Choosing.

All right, already. The general election is Tuesday next, and I hope you're all planning on voting. Unless of course you're voting for Admiral McCain - if so, please just stay home. There, that's done it. Election over.

Not quite. Would that it were that easy. Of course, as is usually the case, people generally to the left of the political center have to overcome themselves as well as the legions on the right - legions of pre-organized churchgoing Republicans who march out to the polls each and every election and pull the lever or punch the card or touch the icon next to the biggest caveman's name. (We've seen the results.) The liberal-left does not come in simple, pre-organized packages like this - neither do the folks in the natural constituencies for leftward political appeals, such as the poor and working class. We're constantly carping at one another. We splinter in so many different ways.

A lot of people far to the left, like me, are disgruntled with Obama's tepid positions on issues we feel strongly about. Understandably so - these are crucial issues of war and prosperity, health and civil liberties, etc. Still, I intend to vote for Obama and encourage you like-minded folks to do the same. In fact, I'm actively working for his election. Here's why: McCain. He's certainly the best argument for voting for Barack Obama. I don't know about any of you, but the thought of having McCain in the White House after eight years of Bush/Cheney is enough to make me scream. This man is all over the road. He lurches from one thing to the next. His vaunted foreign policy credentials are bogus; just the fact that McCain's taking advice from Randy Scheunemann, a prominent booster of Ahmed Chalabi six years ago, should be enough to convince anyone that his administration will be like a third Bush term. (Scheunemann looks like a prime candidate for National Security Advisor or some senior State Department post.)

McCain's economic team is no better, hawking the usual G.O.P. prescription of cutting rich people's taxes, gutting social programs, and glutting the war machine. In as much as that brain trust is likely to be headed up by UBS exec. Phil Gramm, former senator, and primary architect of the current financial meltdown. He would no doubt be joined by Joe the Right-Wing Talk Radio Wingnut (and unlicensed plumber), who is full of great ideas and is, in McCain's words, a "national hero" and the Senator's "role model." (Honest.) Since presidencies are largely about the people the successful candidate drags with him to Washington, this does not augur well for a McCain administration.

Sure, Obama's got a lot of points that irk a leftist like me. (The fact that Rashid Khalidi is somehow being used to "slime" Obama merely by his being in the same room as him at some point is astonishing to me.) But he's marginally closer to my way of thinking than any Democratic nominee in quite a few years. I have less trepidation about voting for him than I did with either Kerry or Gore, frankly. And in a zero-sum match-up against McCain, I'll vote Obama. I encourage you to do the same. Just don't let it be your only political act of the next four years.

Let's pull this thing out, folks. Otherwise it's going to be another long four years.

luv u,

jp