A cloudy, rainy, colorful fall morning; the dogwood in my
back yard is a rich dark magenta, and beyond it in other yards are trees that
are bright yellow, green, orange. I
should be writing poetry in celebration of fall.
But I find it hard to see all of that beauty today. The world is presenting distractions that are
difficult to ignore: today is election day in America.
This is the most nerve-wracking election I can
remember. Yes, 2016 was upsetting, but
the day before that election we were all but certain that we would survive the
week with the long arc of our history still bending toward justice. No one expected Donald Trump to win. No one predicted the last two years of
incompetence, meanness, numb bigotry, lies and official race-based loathing
from our President, from our Congress and from our Justice Department. No one predicted that acidic hallucinations
from the lunatic fringe would swallow the Republican party whole, and since the
Republicans control all branches of our government, would swallow the country
whole. Today we will find out if this is
really what the country wants. If it is,
then it will continue: it will, in fact, be inflamed by an electoral
validation, and get much worse. If the voting today shows that this has been a
big mistake then we might, someday, be able to correct it.
I don’t know what to predict. I think the polls are likely to have wider
errors than they have in the past in part because our political affiliations
have so divided us. Families are torn
apart by them, and so many people have incentive---if they care about family,
or friends, or relationships in any part of their lives---to hide their real
views. There are, I’m sure, secretive
Trump voters, Trump Democrats, who hide their choices from pollsters in order
to hid them from their friends. But
there are also Republicans who oppose Trump and all of his antics, and they may
hide that fact from pollsters who ask.
So the polls are a guide, still, but may be far from the mark.
Which group of secret voters is bigger? I don’t know.
I think and hope that the Democrats will have a very good day today, and
I’m joined in that hope by a very wide range of very conservative former Republican
writers. I know that because they’ve
said so clearly and openly. Their goal
is to retrieve the possibility of a real conservative party in the United
States. They have that goal because the
Republican party is no longer conservative in any definable sense, and as
conservatives they no longer have any political home. I’m thinking of people like Jennifer Rubin, Michael
Gerson, Max Boot and Joe Scarborough, all of whom are strongly conservative,
and all of whom have written in the Washington Post about their hope that the
Democrats do well today so that an honest and actual conservative party can emerge,
somehow, and do well in the future.
I share their hope. I’m
a progressive, and have always been, but I do think we progressives need a viable
conservative party to contest against. It
helps us remember what we think, and why, and it keeps us honest.
So honest conservatives and honest progressives have a common
cause today, it seems. This election has
done that: it pits reality, honesty, and good purpose against corrosive fantasy
and brutal meanness.
We’ll see. We’ll see. I’ll spend the day reading, and pacing, and
looking out the windows without really seeing anything there., waiting for
results that won’t begin to be available until the polls close.
It’s a pretty, rainy fall morning, on what looks like a very
long day. Late tonight we will see what
kind of weather tomorrow will bring.
