Inside
The Last Mile
Jared Is A Crook (Duh)
Obama’s Magnificent Cheesecake Factory Trolling
A Little Secret About the Election
The Jonestown Bit
Too Bad The AI Bubble Will Kill The Economy
New Epstein Horrors
Humanities and The Future
PHP Is Compromised. Bye, Internet.
The Big Picture
The Last Mile
When you read this on Friday morning, we will be four days out. This is my 20th election cycle as a campaign professional, and with each passing cycle you learn things from both victory and (even more) from defeat. Every season is different, every bad year is bad in its own way, and every good year is good in its own way.
This is a good year.
In my 11th year as a voice in the Never Trump movement, and my 6th at the Lincoln Project, I’ve rarely felt like the odds were more in our favor. Victory is in sight, a cleansing, sweeping, tangible victory.
It is not the end, because someone still draws air into his lungs and darkens our national door, but it is nearer the end, and that’s a blessing.
I want to beat my sword into the proverbial plowshare, but that time has not come, and even after the victories that are in sight, I fear the chaos of the next two years (or until the Great Day comes) will require one final push.
I am profoundly in love with this country, for all its flaws and broken parts. I have grandchildren whom I refuse to leave a country as corrupt and authoritarian as it is today. I want them to feel some sense of hope as they grow up, and if I can have played a part in making that future, I’ll count that as a good legacy.
As I always remind people who are skeptical of this nation’s inherent goodness, one can love a flawed thing. (I’m very fortunate in that regard in my personal life…I’m a lot.)
We are so good in small ways and so ready to be called to be good in bigger ways. This world is full of darkness and evils that an America led with courage and grace could confront and defeat. I’m not talking merely about military or global power challenges, but about a nation that could be a force for good across every domain.
I’ve probably made 75 calls today (everyone calls everyone, friend and foe alike at this late stage) and done all the usual work of late-stage campaigns. The last ads are in the silo, and one in particular makes me very happy. It’s late, I’m crispy with exhaustion, and my office is dark and quiet, and I’m thinking of the best-case day on Tuesday.
Picture the morning of November 4 if David Jolly wins in Florida, Gina Hinojosa in Texas, and Amy Acton in Ohio. Republicans wake up to Democratic governors in the three states they’ve treated as the bedrock of every presidential map since the Obama years, and 87 electoral votes suddenly need defending. It will mean the coalitions in those states the GOP assumed were inviolate were…not.
