"Honey, it's Bill again...."

I called Jeremy and Becky last night to offer Becky my positive thoughts on her tenure review. Jeremy answered the phone. I said, "Hey Jeremy, it's Cathy!" He said, "Hey Cathy! Thank god, I was afraid you were Bill Clinton." See what I miss, not living in a swing state? Apparently they, and presumably thousands of others in PA, OH, WI, MN, etc. have been getting non-stop phone calls in recent days from various pre-recorded public figures asking them to give their vote to Kerry or Bush. Clinton has apparently called Jeremy multiple times:
JEREMY: Hello?
PHONE: (brief pause.) Hello, this is Former President Bill Clinton. I'm calling to tell you how important--
JEREMY: God dammit! (hangs up.)
No one EVER calls me. Well, I mean, obviously some people call me--but not former presidents or New York mayors. Alex in Chicago got a letter from Ed Koch, endorsing President Bush; he thinks the Republicans got a list of all the Jewish-sounding names in Chicago for a direct appeal, since apparently the Jewish American community is somewhat split on Bush. Alex isn't Jewish, and like me was one of the Republican minority at Vassar who has since stopped actually voting for Republicans. So Ed's wasting his ink there.

There was an interesting election-day search on blogspot today; you could do a search within blogspot.com for the phrase "I voted for Kerry" or "I voted for Bush." At first glance it was stunning--47 hits for the Kerry question, 110 for Bush! But then I looked at the actual context for the phrase... the entire first page of hits on google for Bush were people explaining why they'd voted for Bush in the last election. Many of them (in the brief google snippet) appeared to be regretting their decision. So who knows? A month ago I was fairly confident that Kerry had the win, figuring that no one who voted for Gore last time would vote for Bush this time around, and enough people who were appalled at the job W is doing would turn to Kerry that it would provide a clear majority. But now I'm less certain. I keep hearing about traditional democrats who are somehow inexplicably attracted to Bush, for religious reasons or whatever. Argh. Arrrrgh! This is going to be a loooooong day. I voted already, naturally. It's steady rain here, since early this morning. The town hall is warm, brightly lit, has 4 little voting booths and an optical scan machine, neighbors from both parties chatting amiably, and there were bagels, coffee, cookies, apples, and biscotti on a table. While I was there, a guy with a little kid brought in a package of Newman's Own Organic Chocolate Cookies (guess how HE'S voting...) and the tiny boy passed them around to all the poll workers while his dad was filling in the bubbles. I know most polling places aren't like this, but I'm sure glad mine is. Happy election day, everyone! I hope.