In the Chute At Last

When you're running in a race with a big field, the finish line is usually set up in what we call "chutes." These are basically lanes, which channel runners in neat order over the finish line. Now, seeing the finish line in any race provides a swell of energy, pride and happiness, but after a really long race, entering the chutes is, well, it is my vision of what nearing heaven must feel like.

You see, there's this point in a really long race, if you're giving it your utmost, when your legs turn to stone. And when flesh and blood petrify like this, something obviously happens to the neurovascular circuitry that allows brains to send messages to muscles, because it becomes increasingly difficult to even keep those limbs in motion, to order them forward. If you've climbed in the high mountains, where oxygen is depleted, you've probably also known this phenomenon. Legs, never mind their terminating feet, might as well be miles away from the command center of the brain for all that they respond to orders like "Keep going!" or, more foolishly, "Speed up!"

And then you see the archway of the finish line, and hope swells. You find yourself thinking with longing about abstract ideas like putting on a final burst of speed, dazzling the spectators, winning your age group. Not too much of that happens usually, if you've been giving your all throughout the long miles preceding, until the chute lines enfold you. And then, like Dorothy and her entourage crossing into the Land of Oz, color returns, pain disappears, music becomes audible, doubt is vanquished. The battle's won.

We are entering the chutes of this election, and in the chutes, some of the pain and hysteria is already beginning to recede. Soon we will be done hearing about wardrobe expenses and renegade ministers, wondering whether McCain really does suffer from PTSD or just looks like it, fretting about how an unmarried teenage girl and her dropout boyfriend became role models for our families. We're in the chute. Obama is starting to give summation speeches, and I wish I could be there to hear one in person, since he had to cancel his last scheduled appearance here in Madison last week. We're in the chute, and the pain and pettiness and squabbles will start to fade away, in preparation for McCain's concession speech late on the night a week from now, in which we can hope he will reach out across the aisle once again.

Why will it be McCain's concession speech rather than Obama's? Not because McCain abandoned the integrity which initially drew supporters his way. Not because his proposed Vice President is a shallow and uninformed redneck wearing Gucci and Dior. McCain is going to lose because he simply missed the message. When he pounds his fist on the podium in front of him and declaims, "Barack Obama wants to share the wealth!" he doesn't hear the voices inside the skulls of even those who support him, those persistent voices telling those of us who, unlike McCain and his fancy wife, constitute the declining middle class of America, "Yes. and I would like that; I would like to share in the wealth of those few wealthy Americans, those few who aren't hurting, those few whom the Republicans have favored with tax breaks and corporate incentives and social policies that have hurt me and my family."

He totally missed the fact, and Obama did not, that the gap between them and us is enormous and growing and divisive. Redistribute the wealth? You betcha.