To my dear liberal friends, as of writing this - it's less than a week until election day, and yet 55 million people have already voted.
While the outcome is certainly not certain, my instinct right now mirrors my instinct in 2016 - I truly believe Trump has this one locked up.
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Assuming my instinct is correct, as it was 8 years ago (I was much less certain in 2020, though I did believe DJT would hold on) - my left of center friends and family will have to reconcile that DJT has pulled a Grover Cleveland.
Defeated in his bid for reelection after serving his first term, Cleveland departed the presidency in 1889 (his 21 year old first lady famously saying "Don't change the furniture, we'll be back in 4 years" - paraphrasing obviously) only to indeed return in 1894 and do his thing for a second term.
Until this Tuesday, Mr. Cleveland was the only POTUS to pull this off. I do believe 45 will become 47 this election day, and when that happens I'll be praying for a bunch of things.
First and foremost - I pray for our country to remain peaceful, for the civil unrest to be minor. Sadly, I fear this will absolutely not come to past.
Second - I pray that I can restrain myself from laughing and pointing in people's faces. Truly, all jokes aside, I am going to be so happy that I truly do hope I am able to restrain myself from gloating, too much.
On the flip side of that - if somehow all the numbers are wrong and Kamala ends up as the president, I will indeed be disappointed, but I pray that I will be able to quickly get over it and get on with the day to day that is my life. I do not want to be screaming to the sky, devastated and distraught as so many on the left were in 2016 when their candidate lost. I never want to be like that, I never want to have politics matter so much that I'm thinking about election day for more than a few days at most.
I see it akin to rooting for the Dodgers in the World Series. I'm a big fan - and thankfully they won last night, I was super happy and today it's business as usual. I'm working, I'm taking care of the wife, I'm looking forward to seeing kids trick-or-treating tonight and a quiet birthday tomorrow. Oh yeah, and that was a great game last night. It's nice to reflect on it, but a little sad that baseball is over until next year.
If the Dodgers had lost, that would've sucked. But guess what, my day today, and tomorrow and this weekend, would be absolutely indistinguishable whether the Dodgers had won or lost. True if they had lost the game, that means I would be watching another game on Friday and maybe Saturday too - but that wouldn't really change anything.
It wouldn't change my mood, my outlook, my disposition or my entire approach to the next week or the rest of my year or the next several years.
Win or lose, the Dodgers don't live in my head at all - even though I love them as a big fan.
Trump is the same. Although I don't love him, I'm a fan alright. And Kamala, same thing - she's like the Yankees. Yucky but who cares. Win or lose, my life won't change.
And the reason I can be so certain about this - is that this has all happened before, and not just with DJT.
Mitt Romney was a woman beating bully who tied his dog to the roof of his car. He was absolutely a threat to democracy.
George W. Bush was literally Hitler - they burned him in effigy, tiny mustache and all.
His dad was the devil. Ronald Reagan was straight up evil.
I've heard it all and seen it all before. Victory and defeat, it all blurs together. I remember when the Oakland A's won the World Series in 89 after the earthquake. I remember the following year when they got swept by the Cincinnati Reds. The former was happy, the latter was sad - neither changed a damn thing about how I went about my day.
So all this anguish, all this hand wringing - all of this NEVER BEFORE SEEN THREAT TO DEMOCRACY nonsense - it can all simply fuck right off. Don't care about any of it.
Yes, it's going to be sweet for an evening and through the next day when democrats have to shut the fuck up and suck it when Trump wins, but really - after that, it's just going to be more of the same. Yankees suck. Kamala sucks. LOL.