I can't pretend to be optimistic about tomorrow's electoral possibilities. What with the President's Little War now producing new headlines (USA today earlier blared their finding that the GOP was regaining its advantage) conveniently in time to drive news of its continued inability to find an honest man to deal with accounting regulations (A wince-worthy grace note here, by the way, is the highlighting of NY's senior senator as a champion of Harvey Pitt. Thanks, Chuck.)

As the one talent our current head of state shares with his predecessor is a great facility on the campaign trail, it seems likely that Bush's last-minute frenzy of campaigning will further cloud the minds of an electorate which possesses all the focused political acuity of bored, somewhat hyperactive preteen. It's best to be prepared for the worst, and this bloody country might well march out tomorrow and deliver up (not, I suspect, by a landslide) the congress to the whims of Cheneycorp.

Or not. Stranger things have happened, and a number of the key races are still mighty close. And so many of the governor's races may go to the Democrats that something of an important balance of power may shift nationally due to that. Not that I view your average Democrat in a state capitol with any particular reverence: but we work with what we can.

(Not here, though: the governor's race is such a pathetically foregone conclusion that the local union which always calls my house with a lame-ass recorded message urging us to get out the Democratic vote didn't even name the gubernatorial candidate in their message tonight. That's right, I was asked to support Spitzer for AG and Hevesi for comptroller, but Carl McCall has already been cut loose by the local demo machine. Pataki must be laughing his smug ass off.)

I know...I have no analysis here, only grim fear. Given the fact that Gore won a majority in the last election, I remain in continual shell-shocked astonishment that we as a polity seem hell-bent on handing this country over to a small group of rapacious petty lords, whose hatred of all reasonable governance is so perverse as to defy logic. I never, never imagined it could get this bad. And now that it has, my faith that it won't become worse is hard to find on this cold night in November.

All that said: I unconditionally love voting. I love going to the school cafeteria. I love finding my little photocopied signature in the registration records. I love the (probably very ancient and fallible and in need of replacement) mechanical voting machines. I am all Aaron-Sorkin about the whole damned thing. And I will feel a very important fraction better after I go and cast my statistically meaningless vote tomorrow. I hope you do, too.