I read this story today. It’s about the person who finished dead last in the Chicago Marathon. I don’t think I’ve ever read something so inspiring. I know, how like a Democrat, to be inspired by the poetry of the loser, but hear me out: 800 people who started that race didn’t finish at all. Untold thousands never even tried to run it. Filtered through that lens, it’s an extraordinary achievement to cross the finish line, even if it was just steps ahead of the street sweepers and the cleanup crews.

Election day is coming, and it’s a huge day, and I’m trying to gear up for it, to be ready for the rush of whatever happens. I know all of you are, too, and some of you have track records of battling for seemingly hopeless causes that make me look like a rank amateur. I know everybody’s getting tired, and fed up, and we’re all just talking each other through those last few miles.

But it occurs to me that while we’re looking at what we did and didn’t do, what we accomplished and where we failed, we ought to take a step back, and realize: hard as it is to believe, with all our focus on on who won and who lost, there are people who didn’t bother to enter the contest at all.

I’m glad, for all that I can feel in every inch of my body every single sleepless night spent reading and plotting and sending e-mails and trying to raise money, for all that my heart and my lungs and my liver might be better off had I never tuned in to this American gladiatorship of an election, that you and I at least stepped up to the starting line, and began to run.

A.