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By MICHAEL POWELL
In the den of his home in New Hope, Pa., a liberal Democrat sits tap-tapping at his computer.
Jon Downs works the electoral vote maps on Yahoo like a spiritualist shaking his Ouija board. He calibrates and recalibrates: Give Senator John McCain Ohio, Missouri, even Florida. But Virginia and Pennsylvania, those go to Senator Barack Obama. And Vermont, Democrats can count on Vermont, right?
Right.
Almost always, Mr. Downs, 53, ends with Mr. Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, ahead, which should please this confirmed liberal and profound Obama fan. But just as often he feels worried.
“Look, I have this sense of impending doom; we’ve had a couple of elections stolen already,” Mr. Downs said. “The only thing worse than losing is to think that you’re going to win and then lose.”
He considers that prospect and mutters, almost involuntarily, “Oh, God.”
To talk with left-leaning Democrats in New Hope, San Francisco or Miami Beach, to drill deep into their id, is to stand at the intersection of Liberal and High Anxiety.
Right now, more than a few are having a these-polls-are-too-good-to-be-true, we-still-could-lose-this-election moment. Their consuming and possibly over-caffeinated worry is that their prayers and nightly phone calls to undecided voters in Toledo, Ohio, notwithstanding, Mr. Obama might fall short on Election Day.
To walk on Broadway, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, is to feel their pain. “Oh, God, I’m optimistic, but I can’t look at the polls,” said Patricia Kuhlman, 54, nervously tapping her Obama/Biden ’08 button. “I’m a PBS/NPR kind of person, and, O.K., I do look at some polls.”
Ms. Kuhlman shakes her head and says, “If he doesn’t get this, I’ll be crying so hard.”
A young woman, Shana Rosen, walks by. She is from Denver and said she had told her boyfriend that their love life was on hold while she sweated out Mr. Obama’s performance in Colorado. Ask Lucy Slurzberg, an Upper West Side psychotherapist, how many of her liberal patients speak of their electoral fears during their sessions, and she answers: “Oh, only about 90 percent of them.”
Certainly, national and swing state polls suggest that Democrats might allow themselves a deep breath or two. But liberals are not inclined to relax, given the circumstances of their last two defeats. Hanging chad, the Supreme Court decisions, and Florida and Ohio’s electoral problems: it is a lifetime of agita to staunch Democrats. The prospect of success now comes scented with dread.
Conservatives, it must be said, are not immune from the worry vapors. Therapists report that Republicans are hyperventilating too. “Wealthy Republicans are very anxious about taxes,” Jamie Wasserman, a psychotherapist with a practice on the Upper West Side and in Montclair, N.J., said of her patients. “They are not pretending to vote for the black man.”
And in Ohio, evangelical radio stations feature pastors praying for God to help voters ignore these “awful” polls and vote his will.
Many liberal Democrats watch MSNBC, but some say it sounds too much like comfort food. CNN serves its election coverage with a stiff little chaser of doubt for Democrats, and many liberals say CNN and NPR are their regular evening companions. If they really want to rub the sore tooth of worry, they dial over to the “Obama’s radical friend Bill Ayers” channel, otherwise known as Fox News.
“Mostly I flip between CNN and MSNBC, but I go to Fox if I want to get enraged,” Mr. Downs said.
Richard Schrader, a senior staff member for a national environmental organization, lives in Amherst, Mass., where politics start liberal and traipse left. He is fairly liberal, but his neighbors worry that he does not worry nearly enough. “They wake up, drink that pot of coffee and hit the polling Web sites,” Mr. Schrader said. “Too much good news has to be a lie.”
Recently he sat down with a friend who was sweating about Minnesota.
“Minnesota?” Mr. Schrader told his friend. “What, are you kidding me? Obama’s up 14 points there.”
The friend shook his head sadly. Take off seven points for hidden racial animus. Subtract another five for polling error. It is down to two points, and that is within the margin of error in sampling, and that could mean Mr. Obama might be behind.
“It was perversely impressive,” Mr. Schrader said.
Another friend worries that every undecided voter will break for Mr. McCain, the Republican nominee. Mr. Schrader said, “I told him: ‘O.K., that will be the first time that has ever happened in American history, but sure.’ ”
Pre-election rituals are much the same, from Oberlin, Ohio, to San Francisco. Many liberals describe waking up in the predawn, padding to the kitchen, firing up the coffeemaker and logging on before the children wake up. Lisa Serizawa, 44, of San Francisco leaps from site to site, from national newspapers to one in Ohio to another in Pennsylvania, then a blur of CNN, polling sites, and whatever.
“I just want reassurance; or is it a heads-up?” Ms. Serizawa said. “I’m cautiously, cautiously optimistic. Though I worry: Am I going to be hurt again?”
Liberals are found in almost every corner of the United States, as are their conservative counterparts. But the tribe’s denser concentrations are along the ideological Interstate that runs from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina, to the Adams Morgan section of Washington, to Montclair, to Park Slope in Brooklyn, to the Upper West Side of Manhattan, to Cambridge, Mass., Burlington, Vt., and Ann Arbor, Mich., and so on until it reaches the Pacific.
And from those redoubts, how can one gauge what is going on in the fairly broad expanses of this nation that are not 94.3 percent liberal Democrat? Unfamiliarity spikes the anxiety.
“We live in a bubble,” Ms. Serizawa said. “I drove to Monterey recently, and I saw my first McCain placard ever.”
Some East Coast liberals deal with the uncertainty by volunteering to call undecided voters, in hopes that a half-hour talk with a voter in Missouri will stop the mind from yapping.
“It makes them less worried to phone the middle of the country,” said Ms. Wasserman, the psychotherapist. “Those who are anxious are becoming more so; some spend an entire session going on about what they heard on CNN.”
Still, it is not as though election is a psychiatric condition. Recent years have offered a bad run for many Democrats. The United States is fighting wars on two fronts. The global economy has pitched into recession, and many say the economic elevator has yet to reach the basement.
For many liberals, the chance to elect Mr. Obama, who would be the nation’s first black president, gives the United States a second chance to walk across the stage of world history. (Which also makes the possibility of his loss unspeakably more depressing; given his present lead in every poll, many liberals fear that race will explain any defeat.)
“The last two elections have been so disappointing, so disturbing,” said Paula Guarnaccia, an assistant dean at the University of Vermont. “The idea that we could now elect this impressive man as president, I guess it heightens the anxiety.”
And yet, sometimes, a poll, or five, can tease out a smile.
Ellen Beth Bellet, a tax lawyer in Miami and an ardent liberal, confesses to being electorally obsessed. (She recently vacationed with a friend who threatened to machine gun the hotel television if Ms. Bellet did not shut off CNN.)
But of late a curious calm has descended. “I wrote an e-mail to a friend and said, ‘I’m afraid to put this in writing, but I’m really excited about the way this is going,’ ” Ms. Bellet said.
Within minutes, the phone rang; her friend was very worried about Mr. Obama’s prospects. “Don’t say that!” the friend said. “No, no, no. What were you thinking? We can’t go there yet!”
In the den of his home in New Hope, Pa., a liberal Democrat sits tap-tapping at his computer.
Jon Downs works the electoral vote maps on Yahoo like a spiritualist shaking his Ouija board. He calibrates and recalibrates: Give Senator John McCain Ohio, Missouri, even Florida. But Virginia and Pennsylvania, those go to Senator Barack Obama. And Vermont, Democrats can count on Vermont, right?
Right.
Almost always, Mr. Downs, 53, ends with Mr. Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, ahead, which should please this confirmed liberal and profound Obama fan. But just as often he feels worried.
“Look, I have this sense of impending doom; we’ve had a couple of elections stolen already,” Mr. Downs said. “The only thing worse than losing is to think that you’re going to win and then lose.”
He considers that prospect and mutters, almost involuntarily, “Oh, God.”
To talk with left-leaning Democrats in New Hope, San Francisco or Miami Beach, to drill deep into their id, is to stand at the intersection of Liberal and High Anxiety.
Right now, more than a few are having a these-polls-are-too-good-to-be-true, we-still-could-lose-this-election moment. Their consuming and possibly over-caffeinated worry is that their prayers and nightly phone calls to undecided voters in Toledo, Ohio, notwithstanding, Mr. Obama might fall short on Election Day.
To walk on Broadway, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, is to feel their pain. “Oh, God, I’m optimistic, but I can’t look at the polls,” said Patricia Kuhlman, 54, nervously tapping her Obama/Biden ’08 button. “I’m a PBS/NPR kind of person, and, O.K., I do look at some polls.”
Ms. Kuhlman shakes her head and says, “If he doesn’t get this, I’ll be crying so hard.”
A young woman, Shana Rosen, walks by. She is from Denver and said she had told her boyfriend that their love life was on hold while she sweated out Mr. Obama’s performance in Colorado. Ask Lucy Slurzberg, an Upper West Side psychotherapist, how many of her liberal patients speak of their electoral fears during their sessions, and she answers: “Oh, only about 90 percent of them.”
Certainly, national and swing state polls suggest that Democrats might allow themselves a deep breath or two. But liberals are not inclined to relax, given the circumstances of their last two defeats. Hanging chad, the Supreme Court decisions, and Florida and Ohio’s electoral problems: it is a lifetime of agita to staunch Democrats. The prospect of success now comes scented with dread.
Conservatives, it must be said, are not immune from the worry vapors. Therapists report that Republicans are hyperventilating too. “Wealthy Republicans are very anxious about taxes,” Jamie Wasserman, a psychotherapist with a practice on the Upper West Side and in Montclair, N.J., said of her patients. “They are not pretending to vote for the black man.”
And in Ohio, evangelical radio stations feature pastors praying for God to help voters ignore these “awful” polls and vote his will.
Many liberal Democrats watch MSNBC, but some say it sounds too much like comfort food. CNN serves its election coverage with a stiff little chaser of doubt for Democrats, and many liberals say CNN and NPR are their regular evening companions. If they really want to rub the sore tooth of worry, they dial over to the “Obama’s radical friend Bill Ayers” channel, otherwise known as Fox News.
“Mostly I flip between CNN and MSNBC, but I go to Fox if I want to get enraged,” Mr. Downs said.
Richard Schrader, a senior staff member for a national environmental organization, lives in Amherst, Mass., where politics start liberal and traipse left. He is fairly liberal, but his neighbors worry that he does not worry nearly enough. “They wake up, drink that pot of coffee and hit the polling Web sites,” Mr. Schrader said. “Too much good news has to be a lie.”
Recently he sat down with a friend who was sweating about Minnesota.
“Minnesota?” Mr. Schrader told his friend. “What, are you kidding me? Obama’s up 14 points there.”
The friend shook his head sadly. Take off seven points for hidden racial animus. Subtract another five for polling error. It is down to two points, and that is within the margin of error in sampling, and that could mean Mr. Obama might be behind.
“It was perversely impressive,” Mr. Schrader said.
Another friend worries that every undecided voter will break for Mr. McCain, the Republican nominee. Mr. Schrader said, “I told him: ‘O.K., that will be the first time that has ever happened in American history, but sure.’ ”
Pre-election rituals are much the same, from Oberlin, Ohio, to San Francisco. Many liberals describe waking up in the predawn, padding to the kitchen, firing up the coffeemaker and logging on before the children wake up. Lisa Serizawa, 44, of San Francisco leaps from site to site, from national newspapers to one in Ohio to another in Pennsylvania, then a blur of CNN, polling sites, and whatever.
“I just want reassurance; or is it a heads-up?” Ms. Serizawa said. “I’m cautiously, cautiously optimistic. Though I worry: Am I going to be hurt again?”
Liberals are found in almost every corner of the United States, as are their conservative counterparts. But the tribe’s denser concentrations are along the ideological Interstate that runs from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina, to the Adams Morgan section of Washington, to Montclair, to Park Slope in Brooklyn, to the Upper West Side of Manhattan, to Cambridge, Mass., Burlington, Vt., and Ann Arbor, Mich., and so on until it reaches the Pacific.
And from those redoubts, how can one gauge what is going on in the fairly broad expanses of this nation that are not 94.3 percent liberal Democrat? Unfamiliarity spikes the anxiety.
“We live in a bubble,” Ms. Serizawa said. “I drove to Monterey recently, and I saw my first McCain placard ever.”
Some East Coast liberals deal with the uncertainty by volunteering to call undecided voters, in hopes that a half-hour talk with a voter in Missouri will stop the mind from yapping.
“It makes them less worried to phone the middle of the country,” said Ms. Wasserman, the psychotherapist. “Those who are anxious are becoming more so; some spend an entire session going on about what they heard on CNN.”
Still, it is not as though election is a psychiatric condition. Recent years have offered a bad run for many Democrats. The United States is fighting wars on two fronts. The global economy has pitched into recession, and many say the economic elevator has yet to reach the basement.
For many liberals, the chance to elect Mr. Obama, who would be the nation’s first black president, gives the United States a second chance to walk across the stage of world history. (Which also makes the possibility of his loss unspeakably more depressing; given his present lead in every poll, many liberals fear that race will explain any defeat.)
“The last two elections have been so disappointing, so disturbing,” said Paula Guarnaccia, an assistant dean at the University of Vermont. “The idea that we could now elect this impressive man as president, I guess it heightens the anxiety.”
And yet, sometimes, a poll, or five, can tease out a smile.
Ellen Beth Bellet, a tax lawyer in Miami and an ardent liberal, confesses to being electorally obsessed. (She recently vacationed with a friend who threatened to machine gun the hotel television if Ms. Bellet did not shut off CNN.)
But of late a curious calm has descended. “I wrote an e-mail to a friend and said, ‘I’m afraid to put this in writing, but I’m really excited about the way this is going,’ ” Ms. Bellet said.
Within minutes, the phone rang; her friend was very worried about Mr. Obama’s prospects. “Don’t say that!” the friend said. “No, no, no. What were you thinking? We can’t go there yet!”
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