And Counting...

Sacre'Poutine! Lord above, I'm sitting in a merde Starbucks in Pennsylvania, exclusively for the wi-fi, my ears bleeding from the droning music, my tongue deadened by the oil sludge coffee, but I was told this is where the story is and so here I am.

My half-brother, Bertie Ernesto, has been feverishly working the phone banks from Bucks County to Wilkes-Barre bothering old ladies and invalids about their commitment to change and do they know where their polling places are, and do they need a ride on Tuesday? I have never had the propensity for the 'cold call' and, though I wish I could help, can merely wait on the sideline, straddle the bar and wait as the news cycles roll over one another like a Katrina tide.

Philadelphia is an interesting model for the USA of the Post Racial Electorate, no? Every time I'm here I see a congeniality in the street interactions of whites and blacks missing from other American cities. In New York, of course, ANY interaction between ANYONE is predicated on 'what are you trying to take from me?' and 'are you going to harm me?' And places like Portland, OR, or San Francisco where whites are performing obscene yoga postures to demonstrate their liberality before their African-American brethren; here you always get the sense, politics aside, that this is their city (all of theirs) and there is no big deal about all that.

In fact, to sit at a bar on Chestnut Street, you'd be hard pressed to realize you are in a 'battleground' state at all. The bartender shrugs that he doesn't have the money to get out to Arizona to help, the patrons laugh about Palin's latest antics. Bertie Ernesto assures me in measured panic that their is much to be concerned about, but you just aren't seeing it here.

I have determined the panic marker for Tuesday night. At ten-fifteen, I estimate, we will have seen a good hour plus of exit polling before the returns begin to pop and flash across the eastern seaboard; they have to be in line with each other right away, for me, in order to Quell the FEAR. I predict it will be a night of AT LEAST medium panic well into the morning of the Fifth. Nothing is certain.

Margaret facilitates from cynicism to pure despair. She's meeting me tonight for a cheesesteak at Geno's. Poor puce, I fear for her sometimes. More from the road.