I sat down today to write a column about some ideas to relieve the stress many are feeling in the final moments of the presidential campaign.
But … I couldn’t think of anything.
Yeah, I was too stressed.
The best — if most stressful — description I’ve seen of the anxiety blanketing at least half of the country is that on Nov. 5, it will be like we’re all awaiting the results of a biopsy.
And, of course, it will probably be worse than that. Because the surest bet about this coin-flip election is that we won’t know the winner by the end of Election Day. And it’s just as certain that Donald Trump will have either declared victory or said the election was rigged or, most likely, both.
Meanwhile, I read the news. Because it’s my job. And also because I can’t help myself. Because I’m looking for a sign that we’re not really approaching End Times, and instead I see the story about a Trump interview with — trying not to retch here — Tucker Carlson in which the wannabe dictator seems to imagine Liz Cheney before a firing squad, with “nine barrels shooting at her.”
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Then I have to look for the clip to see for myself. Google directs me to “Morning Joe,” where they’re talking about how Trump is bookending his campaign — with his opening promise to be your retribution and then with this closing piece of what you might call political snuff porn.
That’s not the sign I was looking for.
And neither is this, about an actual sign: A friend reports that on a recent drive to Greeley, he saw a billboard for “Trump 2024” that said, “Don’t Let Them Eat Our Cats.”
The friend notes that someone paid actual money to warn us about phantom migrants and their supposed pet barbecues.
As a distraction, I did watch the World Series, which, if you’re a fan, you know is not exactly a way to relieve stress. I root for the Dodgers — don’t hate me; I was born into a Dodgers family and I’ve rooted for them since Brooklyn days — and to watch them beat the hated Yankees cheered me up for about … three minutes.
Because while I’m watching, I see the closing campaign ads from Kamala Harris and Trump. Harris rightfully — if depressingly — warns of the dangers to democracy if Trump were to be elected. Trump’s ads, meanwhile, are concentrating on one of the great issues facing the country today — whether trans athletes should be playing girls’ sports in high school. The fact that anti-trans bigotry is at the center of a presidential campaign is as depressing as anything you’re likely to see.
Well, the Series is over. And I keep on reading. I see the story of the Halloween news conference in which the Arapahoe County sheriff’s department is blaming “South Americans” for a series of high-end burglaries in the Denver suburbs.
OK, there’s no evidence linking South Americans to the crimes. Absolutely no evidence, except that in similar cases in other states, various South Americans from various countries have been arrested.
And so ….
In the days leading up to the election, we get a story about possible South American criminals possibly coming to the Denver suburbs, which matters because Trump has, of course, made a major issue of the lie that Venezuelan gangs supposedly have “conquered” Aurora.
Was this some kind of conspiracy on the part of the sheriff or was it just plain ignorance?
Voting begins now.
When Arapahoe County Sheriff Tyler Brown was asked if he was aware of the danger of bringing up this evidence-free connection in light of the highly charged political rhetoric about Latin American gangs in Aurora, he said he was.
”We’ve seen how that gets blown out of proportion on a daily basis, whether it is saying there’s nothing happening at all (or) that we are being overtaken by weapon-wielding (masses) of people from other nations,” Brown said. “That’s not happening here in Arapahoe County.”
And yet, it’s not exactly the sign I was looking for.
OK, I fear this meandering column is starting to sound like a Trump weave. It’s just that hard to think straight these days. But the column is going to come to a beautiful conclusion. I promise.
☀️ MORE FROM MIKE LITTWIN
Look, if I know anything about stress, it’s that we should stay away from the polls. Not because the best independent polls are biased — they’re not — but because they are not able to tell us much about an election when results promise to be so close. And properly measuring Trump’s support has been an issue for pollsters since the beginning.
Every expert analyst tells us not to get excited about the latest polling twists and turns — like this group of Marist polls from the so-called Blue Wall states (made you look, didn’t I?) — and that even poll averaging doesn’t help all that much when/if the election is basically a coin flip.
There is one recent poll that does look pretty solid, though. A Keating Research poll shows Harris leading Trump in Colorado by 12 percentage points, reflecting the 2020 results, when Trump lost by nearly 14.
Of course that relieves only so much anxiety. If Trump actually wins the election, I don’t know what to say, except any stress you’re feeling now might never go away.
But if you’re stressed about this election, if you worry nonstop about what would happen if Trump is elected again, if you can’t stop wondering how so many of your fellow Americans seem to have lost their minds, you know one thing about living in Colorado:
You are not alone.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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