Holding our breath

American Prospect columnist Courtney Martin captures my mood exactly in a piece headlined Dare I believe Obama can win? that she wrote for the Christian Science Monitor. Key quote:

Like so many Americans, I feel as if I am holding my breath.

Could the quiet seed of joy that was planted in my heart the day I heard Barack Obama speak for the first time take root and grow without fear of the brutal storms of disappointment? …

Now I watch Obama, a leader who articulates my own ideas and intuitions with the most eloquent grace, on the brink of a presidential miracle. His words about the critical nature of cohesive community, about injustice, about personal responsibility ring so true in my ears. But I’m scared to believe.

I don’t think that Obama is a “messiah.” I know that he has flaws, that he will fail in many ways, that the space between his ideals and his actions will often gape with a discomfiting hypocrisy, or at the very least, inefficiency.

But I am almost certain that he is good deep down, that he believes, as I do, that we could do better, that we could be better, that we are – when stripped of bureaucracy and alienation and skepticism – already better.

It is not his inevitable fall from grace that I fear. It is the possibility that on Nov. 4, I will find out that my acute craving for a kind and complex leader is not shared by the majority of Americans. That conclusion to this breathtaking story would tempt me, not just to be alienated from American politics, but from the American people. I fear that the worst part of me would bully the best part with cruel words: “I told you so. Hope is dangerous and naive.”

Unlike Martin, who writes that she’s never voted for a president who won, I’m old enough to have voted for Bill Clinton twice. But I also voted for Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, and John Kerry. Those losses –- especially Gore’s — make me wary to get too hopeful.

As I watch the polls and electoral college counts trend in Obama’s favor, and especially now that we’ve entered the month of October, I am increasingly holding my breath, wondering what surprise the Karl Roves of the world have in store to try to frighten enough Americans into not voting for hope.

One month from today we have an opportunity to start the changes that this country so desperately needs. No matter what happens in the next four weeks, my fellow Americans, please vote based on truth, reason, and hope, not fear and partisanship.

Yes We Can. Obama ‘08.