There are other differences. Republican women have thick necks, Democratic women have thick ankles. There are exceptions and even the inverse can be true: Condi Rice has a pencil neck and you won't find a skinnier pair of legs than the ones under Ginsberg's robe. The neck/ankle equation will serve you well until it hits you it's completely false.

Clichés are cheap vessels but they can hold a lot of truth. The rich really do get richer and the poor get even poorer. The rich move up, the poor move down. This has always been true.

John Kerry divides rich from poor at $200,000. Broadly put, if you're under the mark you would be gradually settling into a declining state; whereas if you're above the line, you're presumed to be in a state of ascension. At the very bottom of the jar is the sludge from which I write and spit, write and spit.

The GOP, which stands for Grand Old Party, is actually still quite grand and still getting older all the time, but it's not much of a party these days — ever since Richard Clarke began popping reputations like Macy's balloons, the GOP has beheld the incredible shrinking candidate, now the size of a prize, and no gumball.

Instead of looking for differences, perhaps we should be looking at similarities. Republicans and Democrats share one thing in common: a hometown. We all live in one. We might not come from the same neighborhoods, but we're all neighbors, all Americans, all easy to recognize in foreign countries because we're either triple-sized or anorexic and stuck through with needles.

Now in this town there roils a great seething unease, for its leaders have been winged and are scrambled, lo, see them duck and cover (quack!). In these confusing times, as we townspeople watch an administration burst into one spectacular lie after another, then flip the channel and see American bodies dragged by angry Iraqi mobs, it might do us well to realize our true twoness, because the reality is we have one leg in the Middle East.

To me, this election is about what's hanging over the ocean. This election may require some to quietly switch parties in the privacy of a booth, a difficult act, but it can be done (I speak from experience). Even though most Democrats would rather commit adultery than switch parties, and vice versa, it can still be done.

The truth, once you've unscrambled all the reds and blues, is always purple.