Three more days and this election will be behind us and we can pick up the pieces and move on. I’m trying not to be too optimistic that my candidate will win the presidency. I’ve been avoiding the news as much as possible, but every so often I’ll catch some red state fanatic telling the camera how horrified they are of an Obama victory, and how it would destroy the country. Really? Really. There are people who think like that, in spite of the fact that we’ve had the most incompetent leadership in history for the last eight years and are still standing. Barely, but still.

It’s hard not to be optimistic, until I think about Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. It could happen again, I suppose. I won’t be comfortable until it’s over, that’s for sure, no matter how many pollsters tell me how they think it’s going to come out. If Texas Tech can beat Texas, if Stoke City can beat Arsenal, if Crash can beat Brokeback Mountain, pretty much anything can happen. Who knows what makes people tick? Or, more to the point, who knows what people will allow themselves to believe? Crazy things happen all the time.

Still, and despite trying to avoid all news all the time, I get a kind of a thrill when I look at the electoral maps on the various news sites on the web. I actually prefer the ones that show Obama with 353 electoral votes to the ones that have him with 291, but I’ll take the smaller number as a sign that it’s going to be all right, even looking at things conservatively (so to speak). And I’ll take the bigger number as a sign that it’s almost okay to relax.