“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche, “Beyond Good and Evil”

I’ve been a presidential politics junkie since before I could vote. Part of that, I think, comes from growing up in Battleground Florida, where even the most placid and uneventful national election is cause for riot and shooting war. I remember watching Dukakis speak at my high school in the fall of 1988. I briefly shook hands with both Clintons when I volunteered on his campaign in 1992. Worked in the Hillsborough Elections Office supporting early voting efforts in 2004. They were all bloodbaths. (And the less said about 2000, the better.)

Living in California since 2007, I still have a hard time not covering for the mortar rounds every four years. California isn’t a battleground. Everyone knows that, every four years, the state outcome will have a 30-point margin in favor of Pacific blue. There are no rallies. No ad carpetbombs. No crisscrossing bus tours. No fights in the streets. There’s just the general sense that, no matter what happens in the nation at large, here it’ll still be California.

This year, that’s the only damned thing holding my sanity together.
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