I stood in the corner of the Yankee Tavern, where the locals sit; there was a spacious pocket of calm there, by the window. The drunks going to the game seem to know not to invade it. I decided I didn't know any better.

I put my beer on the counter and scrutinized the scene outside. An older man with dark hair and a mustache, well dressed, lighting a cigarette. Brylcreemed, Billy Martin-looking guy. Could be a livery driver. Could be the King of the Bronx. Most of the passersby were the game crowd: families, old timers, Manhattanites and Jersey guys. Mixed up with them were the locals trying to go about their business: harried Dominican women with their kids, odd-job guys and b-boys. I watched a tired black man in a lime-green suit, a matching fedora and two-tone shoes in beige and white. He carried a plastic bag of groceries. Everybody's gotta take the groceries home.

An older black man in glasses and a cap turned from the bar to interrupt my reverie.

"Lotta commotion today. Lotta fuss," he said, putting his red wine on the counter.

"It's a big day!" I said. It was the first game at the new stadium, an exhibition with the Cubs.

"Yeah," he said warily. He launched into an ornery rant about the team: Tickets are too expensive; families have been priced out. The new luxury boxes are half-empty because of the recession so now they're gouging regular people to make it back. The Steinbrenners are making one last, big push for a championship so they can sell the team in the next two years, "while the gettin's still good." That's why we have these great new players.

"But we always picked up great players. Clemens, Johnson," I pointed out.

"Those guys were at the end of their careers," he said. "We're picking these guys up at the peak of their careers. Teixeira."

"Sabathia," I added. He was a hard man to disagree with.

He was dressed middle class and seemed well on his feet but he was missing most of his bottom front teeth. His tongue wriggled behind his lone remaining incisor as he spoke and it was difficult to look elsewhere. I'll not soon forget that tooth.

He moved on to the neighborhood, the burrough and the city as a whole. This Metro North station they're putting in, what do you think that's about? The South Bronx is turning into Westchester, that's what.

"New York City is fucked," he said.

We looked out the window for a little while.

"Listen. My wife has an iPhone that has 10 times the computational power of the computer that sent Apollo to the moon."

Ten times seemed to me to be an underestimation but it was enough to serve his point.

"She can get her e-mail anywhere she goes. Do you think Wall Street matters now? You don't need Wall Street. You could be in Peoria, Illinois."

"Business can be done anywhere now," I added helpfully.

"New York City is fucked."

He digressed further: the economy, politics, the environment. He bemoaned the coal and oil lobbies.

"If we don't do something about global warming right now, we're gonna be fucked, and we might still be fucked."

"We won't really be fucked for a while, though, right? Forty, fifty years?"

"How long?"

"Forty years?"

"I'm 72 years old," he said. "Within my lifetime, we're gonna see disasters from this thing. I work in energy. I know. Flooding of coastal regions. Manhattan? Battery Park? Forget about it."

"Wow."

"Manhattan will be totally fucked."

"I'm still relieved that Obama is in office," I offered. "As bad as things are, he seems to be the right person to—"

The man made a faint grimace.

"Obama has a chance. As long as he picks the right people. His Energy Secretary is very good. His Agriculture Secretary is good. But why you would want Larry Summers and Tim Geithner in charge of anything I can't understand. They're the ones who caused these fucking problems in the first place."

I cited Obama's talent for promoting consensus, for accomodating differing points of view. Again, the man's face soured.

"Accomodation isn't good," he said.

I tried to backtrack. "That might be the wrong word. But he listens to all sides. He can compromise—"

"There's always a wrong side. You don't want to listen to the wrong side."

It occurred to me that I'd assumed he was an Obama supporter—not just because he was black, not just because we were in New York City, but because in the past year I'm not quite sure if I've so much as been in the presence of a single person who did not support Obama.

"Listen, I'm a patriot. I love my country. I think we should bring back mandatory service."

"Military service or some kind of national service?" I asked.

He winced. "Any kind of service would be OK, I guess," he allowed. "I graduated high school in 1955 and then I went into the Army. The Army's the only place in the world that teaches you to get along with people who are not like you. When you're in the Army, no matter who you are, you only want one thing. Do you know what that is?"

"What's that?"

"To go home. All you want to do is go home. And the people you're with are the only people who can help you do that, and you've gotta help them too. If your commanding officer tells you to carry this and that to somewhere by tomorrow morning, you're not going to be the asshole who doesn't do it. If you don't do it, everyone is fucked. You have to find a way to work with people to get it done."

We were interrupted as one of the regulars, an older black woman, creaked off her barstool to say her goodbyes. I stood deferentially apart, giving ample berth to her ceremonious exit. After she was gone I approached again, nonchalantly, not sure if the conversation would resume. The man acknowledged me with a nod.

"Now McCain, the only reason I didn't vote for him was nuclear power. He wants to build all these nuclear power plants. Where you gonna put the waste? Nuclear power is like asking people to store their garbage in their homes. We'd all be fucked."

It struck me that he felt more kinship with McCain as a military man than with Obama as a black man.

"The other thing about McCain," he added, "is that he was tortured for six years. You can't have an experience like that without your brain being addled."

Finally, he put his empty glass up on the bar and gave hugs and handshakes to those remaining in his circle. He shook my hand: Great talking to you. Great talking to you, too. He walked out the door and past the cops and smokers and crossed 161st Street and went on down Gerard Avenue, past the stadium.

The Sorry Dance

I descended into the depths of the Duane Reade on 59th and 8th, looking for where they might sell money orders. Amidst the aisles and aisles of candy, paper towels and soap. Around a corner, I nearly ran into a middle-aged black woman with short hair and glasses. I feinted to my left; she to her right. We were momentarily suspended in space and time. Finally we do-si-do'd.

"Sorry!" she said. "Dance."

It was a funny interaction and a funny thing for her to say. It got me thinking about other sorry dances.

Like Larry Eagleburger being forced to apologize for criticizing Sarah Palin. He'd originally told the truth - that she is obviously not ready to be Vice President. He didn't savage her - he's a Republican, after all, and often cited by McCain as one of five former Secretaries of State who support him (not that he can remember them all ) - but he made a very sober and lucid assessment of her obvious lack of preparation and know-how. Transparently, someone from the campaign then dressed him down overnight, read him the riot act. I don't know what they might have said to him. He doesn't have a political future - he's 78 years old. Did they torture him? In effect, they cut off his cock. They forced him to humiliate himself on Fox News, to bow down low, to sweatingly and haltingly take back everything he'd said in serene sincerity the day before. It's suggestive of dissidents of authoritarian regimes being forced to recant or die. The Nazis, the Soviets, the Khmer Rouge. The Spanish Inquisition. Convert or die. Confess or die. Those demonic - worse than demonic, really - bargains. You sell your soul but get nothing in return. Honestly, what did they tell him to scare him straight? Or is he just that weak?

So that's the sorry dance. It's the jangly dance performed by a fool when those he's desperate to please pepper the floor beneath his feet with bullets.

Fortunately, a stranger's riding into town.

Obama will win big today.

Nothin' Against the Man

I spent the end of the afternoon calling voters in battleground states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia. A disconcertingly large percentage of the numbers were out of service - either connecting to that future-robot woman's "I'm sorry, the number you are calling..." message or ringing for a while then abruptly shifting to shrieking electronic noise. Where did they get these fucking numbers? Are these the numbers from 2004?

Still others went to voice mail. Two giggling roommates reciting each word of their message in alternation before saying "Bye!" in giddy unison. An elderly woman in Ohio reciting hers in a singsongy near rap: "When-you-hear-the-beep, you-know-what-to-do..."

And a few answered. I dialed the number of a 29-year-old male in Ohio and a woman picked up, and cooly asked me who was calling. I explained that I was a volunteer for the Barack Obama Campaign for Change, and that I just wanted to talk about the election for a couple minutes, blah blah blah.

"He's deceased," she said.

"Oh? I'm very, very sorry to hear that. I..."

"He already voted, though. For Obama."

"Oh?"

"Yup. But now he's deceased."

"Really? OK. I... I'm sorry for your loss."

"Thank you."

"Goodbye."

"Goodbye."

Overwhelmingly, the people I spoke to were planning on voting, or already had voted, for Obama. Every person I spoke to in Ohio, in fact, had voted early for Obama. Dayton, mostly. Some were cheerful telling me this, some were terse and annoyed. But it was Obama, Obama, Obama. Finally, in West Virginia, I heard something different. An older-sounding woman picked up and I asked her for the male name on my list. Who is this? I gave her my spiel from the script.

"He's not here, and you wouldn't want to talk to him, believe me."

"We're happy to talk to anyone."

"Ha!"

"OK. Do you know who he supports in the el..."

"Lemme tell you, it's not gonna be that one."

I fucked up a bit with a Pennsylvania McCain supporter. She let me get through most of my spiel: Pennsylvania's gonna be real important in this election, I'd just like to ask a couple of questions if I can. Finally, I asked her who she was supporting.

"John McCain."

She said this in such an emphatic way that there was really nothing else to say. And in fact, there was nothing else to say in the script either, except "thank you" and "goodbye." But there she was on the other end of the line, awaiting words.

"OK, there you go. Well... Have a really great evening and..."

"Thank you."

"And, uh... good luck."

Just before I hung up I heard her on the other end of the line, in a tone of aghast outrage:

"Good luck?!?"

My most remarkable call was with a man in West Virginia, maybe 50 or so. He spoke in a mountain drawl and was a bit animated from the start, which made me afraid things might go bad. But it actually went something like this:

"Now listen, I ain't got nothin' against that man. Obama. Ain't got nothin' against him, ya hear?"

"Yup, that's great."

"I think I'm leaning a little bit to McCain."

I'd been wary, but I was surprised and encouraged by the words "leaning a little bit." I decided to depart recklessly from the script.

"Why is it that you feel that way?"

"Well, listen. I been hearin' this thing of how Barack Obama's gonna spread the wealth. And that is one thing I... That is one thing I cannot stand for. That is the one thing, I do not like that. Ain't got nothin' against the man."

"You know though, John McCain believes in exactly the same system of taxation that Obama was describing. That's the same system McCain believes in."

"Yeah I know, I know, but it's them words, ya know? Them words, spread the wealth."

"You think it's a poor choice of words."

"Yeah! Exactly. It's a poor choice of words. But it don't got nothin' to do with the man in any way! I been listenin' to him and he's intelligent, I like what he says mostly. Listen. I been a lifelong Democrat. But I voted for Bush in 2000 and in 2004. I voted for Bush in 2000 'cause Gore wanted to take my guns away, and ya see, I'm a hunter..."

"You know that Barack Obama specifically does not want to take guns away from hunters..."

"Yeah, I know that. I know that. Now, I did not vote for Kerry 'cause I hated Kerry. Hated the man. But then Bush wasn't so good neither."

"Exactly."

"Listen, some of my friends, they called me racist. I ain't no racist. But some of my friends, they called me racist 'cause in the primary, they asked me who I was votin' for, I said Hillary. Now, they accuse me of racism. I tell them, if I'd a voted for him they woulda accused me of sexism."

"That's a very, very good point."

"It don't matter to me what color you are or what gender you are."

"That's great, it's really great to hear that."

"It's just that if he means to take my money that I make and spread it around, I can't take that."

"You know that with Obama as president, you'd get a tax cut if you make less than $200,000 a year, right? And John McCain would be giving his tax cut to rich people. Obama's going to help working people keep more of their money."

"Yeah, I heard about that."

"And health care - he's going to save every family $2,500 on health care by fighting the insurance companies."

"Yeah, that's good."

"If you look at the issues, you can see how much more he can help people. See, the thing about a choice of words is that it's been a long campaign, and lots of things have been said, so sometimes someone uses a poor choice of words. Happens to everybody. But you gotta look past the words sometimes to see what the actual policies are all about. See who cares about the issues that are most important to you and to your loved ones."

"I know whatcha mean. I got nothin' against the man, nothin' against the man. I ain't decided about the whole thing, that's the truth."

"Is there anything else about Obama that you have questions about?"

"This one other thing, ya know, this thing I been hearin' that if Obama is elected it'll be him an' Pelosi an' whatshisname, uh, Henry, uh..."

"Harry Reid."

"Yeah, all of them together, that it ain't good for the country because they get to spread the money around anyway they like. But I dunno..."

"Yeah, I don't think it's like that. I think John McCain kind of feels like he's up against the ropes right now, and every day he tries saying something different, and that's because he doesn't have anything good to say to people about policies and what he would actually do."

"Yeah, I suppose it's like that, yeah. I dunno. I'm thinkin' 'bout it. I dunno what I'm gonna do."

"This has been a really great conversation, and it sounds like you're still thinking about things, and that's great."

"Oh yeah! I'll be thinkin' 'bout it, that's for sure. I won't know what I'm gonna do until I'm right up there in that booth."

"You've got a few days to think about everything, and, you know, obviously, on Tuesday, I hope you make the decision for Obama."

"You know what, I think I'm leaning in that direction."

He's Black!

The gnawing fear I have in my gut right now, about the election, is this: At the penultimate moment, National Guard soldiers will be called in to block the polls. They'll be arrayed in well-practiced formations around the perimeters, legs spread slightly, M-16s at the ready across their chests. Commanders will engage tactfully with the puzzled citizenry who'd hoped to exercise their franchise. They'll wave their arms: "No, no, no. Go home everyone. Go home peacefully, please."

"Why? What's going on?"

"No voting today, folks. Go home. Go peacefully."

"What do you mean, no voting?"

"There's no voting. John McCain has won. Go home."

"What do you mean he won?"

"There can be no election, people. There is no voting today. There is no voting for Barack Obama."

"No voting for Barack Obama?"

"He's BLACK. HE'S BLACK, FOLKS. The election is over. There is no voting. There is no voting for a black man. Go home."

Government officials and the Republican high and mighty will be on all the networks, asserting minute variations of the same message: "There can be no election today; one of the candidates is black. How dare anyone think that our nation might actually have gone through with this? Anyone who thought they could vote for Barack Obama is a fool. Of course they can't. He's BLACK. You didn't expect us to actually put our nation in that sort of peril, did you? You'll be glad we intervened. It's over now. Everyone remain calm."

There will be a flurry of outrage, but by the end of the afternoon we'll all grow tired, hungry. Docile. We'll cook dinner and eat it in front of reality TV, placing salty forkfuls in our mouths, masticating unhappily. We might cry a tear or two of shame. Really, what were we thinking? How naive, how stupid. To think we might have, today, voted a black man to the presidency of the United States! Of course they stopped us. Of course. What did we expect?

OK, that's my fear. If it doesn't happen, I think Obama's got a pretty good chance.



Illustration by Louise Asherson

I've been intrigued by John McCain's recent reactions to questions from his audiences about Barack Obama - in particular the episode where an elderly woman asserted to him that Obama is an Arab. It's "good," of course, that McCain corrected the woman by countering that Obama is "decent, a family man, a citizen" and so on (although he doesn't bother to challenge the premise that there's something wrong with being an Arab, which CNN's Campbell Brown, among others I'm sure, has spoken out about). On the other hand, the pressure on McCain to settle down his increasingly bloodthirsty, vehement audience has been great - he probably had to do something whether he wanted to or not. His decision to so so might have been calculated, even timed somewhat - he used it in the debate last night, to claim that he'd taken steps to elevate the discourse but that Obama's campaign hadn't (a weak and laughable tactic, but what else does he have?). And of course, this might have been among the last glimmers of his fading moral conscience. He has shown it in the past, after all. But what really strikes me is his demeanor before he contradicts the woman. Watch the video again. When she says she "can't trust" Obama, McCain nods impatiently, the way you do when you're hearing something you wish you weren't hearing but you have to indulge for some reason. And after she calls him an Arab there's a dreadful beat before he starts repeating, "No ma'am" and takes the mic from her. Watch his face - ashen, tense, rueful. I imagine that in that moment the wheels were turning furiously in his head: "Do I have to say something? Fuck, I have to say something. Goddammit." And he forces himself - a personification of the expression "bite the bullet" - to produce the words and the body language that in the end form a quite gracious gesture toward Obama, the way these kinds of gestures often come off when they are produced under great duress (again, apologies are owed to the millions upon millions of Arabs who may rightly be insulted). It's to his credit that he did it, but also to his discredit that it was evidently that difficult. It was a complex, powerfully dramatic moment - it could have been McCain saving his reputation, saving himself as a politician, saving himself as a human being. He'd probably like to think he was saving his campaign, but I don't think that's the case.

The All-American Witch Hunt

The increasing venom of crowds at McCain-Palin rallies indicates that a certain segment of the population has taken the innuendo and slanderous accusations of unscrupulous Republican campaign strategists completely literally. In other words, they believe that Obama is a Muslim terrorist. They imagine that through some strange and cruel chain of events, the evil "other" represented by 9/11 hijackers and by Osama bin Laden is now incarnate in the Democratic nominee for president of the United States. Many of these people already hold some form or other of Biblical apocalypse fantasy alive in their imaginations, so it is not hard for them to believe that God is testing, or Satan is tempting, the good people of our country in this election as some necessary step in a process that also includes the breakdown of our civilization (i.e., economy), a war with heathens in the Middle East, the End of Days (global warming?) and the Rapture. Considering this point of view, it's not terribly difficult to understand why some people consider Obama's identity as the Antichrist to be a matter of fact beyond any question whatsoever. So it's even sort of poignant when, for example, a woman tells McCain how terrified she is of Obama because he "is an Arab." She really believes Obama is an Arab and is terrified that the United States will be ruled by an Arab terrorist. It's easy for us - the "reality-based community" - to dismiss a lot of the Republican lies and smears about Obama as laughable and obviously untrue. Of course, that's what they are. But the mistake we're making is to trust that while some are laughing and others are keeping a straight face, everyone is in on the joke. That even if McCain supporters want to believe them or pretend that they're true, they must know they're lies. The chilling fact is that many people believe them wholeheartedly, sincerely. They are terrified to the core of their souls that Barack Obama, an Islamist terrorist, will be elected president. "Kill him!" "Off with his head!" they scream. This election is an all-American witch hunt. That's what we're up against.

WAKE UP AMERICA! Part 1

Predictably, McCain's people have McCain saying that Obama is using the financial crisis as a "political opportunity." McCain has seized every opportunity to accuse Obama of seizing opportunity lately - he's done it with Iraq, he's done it with race, he's done it with Obama's own success. Is McCain doing it for his health? To alert the American people that the man he's campaigning against is campaigning against him? Thanks, John. I have to say that these weakass, whiny, bitchy little complaints make McCain look awful - less than a man, frankly. It would all seem to bolster Obama's current strength and good chances, and McCain's desperation. But as we've seen in the past, don't underestimate the odious combination of utter unscrupulousness and desperation in politics, nor the susceptibility, shall we say, of voters to it.

WAKE UP AMERICA!

The news that W. is sending Special Ops to Pakistan without the approval of the Pakistani government can mean only one thing: This is the October surprise. Mark my words: There will be an announcement in mid- to late October that Osama bin Laden has been captured. It will be a moment of pure vindication for Bush, allowing him to strut and preen and prattle on a bit about how history will view this moment, how our sacrifice has been great but our cause just, etc., etc. There will be the implication, as there was in the capture of Sadam Hussein, that one man - our man, our president - has humiliated another man for the sake of the clan. And the corollary of course is that only tough talking, Republican men do that. Sure enough, McCain will glide into office. He'll have a stroke in early 2012, making Sarah Palin president and ushering in a dark decade of warmongering, religio-fascism and economic mayhem that future historians will marvel at the way an avid mortician scrutinizes a bludgeoned corpse, but that's beside the point for now.

These hideous, corrupt, power-mad and murderous cocksuckers have waited seven years to the day to play this card. They could have picked up bin Laden any damn time. But why waste a trump? It's akin to the 3/11 Madrid bombing. Hit them when it hurts. Hit us when it hurts.

If you're inclined to, pray that this doesn't occur, as it surely can't be God's plan.

One reason to worry if you're an Obama supporter is that in spite of the substance of Republican philosophy, very much in evidence in McCain's history and platform - the predilection for war, the reluctance to govern for the common good, the reflexive fear-mongering and "values" pandering - Republicans are now trying to co-opt the Democrats' message. You hear a lot about "change" and "cleaning up Washington" from the McCain campaign. You've got to sort of admire the nerve. They're skimming the cream from the top of Obama's cup and dumping it into the cold bottom of theirs, with apparent impunity. Every grand and beautiful thing that Obama says - no problem, they'll just say it, too. I like to imagine that one of Karl Rove's lackeys, now working for McCain, had this revelation after weeks of "Curse you, Barack Obama! You're so good!" fist shaking. Eureka. Never mind that bringing change to Washington means changing eight years of grotesque mismanagement by George W. Bush and the (until very recently) Republican Congress. Like so many Machiavellian tactics, this one has an infantile simplicity at the heart of it; it's like children pathetically parroting each other's insults. "Say anything and the people will believe it" cynicism has evolved, or devolved, to "if the people believe what the others are saying, say that." Again, a saving grace is that it reeks of desperation upon the slightest examination. All we really need from undecideds this November is for them to think twice.

A few thoughts as I watch McCain's speech at the RNC:

The bio video preceding his speech was scored with what seemed like an obvious knockoff of the "Dallas" theme. Are they just trying to drill the "more drilling" theme into our heads?

Are they crazy, using the dreaded green screen behind him?

Wow, Cindy McCain looks like a faded porn star. I might also add that the cunt plasters on the makeup like a trollop.

Holy shit, a protester - and the cameras stayed on her awhile. Someone tore a pink flag out of her hands, balled it up and threw it on the ground. Gay and lesbian rights? She ran down an aisle with her hands up in V signs - "peace," I suppose, but it seemed like mad, defiant victory.

The background's blue now - someone fixed it and someone else is getting their ass yelled at.

My friends, I propose to bring to our great nation a new drinking game: Drink every time McCain says "my friends."

Politics is now just a derivatives game. It's not about the moral character of the candidates, nor about their "vision," nor their experience or know-how, and least of all about the tedious "issues." The game is played at deep layers of derivation now: It's not even about the "spin" that a campaign can try to put on news events, polls or the assertions of its opponent (although this is an essential tactic). Nor is it even about the media's coverage of said spin. It's about the media's coverage of the media's coverage of the media's response to the public's response to the media's coverage of the spin.

There's been a lot of hand-wringing over whether modern American politics and policy have become "poll-driven." This is not the real worry. (In fact, we'd be a lot better off if the last eight years of executive policy had been determined in accord with public sentiment rather than in spite of it.) The trouble is, the media are poll-driven. They are engaged in a breathless dance with the public, as represented by lucrative demographic sectors, in which they cloyingly proffer "news" that might be most appetizing for the public to consume, whereupon the public more or less eats it up, the media poll the public to evaluate the success of the transaction (ever heard of ratings?), and try even harder next time to please. In other words, the media are doing the work of politicians.

The American people might be stupid, but they're no fools. They'll let someone butter their bread any old day. The media give the public what they want - entertainment, the illusion of authority, the illusion of knowledge, bells and whistles and (ironically) Britney Spears. Barack Obama's umpteen-point health care plan doesn't do that. It might buy you chemo when you're sick, but it won't try to tell you what there is to live for. All consumers aspire, strive and fantasize, and the media's business is to leverage that.

What's most worrisome is that Republicans are experts at this deeply cynical, immoral game. They don't give a fuck whether anything is "true" or not. This was not an aberration of the Bush campaign (no big surprise, as Bush's staff is now on board with McCain). It's ingrained in the cutthroat Republican culture now. They can't fight this campaign on the issues. They fucked us with Iraq, they fucked us on the environment, they've humiliated our country in the eyes of the world, they've dismissed the victims of disaster, they've tortured innumerable innocents, they've encouraged insane and profligate fiscal policies and economic practices, they've installed ass-kissing cronies at every level of government, they can't get their story straight on gays. So now we have: Obama voted against troop funding. Obama wouldn't visit the troops. Obama's playing the race card. Don't you think he's too thin?

It's encouraging that at least historically, McCain has not been completely down with this type of nonsense. (This may be the real reason the Republican "base" is so worried about him.) The pressure might get to be too much; he might have some cataclysmic and very public emotional breakdown over the evil that his minions are doing in his name. But I wouldn't count on it - the sight of the ultimate trophy seems to have rendered him docile and compliant. For that reason, too, Obama might have an advantage: Who's the fucking man in this duel right now? Not McCain. Still, we should worry.

I don't know how Republicans rationalize all this - or if they do. Maybe they see it all as an extension of individualism and free markets - get all you can ruthlessly, give the people what they want, the rest will sort itself out. The real trouble is, it works.

The bigger the lie, as somebody once said.