Maybe I'm an idealist...

...but I'm really not a Pollyanna, despite my constant refrain of "don't panic." I know exactly how wrong things can go, and over the years I've seen a lot of good causes and candidates go down. But I've seen a lot of good causes and candidates prevail, too, and I stubbornly cling to my optimism. I really believe that the course of history favors the advance of liberty and justice, and I really believe that someday that will truly be "for all."

And I really believe that we're going to prevail this year. I could offer any number of reasons, but the source of my essential optimism can't be summed up much better than Ezra Klein put it in a post at Political Animal.

Voters aren't always informed, but they're almost always decent and they well know that no party's candidate is that singularly wrong, exclusively evil, and determined to bring America to its knees. The right insisted on a caricature of Kerry too satanic for any reasonable person to believe, and that dissonance will say all that needs to be said.

Do we need to work hard? Absolutely.

Do we need to fight back? You bet. Every day.

But we can, and I really believe will, win this thing. Don't panic.