I am chanting a new mantra between now and Tuesday, Election Day. I first heard it from my son on September 9 (on a quick trip to New York—that’s how I remember the date), when I voiced my concern about the Republican candidate. He said, “C’mon, Mom. Romney is unelectable.” That was before Romney’s shellacking of the president at the first debate, on October 3, which really sent my worry mercury climbing.

“Romney is unelectable.” Whenever a wave of panic begins to wash over me at the very thought of a Romney win, I start chanting. One reason chanting is good therapy is that a person cannot hold two thoughts at the same time, so if you’re chanting, you can’t also be thinking about your terror. One author enumerated the salutary effects of chanting as follows:

. . . It soothes all our bodily systems and activates the body’s natural healing process. It also plays a part in reversing heart disease.

. . . the rhythmic tones . . . create a melodious effect in the body called the neurolinguistic effect [NLE]. When we know the meaning of the mantra we are reciting, it creates a psycholinguistic effect [PLE] on the body. The NLE and the PLE effects are by-products of the production and spreading of curative chemicals in the brain.

. . . even listening to chants normalizes adrenalin levels, brain wave pattern and lowers cholesterol levels.

. . . chanting helps block the release of stress hormones and increases immune function. It also keeps our muscles and joints flexible for a long time. ~Christy Melroy, http://completewellbeing.com/article/rhythm-divine/

Romney is unelectable, Romney is unelectable . . .

There are millions of citizens like me whose nerves are strung tighter than a violin string over this election. Everywhere I turn, concerned Obama supporters are shaking their heads, sighing, and saying, it is unthinkable that Romney and Ryan could be elected, whereupon they proceed to detail all the pressing reasons for their disbelief that the polls have even been close.

Suffice it to say, in a nutshell, Romney doesn’t give a fig about you or me.

Unless you are in the 1 percent of white, male Americans who have footed the enormous bill for this campaign—mind you, even if you are not a member of this 1 percent but are voting for Romney (arguably against your own best self-interests)—he has demonstrated a total lack of compassion or understanding for you and your life. His infamous “47 percent” remarks, not intended for public consumption, told us everything we had suspected about the width and breadth of Romney’s character and caring.

Add to this callous, callow character a prodigious facility for saying what he thinks the voters want to hear. When you Google “flip-flop,” here are the first and second items that will pop up on your screen:

Romney has even gone so far as to convert a bald-faced lie into a campaign commercial. His assertion that Chrysler is sending Jeep manufacturing to China is completely baseless, according to Chrysler itself.

To tend to the immense devastation wreaked by Hurricane Sandy, Obama and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) were right on the job. Romney, in a Republican primary debate last year, when asked how, as president, he would deal with FEMA, touted privatizing disaster assistance. “Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.” On Wednesday, with floodwaters still swamping homes and roads, and the embers still hot from disastrous fires, Romney said, “As president, I will ensure FEMA has the funding it needs to fulfill its mission . . .” Which statement do you believe? If you’re like me, you don’t trust a word that comes out of this man’s mouth. And there’s more.

On a woman’s right to choose: In 2002, while running for Massachusetts governor, Romney said, “I will preserve and protect a woman’s right to choose. I will not change any provisions of Massachusetts’ pro-choice laws.” In 2012, he said, “I’ve said time and again, I’m a pro-life candidate, I’ll be a pro-life president.”

On LGBT rights, according to one operative who’s known Romney for a long time, he started out during his Senate campaign in 1994 all for full equality for gays and lesbians. Then in 2002 Romney was elected governor of Massachusetts, and in 2004 his state legalized same-sex marriage. “Once he became governor and had his eye on the White House, he totally flipped . . . It was across-the-board prohibition of any small bite of equality for the gay community.” If President Obama’s change of thinking on the subject of marriage equality can be dubbed an “evolution,” in Romney’s case it’s a devolution, the antithesis to social progress and enlightenment.

Romney is unelectable, Romney is unelectable . . .

There are many among us who would claim that all politicians lie. This may be so. American politics has always been contentious, and it seems to have grown increasingly nasty and personal since the advent of instant communication and the election of the first African American president in 2008. But candidate Romney has taken the art of lying in politics to an entirely new level in 2012.

If you take Romney’s absence of regard for the truth, and toss in a whole passel of Americans who hate Obama and resent that he was elected in the first place, you have a witch’s brew, just in time for Halloween, that could poison progress for decades to come.

Obama’s clear victories in the second and third debates helped. His thorough grassroots campaign has helped. His deportment as the leader of all the people in the wake of Hurricane Sandy (so that even outspoken Obama critic Governor Chris Christie in New Jersey has lauded and abundantly credited Obama and his administration for their proactive, speedy aid) has helped. And it especially helped on Wednesday to read in the Daily Kos that Obama is polling well again in the swing states, and that Romney’s big bounce following the first debate has all but disappeared.

So, with five days to go until this highly charged election season finally comes to a blessed end, I cling to my innate faith in the wisdom and optimism of the American electorate—that more of my fellow citizens are not falling for Romney’s tailored but empty suit of campaign rhetoric, but realize the character and the accomplishments of his opponent, the incumbent, make President Obama far and away the better choice for 2012.

And if panic threatens to grab you by the throat until the deed is done, I have two bits of advice for you: The first one is to vote (early, if you can, and often—oh, if only it were possible). And the second is to join me in chanting: Romney is unelectable, Romney is unelectable. Ommm.

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