I've had woodpecker fever all week. I've been putting knuckles through Ikea tabletops for days. If you mention Obama, I'm looking to knock some wood. All signs look good, the polls are positive and - knock, knock, knock - Yes We Can!

I bubbled in Obama this morning in a rainy La Jolla garage and plan on holing up in an undisclosed bookstore where the only thing more plentiful than wood to knock on is Pabst Blue Ribbon to knock back.

More than an Obama victory though, I'm looking forward to getting the United States of America and the Constitution back. No gloating and no nose rubbing - just a deep breath before the real work begins. Tomorrow, there might be those on the right who will feel a dread and pit of the stomach sickness that many of us felt following George W. Bush's elections. That unfortunate president demanded eight years of nausea - but I think things will turn out differently for those soured by an Obama victory tonight. Barack Obama has delivered a consistent and insistent message of unity - echoing Lincoln's "House Divided" speech from the moment he announced his candidacy. The electoral map may be re-written tonight, the suffocating red state/blue state mentality will give way to the sort of America that Walt Whitman sang about.

Speaking of Whitman, I hope he, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King are around somewhere to watch the returns come rolling in tonight. Tomorrow it's back to Whitman's America:

Whoever you are, to you endless announcements!

Daughter of the lands did you wait for your poet?
Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand?
Toward the male of the States, and toward the female of the States,
Exulting words, words to Democracy's lands.

Interlink'd, food-yielding lands!
Land of coal and iron! land of gold! land of cotton, sugar, rice!
Land of wheat, beef, pork! land of wool and hemp! land of the apple
and the grape!
Land of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world! land of
those sweet-air'd interminable plateaus!
Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie!
Lands where the north-west Columbia winds, and where the south-west
Colorado winds!
Land of the eastern Chesapeake! land of the Delaware!
Land of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan!
Land of the Old Thirteen! Massachusetts land! land of Vermont and
Connecticut!
Land of the ocean shores! land of sierras and peaks!
Land of boatmen and sailors! fishermen's land!
Inextricable lands! the clutch'd together! the passionate ones!
The side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bony-limb'd!
The great women's land! the feminine! the experienced sisters and
the inexperienced sisters!
Far breath'd land! Arctic braced! Mexican breez'd! the diverse! the
compact!
The Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Carolinian!
O all and each well-loved by me! my intrepid nations! O I at any
rate include you all with perfect love!
I cannot be discharged from you! not from one any sooner than
another!
O death! O for all that, I am yet of you unseen this hour with
irrepressible love,
Walking New England, a friend, a traveler,
Splashing my bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples on
Paumanok's sands,
Crossing the prairies, dwelling again in Chicago, dwelling in every
town,
Observing shows, births, improvements, structures, arts,
Listening to orators and oratresses in public halls,
Of and through the States as during life, each man and woman my
neighbor,
The Louisianian, the Georgian, as near to me, and I as near to him
and her,
The Mississippian and Arkansian yet with me, and I yet with any of
them,
Yet upon the plains west of the spinal river, yet in my house of
adobie,
Yet returning eastward, yet in the Seaside State or in Maryland,
Yet Kanadian cheerily braving the winter, the snow and ice welcome
to me,
Yet a true son either of Maine or of the Granite State, or the
Narragansett Bay State, or the Empire State,
Yet sailing to other shores to annex the same, yet welcoming every
new brother,
Hereby applying these leaves to the new ones from the hour they
unite with the old ones,
Coming among the new ones myself to be their companion and equal,
coming personally to you now,
Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me.

- from Starting From Paumanok in Leaves of Grass

In light of the excitement and anticipation surrounding Hillary Clinton's speech at this week's Democratic National Convention, some may have missed the short address delivered by Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a few hours earlier. In her short oration, Richards praised Barack Obama's commitment to women's health care and admonished his opponent by pointing out that the presumptive Republican candidate "voted against real sex education, against affordable family planning and, if elected, John McCain has vowed to appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade."

She has little to worry about. Roe v. Wade is here to stay and come mid-November, I suspect we will all be referring to her preferred candidate as president-elect Obama. Nevertheless, Richards brought to mind an interesting question: aside from being generally pro-choice and believing that the issue of when life begins is above his "pay grade" (that certainly doesn't leave the rest of us any hope of understanding the issue, especially when he starts earning a president's salary), what do we know about Obama's position on abortion? The most revealing way to answer this question is to take a look at the senator's voting record.

Planned Parenthood is right in endorsing Obama as the candidate who will stand by the organization's principles, most notably, a woman's right to choose. He has repeatedly shown his support for the expansion of abortion rights by, for example, voting against bills that would prohibit tax funding of the procedure. This is in spite of stating at the recent Saddleback Faith Forum that he would like to reduce the number of abortions that take place in this country. But perhaps most disturbing is Obama's record on partial-birth abortion.