I’m worried about you, I suspect many of you, actually.
I’m worried about how you’re feeling about the presidential race. Many of you are discouraged and fearful about the prospect of Donald Trump winning in November.
There’s reason to be upset, frustrated, worried, discouraged, even angry. I can’t deny that, don’t even want to.
I’ve lived long enough to know there are times in life when we have such feelings. “Life is difficult,” is the first line in Scott Peck’s still popular book, The Road Less Traveled, and it’s true.
Especially life in America today, what with the divisions, tensions, and conflict that are so discombobulating that I find myself struggling to keep my head while those around me are losing theirs, as Rudyard Kipling counseled his son to do.
Donald Trump and his Republican Party may not be the only reason you are feeling this way, but if you’re worried about the future of our nation they are certainly a major one.
But at the risk of sounding naïve, Pollyannaish, as if I haven’t lost my head because it’s in the sand, I think being discouraged and depressed and frustrated over the state of the nation’s politics is an overreaction to what’s going on.
Let me try to make sense of why I would dare to say that.
First of all, the election is three and a half months away. Only a few years ago, presidential races started after Labor Day. That’s still a month and a half away. Much of what is happening now will be forgotten by Labor Day. Pay attention to the moment, but don’t make the mistake of letting the media convince you that anything going on now will have a definitive effect on the outcome. It won’t.
Secondly, most voters don’t like Donald Trump. According to a recent ABC/Ipsos poll, 59% say Trump was rightfully convicted of 34 felonies in a New York court; only 38% accept his claim that the convictions were unjust, and 49% think he should be sentenced to prison for those crimes.
An NPR/PBS/Marist poll last week found that 68% of voters said it was more concerning to them to have a president who doesn’t tell the truth than one who might be too old to serve.
It is true that a majority of voters think Biden is too old to run, but what matters more is that they don’t give Trump any advantage because of it, despite what the media and scared Democrats are saying.
That NPR/PBS/Marist mentioned earlier found that the presidential race itself was dead even. What is more, FiveThirtyEight’s conglomerate results found the same thing, but also found that Biden is ahead in enough states to win the Electoral College vote.
My point is, while some of you feel like the race is already over, the polls say just the opposite. But if you keep thinking it is, you are probably falling into the trap Yale Historian Timothy Snyder says in his little book, On Tyranny, often happens to people because of their fear of tyranny.
They end-up speaking and acting in ways that help bring about the very thing they are afraid is going to happen. One sign they are is when they adopt a defeatist attitude that resigns itself to losing.
Not only is that happening among anti-Trump voters, it’s exactly what Trump wants people to believe. He wants to convince the public that the only way he can lose is if Biden cheats. He tried to do in 2020 and failed. This time he may succeed one way or another if you and voters like you buy into the same myth.
Given the fact that Americans have made it unequivocally clear that they don’t like Trump and are afraid of what he will do if given a second term, talk of a Trump victory being inevitable borders on being irrational. At the very least it is a feeling that is overriding the actual facts we have.
Fourth, the votes to defeat Donald Trump already exist. He has lost the popular vote twice, and now an overwhelming majority of voters see him as a genuine threat to their democracy and democratic freedoms, something they didn’t think in previous years.
When you think about it calmly, you can see that there is only one reason Trump can win, and that is if the people who oppose him don’t vote. It really is that simple.
Moreover, Biden’s record is stunning, what with leading us back from a near recession to the strongest economy in the world, our borders being safer than ever, our national security stronger because he repaired the damage Trump did to the relationship we had with our allies, especially those in NATO, making the choice in November unequivocally clear.
American voters either risk the country’s future to Trump or keep it safe with Biden. That brings me to the final reason you need not be discouraged.
Most Americans have common sense, and when they look at the choice before them, they are going to choose keeping the country and our democracy safe rather than risking it all for Trump.
The fact is, and it is a fact, most of us are not extremists, and we don’t like extremism. I have not heard a single convincing argument that a majority of us will embrace extremism this year and all the chaos and damage that go with it.
Especially when you factor in the power of the women’s vote this year, women who believe Trump, the Republican Party, and the Supreme Court have already proven their extremism in striking down Roe v. Wade.
All that said, do I worry about Donald Trump winning? Absolutely. He’ll probably get a bump in the polls after the Republican Convention because it always happens.
But I am not going to waste time between now and election day wringing my hands, being depressed and despondent because Trump might win.
There is a better chance that he won’t. If I’m wrong, I’ll deal with it then. For now, I’m taking my chances on the good and common sense of most Americans who at the end of the day will not give our country over to extremists like Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans.
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