This was in headlines, but I just can’t leave it alone. It’s too good. First the photo of the day, accompanying this San Francisco Chronicle piece, “Dems nervous, GOP upbeat as vote nears.”

Photo credit: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

Get this: the presidential race is so close that rich, white San Franciscans are having trouble exercising in their home gyms or getting proper sleep at night. Take, for instance, the story of Obama campaign volunteer Kay Edelman:

For the past several weeks, the 60-year-old San Francisco resident has frequently bolted awake in the middle of the night, in “a panic attack,” she said. She darts for her computer and checks the latest polls. Some days she’s so distraught that she can’t exercise.

Every morning, she gets e-mails from friends who’ve been just as sleepless. Most are so tense, they can croak out only a few words. “Very anxious.” “Worried.”

“Nothing more needs to be said,” said Edelman, a retired educational administrator.

Actual quote from a man who didn’t sleep for two nights after the Denver debate:

“After I read Nate Silver the other day, I felt better,” Blume said.

And, there’s this scene from a San Francisco dinner party the night of that fateful debate performance:

Edelman hosted a bunch of friends to watch the debate over dinner. But after the first five minutes unfolded, nobody ate. Few spoke. “And right after it ended, everybody just got up and left,” she said.

Romney Derangement Syndrome is kicking in even before he’s elected.

I’m certainly not immune to worry over the election or the fate of the country, but let me pose a question for stressed-out liberals. Why do you continue to vote to make the federal government and the leaders at its helm an ever-more present and powerful part of every part of our lives when you know there’s a chance every four years a guy you won’t like will be at the helm? If it’s going to stress you out this much who has the levers of power, perhaps you should work toward making the levers less powerful?

And, say, Edelman and her friends look pretty comfortable. Shouldn’t President Obama be busy afflicting them?

Will we comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable under President Obama, or do the exact opposite under President Romney?

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) October 30, 2012