I’m not sure I can remember an election where more people seemed terrified at the thought of the potential outcome.
I’m not talking about Republicans here. They always seem — or at least pretend to be — frightened at the thought of some crazy Marxist becoming president and destroying everything good about America. They seem most scared that a Democratic administration would take away their guns, raise their taxes and make them wear tutus.
I’m talking about normal people.
Democrats.
Mike, that’s not fair …
Hey, I think it was Finley Peter Dunne’s character Mr. Dooley who said it first.
Politics ain’t beanbag.
I used to believe Republicans weren’t so bad, that when they won elections it was sort of like the New York Yankees winning the World Series. Annoying but bearable. In the 1960 presidential debates, Richard Nixon said that he and John F. Kennedy essentially believed the same things for America but disagreed on methods and timing for accomplishing them.
Imagine that.
Now we have a president who calls his opponents criminals, who says he’ll eliminate the funding for Social Security and who insists that if he loses, it means the election was rigged.
We have Republicans in Congress — particularly in the Senate — who say right or wrong doesn’t matter if you have the power to have things their way. In 2016, they refused to even vote on a Supreme Court nomination eight months before the election. This fall, they rammed through a nomination that was made less than two months before election day.
Six days till election day and it certainly looks as if Americans are ready to repudiate Donald Trump and change course. Trump trails Joe Biden by about 10 points nationally and by significant margins in the states Biden needs to win to be elected.
But …
Those frightened voters point out that Hillary Clinton had a good lead at this point and shockingly lost when the votes were counted. They’re afraid the same thing will happen again.
There are numerous reasons I don’t think it will happen again.
1, Biden has a bigger lead in the polls than Clinton did, and the polls have been much more stable this time.
2. Millions of conservative voters despised Clinton. I have a friend who called her “the epitome of evil.” You don’t see that sort of animosity toward Biden.
3. There was considerable complacency among Democrats in 2016. Not this time.
4. Trump was an unknown candidate in 2016, a “take a chance on me” guy. Not this time.
5. Trump’s net approval/disapproval rating is minus 22 percent.
6. And of course, the virus and the disastrous way Trump and his administration have dealt with it.
I don’t believe it’s possible at this point for Trump to win a legitimate election. It would take voter suppression in key states, falsification of the count in others and conceivably even some bizarre court rulings. Of course, I didn’t think it was possible he could win last time either.
Despite all that, I can’t be paranoid. I believe Biden will win and it might not even be close.
Still, I will be glad when it’s over.
Then I can tell that little paranoid voice in the back of my mind to pipe down.