. . . Wherein I’ll catch the smart voters. 

Beautiful day, sat outside Bread Kitchen for coffee and millet slice while paving crew chewed up North Blvd. a few steps away.  Luckily, the wind blew east, so I didn’t have to swallow pavement dust with my millet.  Fenwick students debarking from eastbound train on way to school bus had to walk through the cloud, however.  Looked like a British movie scene, 1940s smoke-filled train station, you know, the school children on way to the countryside, removed from German bombs.

Pavement crew straw boss spotted me, came over, asked where I got the hat.  My NoObama 68 cap, of course, which has drawn at least five such responses since I began wearing it a few weeks ago.  The tee-shirt shop down the street would make one for you, one guy was told, he told me.  Can’t be too obvious about this, said a woman, who also liked it, this being Oak Park, you know.  “I like your hat,” said the young man carrying stuff to the auto repair (or other) shop in the alley west of OP Ave. between Lake and N. Blvd.  And not a word but a thumbs-up kind of grin from the very button-down business man cycling to the station on Forest Ave. at Ontario. 

Various more or less malevolent glares also, and a startled look from a black business-man-looking guy, but only one voiced negative response, from the counter wench at U.S.A. Liquors, at Harlem & Madison, where the elite meet to buy by the bottle.  She spotted me roaming her aisles looking for something white and “affordable” (by me, that is) and stared.  “You a Republican?” she asked as I plunked my wine on the counter.  She asked in a fairly detached manner but was truly speaking for the multitudes to whom Democrats make their redistributist pitch.  Finally, “Barack’s gonna win,” she said.

Is he?  Charles Krauthammer and the gang at Fox think so — barring an unforeseen intervention.  Rush Limbaugh and James Carville are not so sure about that.  Rush is a great coach for the team.  James darkly hints at riots if he does not win.  Many others, of course, see racism in Obama’s opponents. 

Meanwhile, there’s the anti-Palin phenomenon, riding side by side with the Palin phenomenon.  She’s good, no doubt about it, and she rubs raw the sores of discontent among Dems.  A Knoxville TN blogger says she’s smug.  Not even that she looks smug, but she is.  I think this inaccurate judgement reflects the common resentment of looking sure of oneself.  You’re not supposed to.  You’re supposed to sprinkle your talk with worried you-knows, repeatedly trolling for affirmation. 

If you’re smart, don’t look smart.  But above all, don’t look sure of yourself.  Be apologetic or at least tentative.  Look a little harried too.  Don’t look confident.  Above all, don’t be too Christian about it all, and don’t hold your Down syndrome child so comfortably, especially while you look so good.