Exit the Landing Craft and Proceed to the Shore

With 7 days left till the general election, an image comes to mind. It's an image of G.I.'s from WWII sitting in their landing craft, bobbing up and down, about to hit the shore. Perhaps this image owes more to Hollywood than to real life but it illustrates the critical moment that we're at in the current campaign.

I wasn't one of the first to support John Kerry for president (for that perspective, see Asim's message) but as soon as it became apparent that he would be the Democratic candidate, I became active in his support. At first it was a marriage of convenience: I wanted to kick George Bush out of office and so did Kerry (or maybe it was the other way around). In any case, as the campaign progressed, those qualities in his character that take a while to sink in -- his doggedness, his determination, his sense of judgment and mastery of the facts -- qualities that we saw so clearly throughout the three presidential debates -- those qualities proved to me and to so many others that he wasn't simply an alternative to Bush but that he was the better man by leaps and bounds.

A lot of people now feel that way. The truth is we're winning. We're winning so well that the other side with all its media manipulation and saturation advertising can only muster a tie in the polls. That's bad news for them and good news for us.

The other good news is that as we approach the end of this campaign, what each of us has to do becomes clearer. At this point, it's either work the phones at one of the Phone Bank centers or travel to a battleground state on one of our i4k roadtrips. If that's how we spend the next seven days, we win.

All of our activities have led up to this. This is the moment we've been waiting for -- the final push. We're like the G.I.s in that landing craft with the door suddenly opening up. It's our job to rush out and take back our country.