Having spent the better part of the first half of my life hiding my feelings, I figured out that being open emotionally is a key to good mental health, at least mine. As a consequence, I’ve spent the second half being straightforward when it comes to my gut, sometimes to the embarrassment of the people around me. So get out your hankies and read on. I’d already had some pretty good boo-hoos over the summer as Barack Obama’s impossible quest became improbable and then possible:...

I voted yesterday in the most important election of my lifetime after the most dramatic primary and general election campaign of my lifetime. And as I left the polling station and walked out into the chilly morning air, it all fell into place: Barack Obama represents what America once was and can stand for again. As well as this: Obama did not transcend race so much as make the case that he is the best man to lead America out of the wilderness. If that seems simplistic, it is. Because while the...

We will provide updates throughout the day until the polls begin closing in East Coast states. Please use the comments section to share your voting and other Election Day experiences. This post will be updated periodically and moved to the top of the site. There are newer posts below, so please keep scrolling. 6:00pm: Polls are closing in Indiana and parts of Kentucky. Virginia, South Carolina, Florida, and New Hampshire follow at 7:00; Ohio and West Virginia at 7:30; another 18 states at 8, including...

December 2007: Look Closely. Obama Certainly has aged. Us, too. Entire cyber-forests have been leveled in praise and condemnation of a man who in all likelihood will be president-elect when the sun comes up on Wednesday morning, so there’s not a whole lot more worth saying. In that spirit — and because your feckless . . . er, fearless correspondent is running on empty, herewith a review of what he wrote about Barack Obama over the past year as the impossible begat the unpredictable,...

“LOVE” SCULPTURE AT JFK PLAZA: WHAT? NO HOMELESS PEOPLE? Unless you’re one of the people whose car got turned over in the irrational urban exuberance following the Phillies’ World Series win on Wednesday night or stood helplessly on the platform as train after packed train rattled through your suburban station without stopping on Friday morning because of the immense victory parade downtown, you’re probably feeling pretty chuff about the city of Philadelphia right...

With the Fat Lady about to sing, the excuses for why John McCain’s campaign has sunk like a stone continue to fly fast and furious. I’ve been collecting the ripest of these excuses over at Kiko’s House in a daily feature titled “McCain-Palin Trainwreck Excuse du Jour.” Here are synopses and links to the most recent entries: McCain’s “strategy” of throwing everything against the wall and hoping that something will stick hasn’t worked. The campaign couldn’t...

Being a big believer that public-opinion polls are merely snapshots in time, I have been loath to cite let alone read too much into the blizzard of polls this fall. But the latest Gallup Poll using the traditional model is a shocker and, for all intents and purposes, a very real indication that Barack Obama has sealed the deal. Gallup’s traditional “likely voter” model is the most conservative of its polls in that it has been battle tested over and over in past elections and factors...

NEWARK, Del. — What to make of the fact that Joe Biden and his wife Jill are graduates of the University of Delaware, while both McCain campaign strategist Steve Schmidt and David Plouffe, his counterpart on the Obama campaign, are products of the university’s political science program? Probably not a whole lot beyond it being a pretty big coincidence for such a little state. In any event, it seems like years ago and not merely last October when the DF&C and I bumped into Biden...

THE EMOTIVE MARY AND PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (TOP) AND DR. ROBINSON AND MR. STEIN Halloween may be my favorite holiday and Frankenstein one of my favorite books. But there is a dirty little secret about the masterwork written by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley in her late teens and first published anonymously in 1818 as Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus, and a colleague, Charlie Robinson, can now tell the tale after studying Shelley’s original notebooks at Oxford University’s venerable Bodleian...

THE SCENE OUTSIDE A HOUSE SOMEWHERE IN AMERICA

World champions (top) and The Wild Thing The Philadelphia Phillies’ last gasp as a World Series contender ended on a frigid late October evening in 1993 with one swing of the bat as the Blue Jays’ mighty Joe Carter launched a fastball hurled by reliever Mitch Williams into the left-field seats of Toronto’s Sky Dome for a walk-off three-run homer. Williams, known with an affection atypical of Philadelphia sports nuts as “The Wild Thing” for his habit of throwing the...

Lordy be! In only six days the angry mantra of the John McCain-Sarah Palin campaign will be silenced. You know the one I’m talking about: That some of us are not true Americans because of where we live, what we do for a living, where we went to school and, horror or horrors, because we support a Muslim terrorist for president. But you can bet your dangling chad that while we will be filling this welcome void by beginning the arduous task of pulling America from the smoldering ashes of the...

Charles Cullen is every hospital’s nightmare: A deranged nurse who methodically murders patients by giving them hard-to-detect overdoses of medications. Cullen, who was arrested in 2004 after a 16-year crime spree made considerably easier because a severe nursing shortage enabled him to go undetected as he moved from hospital to hospital, told authorities that he murdered as many as 45 patients at hospitals in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. As a result of Cullen cooperating with authorities...

. The most direct line to Washington for Sarah Palin is not being half of the terminally disastrous John McCain ticket but to appoint herself to Ted Stevens’ seat in the event that the disgraced Alaska senator is found guilty of making false financial disclosure form statements and has to resign. Well, Stevens was just found guilty on all seven counts. As it is, Palin could only appoint herself to Stevens’ seat if he wins a tough re-election fight against Democrat Mark Begich, by no means...

G. Terry Madonna is a familiar talking head on CNN and other news channels these days and even more in demand because John McCain is making his last stand in Pennsylvania. There probably is no pollster more knowledgeable and well spoken when it comes to Keystone State politics than Madonna, who is the man behind the F&M Poll (formerly the Keystone Poll) at the Center for Politics & Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, where he is director. Madonna and I worked...

Twenty or so years ago, a small and comely twentysomething blond American stopped over in New Zealand on the way from her hometown of Boston to graduate school in Australia. She ended up spending an evening in a pub near Auckland where she met a group of Maoris and so liked what she saw — the country in general and a hulkingly handsome Maori by the name of Seven in particular — that it eventually would lead her to write one of the most unusual travelogue and history books of the many...

I was not initially moved to blog about the Ashley Todd affair because it stank of being phony from the jump. Furthermore, I didn’t want to add another drop to the oceans of invective that have accumulated in this most rancorous presidential campaign. But all of that changed when I was able to confirm to my satisfaction that, while the McCain campaign most certainly did not send this very messed up young woman out to that ATM machine in Pittsburgh, it actively-encouraged reporters to pursue...

My jaw kept dropping every time I read a right-of-center commentator who is licking their chops over a Sarah Palin candidacy in 2012. For one thing, the 2008 election isn’t even over. For another, how could these people ignore the obvious: While McCain has brought his own baggage to the big dance, his partner has been like a giant anchor, pulling the ticket down, down, down with every passing week since her post-convention boomlet faded like so many summer flowers. Isn’t it obvious that...

With the clock running out on the 2008 presidential race and John McCain sinking like a stone, the excuses for why his campaign has come a cropper are flying fast and furious. I’ve been collecting them over at Kiko’s House in a daily feature titled “McCain-Palin Trainwreck Excuse du Jour.” Here are synopses and links to the most recent entries: It’s those uppity Negroes getting all tribal. He just can’t get any traction with the Bill Ayers story. He has an appalling lack of judgment. It’s...

I slowed down long enough last night to listen to a John McCain stump speech from Pennsylvania in its entirety and the guy had all the enthusiasm of a public radio station fund drive announcer trying to convince listeners that the station will go off the air if they don’t buy his baby new shoes. Yes, it’s that bad. About all that McCain can hope for 12 days out is a “dead cat bounce,” that is, a tightening in the polls because unlikely voters are in fact voting for him, but...

PHILLIES PITCHING ACE COLE HAMELS Some of my earliest childhood memories are of sitting at the kitchen table with my mother and grandmother listening to the Philadelphia Phillies on the radio. And more often than not, listening to the Philadelphia Phillies lose. My love of baseball was nurtured on these spring and summer evenings while my father was on shift work, and I had learned the finer points of the game — from the suicide squeeze play to the art of bunting to when to intentionally walk...

Sarah Palin has finally spoken out against incendiary shouts from audience members at her campaign rallies — but of course with a disclaimer. In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, John McCain’s running mate said that: “We have heard through some mainstream media is that folks have hollered out some pretty atrocious and unacceptable things. We have not heard that. “If I ever were to hear that standing up there at the podium with the mic, I would call them...

In my first encounter with General Colin Powell at the Pentagon, I could not take my eyes off of the ribbons cascading down the left breast of his dress greens. In my second encounter with Powell following a press briefing that he had given as President Reagan’s national security adviser, there was the unmistakable sense that beneath his calm exterior burned a fire of great intensity that he banked with the same care that he measured his words. It has been over 20 years since those encounters,...

The racist and xenophobic bile that has flowed from the right-wing Republican base and spokesmouths like Rush Limbaugh has been unprecedented in this campaign season, and it was easy to predict that the moment Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama that he was no longer a war hero and brilliant diplomat but just another uppity Negro. If the hate-mongering of these people was not so destructive, the knots into which they tie themselves would be amusing. They slavishly support an immoral war fostered by...

(1.) The Republicans continue to confuse talk radio with reality. (2.) Barack Obama has raised an astounding $604 million to date. The bellyaching of John McCain over this record amount is sheer jealousy, while his allegation that raising huge amounts of dough is a recipe for scandal is laughable since the average Obama donation is under $100. (3.) Did the smarties running McCain’s campaign ever contemplate that Obama’s fundraising dominance would be so complete that he would be able...