Dennis, don't run. 

When I was a small child, I had a tiny novelty book of quotations titled The Wit and Wisdom of John F. Kennedy.  I got it in Boston once when I went there with my father.  I kept it with me constantly and forever—which for an eight year old is about six months.  Opening it to a random page, I would read hopeful sentiments advocating the uplift of humanity, promoting the inclusion of all within a just society, and basically affirming for my trembling spirit that goodness was still good despite appearances to the contrary in the darkness following his assassination. 

Dennis, when I was at your website, contemplating whether I'd sign-up to volunteer in New Hampshire next month, I noticed that you will have a Peace Train, traveling from California.  I fell apart.  Bobby Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign song was Peace Train by Cat Stevens.  This may be ancient history, and passe for most people, but what you are seeking to do is what Bobby Kennedy sought to do: to promote the dignity and integrity of the individual, and additionally to help unite all individuals under one banner of our common humanity.  For that, they shot Bobby Kennedy dead. 

His funeral train became our Peace Train, as thousands lined the tracks from New York to Washington, paying homage to the man, and to the ideals of peace and social justice which he tried to make reality.  When his train was gone and he was buried, all that remained was us—the people he had moved during his life, the people whose hopes he had kindled, and whose dignity he had restored.  After the rumbling of steel on steel had passed, all that was left was the peace train of us who loved him, each of us carefully guarding the flickering flame of courage he had ignited within us. 

Dennis, don't run. 

I know it is a failure of my faith to advocate a safe course rather than a true course.  It is a failure of my courage to ask you not to run for president just because I believe they will kill you once you get this peace train rolling again.  And it has already begun to move. 

I just don't think I can take it again.  I've never recovered from the trauma of these assassinations, 35 years ago.  And I have no idea how I would manage if I had to go through another one.  "We are not victims of the world we see, we are victims of the way we see the world."  I listen to your words and it reminds me of listening, after his death, to a recording of Bobby Kennedy in Indianapolis on April 4, 1968, announcing that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot and killed.  I don't want there to be only recordings left of you.  Yet, I know that if you are not true to yourself, if you do not run, if you do not put Bobby Kennedy's peace train back on its track and take it toward its original destination, then there won't be anything worth recording.  If there is anything that Bobby, and you, have taught me, it is that we must confront the fears, we must never allow them to deflect us from the goal, and we must never settle for anything less than what is right and just. 

Run, Dennis, run.  And I, and millions of others, will run with you.  No matter what they do to you, you will always have our most heartfelt gratitude; for restoring our dignity as a nation, for maintaining integrity through howling storms of fear and threat, and maybe most of all for getting the peace train moving again.