(Okay, so Halloween ended a few hours ago, but I was too busy handing out 25 lbs. of candy to the neighborhood kids and watching MSNBC and CNN and screaming at the TV set to write this in time. Indulge me). Kinna-WHA??? Is that anything like a kinescope, or some town in Ireland? Nope. Ever watch a baseball game, and as soon as the play-by-play announcer mentions the pitcher has a no-hitter going, some batter knocks one out of the park? Well, as any Jewish grandma would tell you, that infamous jinx could have been proactively negated by muttering "kinahurra" (a far more evocative version of the plain-vanilla "knock wood," though not as graphic--or as messy--as the Italian "Scutta malocchio" followed by spitting through one's fingers). Why am I being so paranoid (I prefer to call it "cautious")? After all, Obama is way up in the national polls--as much as 11 points in some of them--as well as ahead in all the battleground states (and on the verge of turning some more red states into tossups). Well, Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, "To be Irish is to know that the world will break your heart." I submit that the Irish have no corner on that; as a Democrat, I have twice in the past eight years put on my prom dress waiting for the doorbell that never rang. McCain/Palin is slinging ridiculous mud about "socialism" and "palling around with terrorists," and using "liberal" as an epithet akin to "leper." Unfortunately, it's beginning to work--there are enough undecided voters out there who are too honest to lie to pollsters but who can't bring themselves to vote for a black person (or at least a non-right-wing black person) and are looking for the flimsiest of pretexts to justify voting against him while denying race had anything to do with it. Add to that the youth vote who have registered in record numbers, but whose names haven't shown up on the rolls (suspiciously high numbers of Rock the Vote applications have been getting "lost" and "delayed" in election offices) or who couldn't cut class to stand in line for five hours. Then there's the dirty-tricks voter-suppression machine, already in high gear: bogus threats of arrest for voters with outstanding tickets, forged notices (some on stolen official state letterhead) instructing new Democratic voters in heavily minority areas to vote on Wednesday "due to unprecedentedly high numbers of new registrations," electronic voting machines flipping Obama votes to McCain. etc. Michael Moore warned last night against doing the happy dance and spiking the ball on the five-yard line. I am so conflicted--I wince every time I hear MSNBC's and some NY TImes columnists verbal comfort-food-for-liberals, and am actually afraid to contact the Obama office to ask what happened to the e-mail I was supposed to get with a printable ticket for the Grant Park hoo-hah on Election Night.......jinx, jinx, jinx, kinahurra....I'm not even going to stick the bottle of champagne in the ice bucket, much less slip it into my purse and head down to Grant Park with it, until I see Obama ofiicially top 270 electoral votes. But I also long to hear that poll margins are widening again, without some smart aleck GOP think tank crowing they're dead even. I want some solid comfort--and I'm not going to get it. I've seen this movie twice before (even more if you count 1968 and 1956). I only hope this time they show the Director's Cut with the alternate ending! (Note--in coming days, per requests, I'll be posting archived pieces from my previous website. I'll label them clearly as oldies but goodies. And I'm working on the song clips as fast as I can).