It is hard, when you care about the outcome, to not watch polls. As a political scientist, moreover, they are like snacks to me. But my brain and my heart are not in alignment. That causes some dissonance.

I expect that, as happens nearly every election, the candidates will be very close at convention time, and so it is. I recognize that even in a good polling year (and this isn't one) most headlines focus on "noise" - trumpeting variations in results with words like "surge", "eclipse", "fading" - when such variations are better explained by the margin of error. A 3-5% difference is, truly, meaningless.

My nerves, however, jangle when the "race" is "close". A Democratic/progressive tide is so important and a Trump victory, even a close one, would be so devastating. Trump represents everything I detest in politics, and in cultural terms. I don't want him defeated, I want him to be obliterated in historic terms. I want decency and community to prevail. I want him and his ilk to be humiliated and relegated to the dustbin from whence they sprang.

My heart feels we are on the precipice, about to take a leap to a new level of inclusiveness, rationality and tolerance - with immigration reform, tax fairness, and economic equality - but my head recognizes the obstacles in the way - the GOP, entropy, lobbyists, and inertia. It's maddening.

A well reasoned argument is like a diamond: impervious to corruption and crystal clear - and infinitely rarer.

Here, as elsewhere, people are outraged at what feels like a rigged game -- an economy that won't respond, a democracy that won't listen, and a financial sector that holds all the cards. - Robert Reich