Those of you who have had a short first love and then started another courtship will know the odd feeling of falling in love a second time. There's something...missing. It's not the passion, or the joy, or the commitment, or anything easy to put your finger upon, but something just feels different.
And, of course, something is: you. You've been through it before. You may be scarred by the breakup, or simply aware that some good things end. You may be afraid of feeling as lost again. You may not. No matter the intervening history, you are not the same person who fell the first time, because that person doesn't exist any more.
That's something which we who have been through many election cycles know, too. For those of you for whom this is a second electoral romance, let us, older, wiser -- and scarred -- teach you, beyond the flip.
