Please step away from the echo chamber, sir.

This jumped off the screen at me this morning, from the NYTimes, via Huffington:

"Part of me enjoys watching him squirm," said Shirley Tobias, 46, sitting with a colleague from Netscape at a coffee shop in Grandview, a suburb of Columbus. "But he's squirming on our behalf. We're all in this together."

been reading Lance Mannion and the Viscount on liberals, conservatives and other more or less apt ways of describing one's own political predispositions.

I was so sure, 13 months ago, that W would be as widely reviled in a year's time as has actually turned out to be the case, that I could not imagine what the approximately 50.9% who apparently voted for W might possibly be thinking. On election day, I told everyone I knew it was a Kerry landslide.

I was misinformed.

I thought the things that were obvious to Josh Marshall and Duncan Black and Paul Krugman were obvious to one and all. Now, I see Dean Broder on Washington Week predicting a rush to the center, decrying the extremes, a pox on both, yada, yada...

This rush to the comfortable middle is evidence of what I fear may be fear itself.

The wrong track number has never, for me, been this visceral.

Thanksgiving always finds me reflective, especially when weather and mundane obligation conspire to once again keep me from celebrating with my extended family. This year, I am much less sure of what I know, but more unsettled by what I see congealing as the American Public Mood.

There is little comfort in noting that many more people are seeming to agree that we in for a world of hurt over the next few years.