I'm enjoying not paying a lot of attention to the election. You should consider it. I did watch Bill Maher last night and I thought a lot of sound things were said on his program, mainly about how the Religious Right has shown that the "religious" part of that was never as important as winning. Remember when they used to insist that a man who'd cheat on his marriage was no damned good and automatically unfit for office?
But it was all intermixed with some hysteria…and after the show was over, I'm pleased that I was able to turn my mind to other matters…things I can do something about. If you're determined to be paralyzed until the networks call the race Tuesday night, you're wasting a few days of your life and maybe a large chunk of your stomach lining.
I may post a few more thoughts here but I think this election is over. The minds that are made up are made up and no new revelations — factual or otherwise — are going to budge them. At most, they may motivate some people who might not have gotten around to voting to get their asses to the polls on Tuesday.
One of the reasons I'm not on the window ledge about the outcome is that I think we know the outcome: One side is going to win and the other side is going to spend the next four years hurling mud and challenging the outcome in every way possible and being obstructionist and vowing to undo it all in 2020.
In our little game here to predict the outcome of the election, I guessed Hillary would get 350 electoral votes. That made sense at the time given the polls but I now don't think the winner (who I still think will be her) will get anywhere near that. The winner won't win by the kind of margin that will cause the losing side to act like actual losers. Not only will the victor not get a "honeymoon period," there'll be powerful forces working for an annulment before Inauguration Day.
And as I'm writing this, I think I was also wrong in the third paragraph above. I don't think this election is going to be over on Tuesday. I think all that will be decided on Tuesday is which side is going to spend the next four years — and maybe many more to follow — trying to delegitimize and obstruct the winner. And if you're hoping I'm wrong…well, so am I.