Four basic reminders of where we are as nation

I have spent most of the time since Labor Day out across the country, campaigning, knocking on doors, speaking at rallies ahead of the midterms. I’ve been in upstate New York and eastern Pennsylvania, in northern Montana and the Central Valley of California, on the Kansas-Missouri line and southern Maine, in eastern Iowa and south-central Michigan, in Austin and in Dallas. And I’ve been online more nights than not, helping with phone banks into every part of America. At every turn I’ve been joined by my Third Act colleagues, hundreds of older Americans deeply engaged in this fight — so I feel as if I’d had a pretty widespread exposure to what’s happening in the swing states in this most tumultuous of political years.

Which is different from saying I know who’s going to win Tuesday’s elections.…