I posted this a few other places yesterday, but wanted to get it here today:

When the dust settled on the 1960 presidential election, President-elect Kennedy told us that he was off to prepare for "a new administration and a new baby." The baby, born a couple of weeks later was John F. Kennedy, Jr. Less than three years later, another son, Patrick, died two days after his birth.

I thought of all of that when I heard about Madelyn Dunham's death and the crushing sadness that Sen Obama must feel on the eve of this election. The religious teachings of my upbringing included the requirement that the entire congregation mourn all deaths and that we do so remembering that those who those who leave us "still live on earth in the acts of goodness they performed and in the hearts of those who cherish their memory." When someone I love lost her father, I thought those words to be comforting, and I hope something like that has some meaning for Senator Obama and his sister who have certainly lost someone who was vitally important to them, and whose "acts of goodness" may be found in both of them.

Mrs. Dunham has left us with Senator Obama, who, I am convinced, will be elected President of the United States.

Less than a week before President Roosevelt was elected in 1932, the New York Times reported a Literary Digest poll, that, with the primative tools available to them, called that race to favor the Democratic candidate by a 3 to 2 margin, only about 3 percentage points higher than what he actually got, and said he would receive exactly two more electoral votes than he actually won.

This did not stop the Times from running an article on the Sunday before that election reporting a tightening of the election and citing California as an example of that, but California, just as the rest of the country, voted overwhelmingly for Governor Roosevelt.

Polling is much better today and, accordingly, we can expect a new day to dawn tomorrow. There is no complacency out there: we all want to be part of it. I expect the most extraordinary turnout and not in salute of the Bush administration.

I will vote tomorrow and then join others to visit and honor our nation's greatest president before coming home to see the election of our next one.

It is a happy thought, among the sadness of Mrs. Dunham's most untimely death.