The Home Stretch
Okay, enough is enough. Thank goodness this horrible, terrible, dispiriting presidential election is almost over, because everyone’s head is just going to explode if it keeps going much longer.
How much more, I ask you, do we need to hear about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump? How many more insults from Trump to Clinton and from Clinton to Trump do we need? How much more raving insanity does anyone need to hear from those lunatic right-wing radio talk-show hosts like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, who must have to take “hate pills” every day to maintain their level of vitriol on-air.
How many more “new” polls do we need — each one touted with breathless abandon by those TV anchors who seem stunned – just stunned — that there’s a one- or two-point drop or gain by someone in some state, somewhere in these United States?
How many more negative, slashing TV campaign ads does anyone need to see? Do those ads or those polls or those talk shows or those campaign-stop insults by Trump or Clinton add anything new to your understanding of this election? Has any of it given you an “aha!” moment, during which you realize, suddenly and for the very first time, that all your assumptions about Trump or Clinton were, simply, wrong, and now you’re magically able to change your mind and your vote?
Didn’t think so. Nope, this phase of the political campaign is really “garbage time.” Virtually everyone who plans to vote has already made up his or her mind. And, frankly, if you haven’t made up yours yet — if you still can’t discern any appreciable differences between Hillary and Trump — then let me be the first to suggest that you must don’t vote.
Yes, I said it. Just don’t vote — at least not for president. Because if you can’t see — after 18 months of bitter, divisive campaigning — any differences in style or substance between the two candidates — perhaps you’d be better suited to vote in your local city council race. Maybe cast a ballot in a school board race. Here in California, we have so many ballot initiatives that my voter election guide runs more than 200 pages. Perhaps you can read all of them. (No, I didn’t, either.)
This presidential election has driven just about everyone stark, raving nuts — and why not, because one of the candidates is a liar while the other one is — well, stark, raving nuts. The nutty one is, of course, Trump, who has made so many stupid statements, insulted so many people, made so many derogatory comments – and, among other things, threatened to have Hillary thrown in jail — that he’s virtually a textbook example of someone emotionally and intellectually unqualified to be president.
Yes, Trumpsters will vote for him no matter what he says or who he says it about because — and this really is their biggest reason — they just personally hate Hillary Clinton. Revile her. Despise her.
And that’s okay — except that the day after the election — when, polls show, she is likely to win the presidency — these anti-Hillary folks need to do a simple thing: accept the results. Democracy means, among other things, that sometimes your candidate wins, and sometimes not. Winners get to govern — losers get to try again next time.
Except, of course, that Trump has said he’s not willing to commit to accepting the results because everything’s rigged against him — the media, the polls, the folks who run the elections — everything. That’s pure garbage, but Trump backers just eat it up.
When a candidate says that, he’s usually losing, and right now, Trump is losing. But after Nov. 8,. for the good of the country, he and his backers need to “back off” and accept — just accept — that someone else will be president.
I’m pretty sure that they’ll continue whining and complaining to their favorite right-wing radio talk-show host. That doesn’t seem like a great way to spend the next few years, but to each his own, I guess.
One more note: Bud and I (he, the “other half” of this blog site — or am I the “other half”?) were having coffee at our favorite Starbucks this week and wondering what the campaign would have been like if Trump had acted, well, sane. You know — not denigrated and demonized all those folks like John McCain and Carly Fiorina and Megyn Kelly and that Gold Star family and that disabled reporter. What if — after his stupid comments about what he likes to do to women — he’d said, “I’m deeply ashamed. It will never happen again.”
Bud and I agreed: Hillary would be in deep, deep trouble. And there’s one other way in which she’d have been in deep, deep trouble: If the GOP had nominated someone else to run against her.