The current election presents two problems for me on a personal level. One is that it's a big roller coaster ride with Trump up one day, Hillary up the next and so on. This contest was always destined to be like that if only because of the sheer number of people who would never in a zillion years consider voting for "the other" party. Trump was kinda right: He could murder someone in broad daylight and not lose many (if any) of his supporters.
I still think Hillary will win it by somewhere between the margin Obama had over McCain and the margin Obama had over Romney…but in the next 102 days, there will certainly be points when the momentum if not the actual poll results seem to be shifting one candidate's way before they shift back again. This means a lot of calls and e-mails from friends who are on a window ledge with worry, terrified that "that man" might win.
Worry is rarely a good thing. I have suffered the pains of many disasters that occurred nowhere but in my mind. It's also kinda silly, given how volatile this election is with so many new revelations and accusations yet to emerge. This thing about Trump's financial involvement with Russia and him urging them (sarcastically, he now says) to hack Hillary's e-mail is a good example. It came utterly outta nowhere and no one knows where it'll land. Good for him? Bad for him? Who knows?
In a normal election, it would be very damaging to Trump but so would a lot of things he's said or done that haven't hurt him much. (The Melania plagiarism thing — which on a list of Trump-related outrages probably shouldn't even make my Top 100 — probably harmed him more than will the suggestion that he's kissing Putin's heinie and becoming financially dependent on Russian dough.)
So I tell all this to my friends on their various window ledges and I calm them a bit for a time. There was a point, I remind them, when McCain's selection of Sarah Palin temporarily catapulted him into the lead. I think that choice is now regarded as a very bad decision but it set the numbers spinning for a week or three there. There will be similar hills 'n' valleys and who the heck knows what the debates will do? Or future ad campaigns? I'm imagining the Democrats trotting out a spot that will look a lot like the Swift Boat Veterans ads against John Kerry but these will feature former Trump business associates saying things like, "I trusted Donald but I lost my home and he stiffed everyone else in a deal where he made twenty million."
The people on window ledges comprise one personal-type problem I have. Another is how to deal with friends — and people I'd like to keep as friends — who are for Trump.
I have a number and some of them are fine. I think they're wrong but, you know, I also think some of my friends are wrong about what's the best Marx Brothers movie or what software you should use for writing scripts or is cole slaw actually a food? (The correct answers, of course, are Horse Feathers, Movie Magic Screenwriter and no.) If I'm not going to let important topics like that ruin a friendship, I sure don't want something trivial like the future of the United States to divide us.
With some of my Trump-backing friends, there's not much friction. These would generally be the ones who favor the actual legislation and policies they believe he'd enact. I think they're wrong about whether he will do those things or that anyone should…but grown, intelligent human beings can discuss those things and so can my friends and I.
But there are some folks who just carry it too far, demonizing not only the candidate they despise but anyone who doesn't join them in their loathing. Sorry…you probably can't demonize me and remain my friend. It's not that I think you're politically wrong. It's that I think you're rude…and rude can go a long way to rupturing friendships. Wrong, I can overlook and anyway, some of that's a matter of opinion or different interpretations of the facts. (There's "wrong" when you tell me Barack Obama has presided over a bad economy and wrong when you tell me, as one correspondent persists in doing, that Obama's Kenyan birth certificate has been found.)
I can think of at least five friends who I'm fairly sure support Trump, though I haven't discussed it with them. I'd rather not because I doubt I'd change their mind and I doubt it would be a civil discussion. I don't want to lose them as friends and I also don't want to stand there and adopt one of those fake Flight Attendant smiles and say nothing when they start in about how anyone who'd support Hillary is stupid, doesn't love America, has some ulterior motive, "And you know she murdered Vince Foster,:" etc. I'll see if I can make it to November without talking to them. It's safer that way.