It's hard to get used to the idea that we don't really have an election day anymore, but an election season. Tomorrow is simply the last day of that season, but it is one that all of America seems to be looking forward to with a combination of excitement and trepidation, It is safe to say that virtually everyone is hoping that tomorrow will bring them relief. There is an emotional investment here on a scale that I have never seen. How many people have told me, "I'm just trying not to let it get to me." But that's a clear sign that, try as we might, it's getting to us.
The early vote tabulation is up to 94 million. The RCP polling average gives Biden a 7.2% lead, but the most recent poll (NBC News/WSJ) puts Biden ahead by 10%. In the battle ground states, things are close as can be in Florida, North Carolina, Texas (!), Arizona, Nevada. The most recent poll in Pennsylvania has Trump winning by 2. That may be an outlier, as it diverges from virtually all the previous polls, or it may be a sign of a late trend in a state that Trump and his family and have made their home away from home.
This weekend journalists everywhere released their fate-of-the-republic pieces, a journalistic tradition going back to 1796 I suppose. This gets us back to the "emotional investment" I mentioned at the start. I am undecided as to whether this emotionality is a very good sign for the Republic, or a bad one for our own well-being as a people.
I keep going back to the election of 1800, which was the first in which the government changed hands, one political party to another. That election proved to everyone that there could be a peaceful exchange of power in America, even after an incredibly contentious election season filled with personal animus and over-the-top predictions of doom. But the important thing to remember is that that the loser in that case was John Adams, an honorable man who excepted the results quietly. In this case, however, the likely loser, Donald Trump, is promising to continue the contention in the courts, working hard to disallow votes in carefully selected swing states, all the while accusing Biden (this is a dead certainty) of trying to steal the election.
Which reminds me, the best thing to do when you're running out of a bank with the alarm bells ringing and a money bag clutched in your fist is to point to the nearest person and yell, "Stop, thief!"
Getting back to "emotional investment." I have always believed that this country has staying power, and that that staying power is based partly on laws and partly on customs and intangible but deep-seated ways of thinking about ourselves as a nation. There is a great host of voters out there that do not believe the country should be run by one partisan faction or another, but that it runs best when those factions are willing (or forced) to compromise. Some (well, a lot) of the emotionality of the electorate is owing to a misguided belief that everything depends on one faction getting the upper hand and keeping it. Then the chosen one can rule by fiat (AKA, executive order). Screw the hard work (and compromise) of putting together legislative coalitions to pass bills. That would mean compromising with the partisans on the other side, whom you have trained the electorate to think of as pure evil.
Politics shouldn't be civil war by another means.
But I have been going on long enough. What I'm hoping is that Biden, who will be our next president, will rule somewhat like Lincoln planned to after a bloody civil war: healing the wounds and working hard for amity, repairing the damaged ship of state. If he can do this, it will have been truly a signal election, and he will solidify his place in history.
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Read Also:
Trump's Ego Defeating Him, Biden's No So Much
How Trump could still win this thing
Could the Supreme Court Decide Trump vs. Biden?
Tuesday (Richard Brookhiser)
How We Heal (David French)
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