Today we mourn, tomorrow we vote

September 11, 2001, was a Tuesday. Though our leaders seemed to be asleep at the wheel in the months preceding, and in the first minutes of the horror, these attacks were essentially a physical assault from the outside. 

That fateful Tuesday was a primary election day in New York, and it was appropriately postponed. In the years that have followed, and right up to recent days, we have seen our democratic way of life both tested and diminished -- that is on us, not on the terrorists. 

Tomorrow is another such primary day, giving us a new opportunity to honor and reaffirm our democratic institutions in real time. If you are registered as anything other than "independent", then please come out and vote to determine who will be the nominee for your party in the November general election. 

We cannot bring back those we lost on that beautiful sunny day, nor the thousands more we sacrificed in pyrrhic pursuit of vindication in Afghanistan and Iraq. But we can do this little act of faith and commitment to the values for which we have always struggled.

Today we mourn, tomorrow we vote.