Liberal anxiety

Do any of you do this sort of thing:

Richard Schrader, a senior staff member for a national environmental organization, lives in Amherst, Mass., where politics start liberal and traipse left. He is fairly liberal, but his neighbors worry that he does not worry nearly enough. “They wake up, drink that pot of coffee and hit the polling Web sites,” Mr. Schrader said. “Too much good news has to be a lie.”

Recently he sat down with a friend who was sweating about Minnesota.

“Minnesota?” Mr. Schrader told his friend. “What, are you kidding me? Obama’s up 14 points there.”

The friend shook his head sadly. Take off seven points for hidden racial animus. Subtract another five for polling error. It is down to two points, and that is within the margin of error in sampling, and that could mean Mr. Obama might be behind.

“It was perversely impressive,” Mr. Schrader said.

Another friend worries that every undecided voter will break for Mr. McCain, the Republican nominee. Mr. Schrader said, “I told him: ‘O.K., that will be the first time that has ever happened in American history, but sure.’ ”

The part about whittling down a 14-point lead to nothing was particularly impressive.

There are two possibilities for us on Wednesday. Either we wake up with a bounce in our steps and feel compelled to pinch ourselves in order to make sure it's really true, or we just won't feel like getting up at all.

I prefer the former.