Election Anxiety

As election day approaches, I find myself feeling anxious–both definitions. I’m eager for the day to arrive so we can see an end to the awful and constant political ads, and also looking forward to the predicted blue wave which should help to return the country to a semblance of sanity.

And yet, I also feel dread knowing that the outcome could surprise the pundits and pollsters who tell us this time will be different than the last time. Last time, they were wrong.

Two years ago, I was happy and confident and hopeful.

I know that because Facebook keeps showing me those optimistic posts I made two years ago that now make me want to cry and scream. They also make me, well, cautiously optimistic, as they say, about tomorrow.

We’ve been on a roller coaster since the Kavenaugh “hearings.” Those seemed to energize the right.

Then more than a dozen prominent Democrats plus a few others from Trump’s enemies list received mail bombs. A Trump-loving creep sent them while the right accused the left of sending them knowing the right would be held responsible.

The next day a crazed white nationalist took his AR-15 into a synagogue and killed eleven people and momentum again favored progressives. The liar-in-chief pouted because these inconvenient terrorist attacks took attention away from his constant emphasizing the “hordes” of Central Americans coming to invade the US. To rev up the base, he decided to send thousands of military troops to the border to defend from the starving families still 900 miles away and on foot. Finally (well, so far) he announced that he would end birthright citizenship with an executive order.

In Florida, Georgia, Kansas and North Dakota and elsewhere, voter suppression was the right’s strategy for winning toss-up races.

Still, the polls look good for Democrats to take over the House of Represesntatives, as well as many governorships. The long awaited Blue Wave seems real.

The more people around me are almost giddy with their expectations, I grow more wary and a little afraid, panicked even. I remember the last time. I can’t take it again. More important, I don’t think our country can take another two years of this unchecked evil. Vote blue.