Dear Senator Edwards:

I just wanted to drop you a quick note to say how nice it almost was to run into you at Blueberry Hill the other night. Actually, a couple of friends and I went by there specifically to talk to you, and for a while I started to worry that you weren’t going to show. For a while, I thought you might have driven by, seen the line, and said, “Sheesh! Forget it. It’s too crowded. Let’s go to Fitz’s.” We almost did.

That’s actually the main reason I wanted to write. You see, I’m currently an undecided voter, and when I heard you and John Kerry were coming to town on Wednesday I thought it would be a prime opportunity to wrap my head around some things before the primary, not to mention participating in a little footnote history. Unfortunately, John Kerry apparently only wants hobos and late night DJs to vote for him, because he held his event at 4:30 in the afternoon. I mean, come on. I’ve got a job to go to, even if I do spend the afternoon writing letters to presidential candidates instead of working.

(As we speak, Howard Dean is down at the History Museum leading a town hall meeting that started at 2:15. Don’t get me started.)

Anyway, I wanted to give you some advice. You need to have a serious talk with your campaign staff; they’re going to wreck your chances of getting elected if they keep scheduling events the way they did this week. I guess I can see what they were going for, capturing liberal U City’s hip, youthful energy with a late rally at a popular bar. I can also understand the need to make the event look crowded, lest it appear like a Kucinich rally on C-SPAN or something. But… come on. They had you in the Duck Room downstairs. The Duck Room is where you go to see local swing bands and Chuck Berry. Do you know why? Because the Duck Room has a capacity of 350 people. 350 people, Senator. The owner of the bar has a place that can fit 1,000 people inside right across the street. I gazed longingly at it as I stood out in near-zero temperatures for an hour, thinking, “Is this the kind of thinking John Edwards is going to use to run the country?”

We arrived nearly two hours early. The line when we arrived stretched from the Duck Room through the bar to the front door OUT the front door into the street and around the corner to the back of the building. Unbelievably, my friends and I got all the way into the room directly above you, the reward for which was the chance to hear your speech piped in through the bar’s speakers. In that room, it was like a cross between a high school mixer and the world’s biggest overcrowded elevator. Arm raising was not an option, nor was it really advisable from an olfactory standpoint; it was five degrees outside, but 112 inside.

And oh, oh, pity upon the poor waitresses who were trying to bring food to tables, tables full of people who had gone out that night with no idea that the next president of the United States was playing the Duck Room.

I will say this much: the enthusiasm that greeted my friends and I when we arrived (a half hour earlier than planned, after we heard from reliable sources that the crowd was already “like a zoo fire”) was heartening and unlike anything I’ve seen in a while. People there genuinely believed in something rather than against every thing but one. This was particularly true of your young, perky, nubile campaign volunteers, who certainly seemed to be motivating the electorate. After meeting one young brunette, whose batting eyelashes ensured that we would all be on your mailing list from now until the apocalypse you may well cause, several of my friends expressed an eagerness to get out the vote.

I should probably explain that apocalypse comment, but I’m not sure how to do so and still sound sane. Let’s put it this way: you are very charismatic, almost hypnotically persuasive, and unnaturally young-looking in a way that borders on the unholy. For these reasons, several people I know half-jokingly believe that you may figure prominently in the Book of Revelations. I don’t necessarily agree, but if you do have any position papers on mandatory barcode tattoos, I would appreciate it if you would forward one to me at your convenience.

Anyway, your event ended up being fun and educational even when it became clear we weren’t getting in. (Though some of us got to go anywhere they wanted because they brought their big, fancy microphones.) During the hour we spent standing in the snow, the half hour we spent snaking through the bar, and the half hour where you were totally late, my friends and I had a chance to talk about a lot of the issues facing us on Tuesday. By forcing me to vocalize my thoughts, my friends helped me to realize that it’s pretty much either Kerry, Bush, or you. And that’s before you even got there to say anything, while we were still standing by the window listening to John Mellencamp.

That’s the other thing I wanted to talk to you about.

When we first got inside and I heard the Mellencamp, I thought maybe somebody put a quarter in the jukebox or something. As the first nonstop half hour of Mellencamp twanged on, I wondered when exactly this CD was going to end. By the end of an hour of nonstop Mellencamp, I began making aloud comparisons between myself and Job, while simultaneously being in unabashed awe that John Mellencamp has written so many songs. It seemed cruel on his part; it seemed cruel on the bar’s part. So imagine my disappointment when they announced you and began blaring “Small Town,” and it became clear you had told them to do that to us. Seriously, I could recommend something if you want. Beck’s “Midnite Vultures.” Or, you know, everyone loves the Beatles. Think about it, and soon. My ears still have dried blood in them.

Anyway, since the whole point of going to see you was to, you know, see you, we eventually decided to go back outside at 10:00 and shake your hand when you pulled up. I really liked that when you (eventually) got there, you climbed on that van and gave that bullhorn speech. A friend of mine who had split his chin on the ice while campaigning for Gephardt tried to shake your hand; he missed, but- true story- when he touched the hem of your sport coat, his cut was completely healed.

I would swear you were making eye contact with me, and only me, throughout the entire thing. “Oh,” I thought as I listened to you, “you’re good.”

Unless you really were. I was the one in the green coat. Let me know.

When you went in, we dashed back inside to listen through the speakers. It was okay, but you didn’t do any of your new stuff. Do you ever feel like Billy Joel or Lynyrd Skynyrd, going from town to town, standing in front of cheering crowds as you play all your greatest hits? As my friends and I listened to your stump speech yet again, we literally found ourselves saying, “Ooh, I hope he does ‘35 million Americans are in poverty’! Wait, shh! I think I hear the opening notes of, ‘And talkin’ lahk thi-yus, Ah’m sure to win in the South!’”

Anyway, it was all right. I still might vote for you; let me know if you plan to swing through town in the next few days. We can talk.

Oh, and there was a guy going around the bar selling buttons with your picture on them and then pocketing all the money for himself. Just thought you’d want to know.

Sincerely,

Jim