Swing State

Today, Missouri will host Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, and Mike Huckabee. As I type this, John McCain is speaking at a rally in a St. Louis exurb. And, over the weekend, Barack Obama drew his biggest U.S. crowd ever to a rally at the Gateway Arch. I had to work, but Tom and Ben Metroed in to try to see Obama; however, the mile-long line at the gates proved too much for a 4-year-old, so they turned back.


According to yesterday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the St. Louis suburbs will play a key role in determining the outcome of the election in Missouri. While the city is reliably blue and the exurbs are reliably red, suburbs such as mine have been purple. Recently, lots of yard signs have sprouted up; on our block, I've counted three for Obama, one for McCain, and one for Chuck Baldwin, the nominee of the Constitution Party.


I'm torn between feeling optimism that Obama might actually win, and reminding myself that I've felt this optimism before and been disappointed. I try not to check Pollster.com and the futures markets (Intrade and the Iowa electronic markets) too many times a day. Ben has heard us talk about the election enough that he asks why people who want to be president must run a race first, and he wants to get up early with us on November 4 to go vote.