I stand at both tolls — red, blue, and gray™

The moderate's whole pedigree in one image: not the mushy middle (the shrug the house always rejects), but a man standing at every toll booth at once — red, blue, and gray — paying attention where each lane pays out. Mix all three and you get gray, and the joke turns on itself: gray is the bought color, the one with the merit drained out — so the synthesis of all the tribes is the color money can buy, which is exactly why it has to be argued past, not settled into. His footing beside it, honest and rare: Obama's birth certificate got laid to rest; being Hawaiian-born was rare, and rare doesn't mean wrong. My pedigree's even rarer. Rare is the credential, not the disqualification — the record is the arbiter, and a rare record still reads true when you check it. Kin: the hybrid that wins, they won't let you choose gray, vote-blue-as-a-moderate. (His coin — machine's read, refine to his.)