Later, Obama came to the long table where Fanning and other members of a local First Presbyterian church were gathered. He held out his hand to her and asked, "How are you, ma'am?" but she declined to shake his hand.



Fanning asked Obama about a North American union, and Obama responded: "Well, you know, I am opposed to it if it were happening. But it doesn't seem to be actually be happening. The truth of the matter is there is no plans. I've talked to a lot of people, including folks down in Texas. There's no plan to create a common government between Mexico, U.S. and Canada. That's just not ... that's just not happening. I know some people have been hearing rumors about it. But as far as I can tell, that's just not something that's happening. We would never give up our sovereignty in that way. Any other questions?"

In an interview, Fanning said, "I still think he's a closet Muslim."

They're out there.

But you should have known that already.

Obama spoke at length with many of the others parishioners at the long banquet table and got a much friendlier reception as he spoke about health care, taxes and Social Security. Fanning told your pooler, "Some of ‘em are just nicer than I am. I know how some of ‘em think."



But several of her fellow churchgoers said their support was genuine.

Betty Waylett, 76, told Obama, "You're doing a great job." She told your pooler that she is a Republican but that she will vote for Obama because she likes the way he speaks and his manner. Waylett, who is white, said Obama's race is not a factor.

The racially charged expressions by some are materia prima - if played right - for your own acts of political jujitsu: By responding to them without panic, without hostility, and at least putting on the theater of treating them respectfully and still trying to win them over, you win over the real "swing voters" in places like Virginia and Colorado and Florida (or at that same table in North Carolina).

The thing is, you gotta be cool and stay cool.

Get real: It sounds disingenuous and phony to pretend you're all shocked about what you knew was already there. Those that will launch with increasing volume into such racist tirades in the coming days should be seen as props; you won't convince them, but you can convince their neighbor with the grace that you show in dealing with them. That's what wins.

I fully expect Chicken Little-ism to rear its clucking head, one last time, very shortly, attaching its fear to the overt expressions of racism that will inevitably come spilling out now that the obvious is becoming apparent. Such expressions of panic - reputedly from our side of the aisle - will be potentially much more harmful to the shot at victory than the "fear of the other" ideations that will come from the mouths of the most confused and fearful.

All of that, too, will be evidence that the country is about to say "I do."

To paraphrase FDR: We have nothing to fight but fear itself.