Edibles, meditation or electroshock therapy?
I’m looking for new ways to cope with the stress of this U.S. election. Can you microdose Valium? With two weeks to go, should I beat myself over the head with a Styrofoam bat to keep the shifting polling data from haunting my dreams?
“Too close to call” is fine when predicting the World Series. It’s insufferable when the free world hangs in the balance. In recent months, if you did a shot of vodka whenever a cable pundit uttered “within the margin of error,” you’d have liver damage. But here we are.
America is stubbornly split between voting for decency or chaos.
You know why the pollsters get so much wrong? They believe we still inhabit normal times. This election proves we do not. One candidate, Kamala Harris, is scrutinized with an electron microscope. The other, Donald Trump, is riffing on Arnold Palmer’s penis or manning the deep fryer at McDonald’s, ironic since he wears more makeup than Ronald McDonald.
Harris is falsely accused of spewing “word salads.” Meanwhile, Trump is more incoherent than a vagabond on bath salts. Word salads? Every MAGA rally zombie should get a free bottle of ranch dressing to pour into their ears while Dear Leader rambles about shark attacks or the great Hannibal Lecter. Trump claims his new oratorical style, which is like reading random pages of “Infinite Jest,” is called “the weave.”
He ping-pongs unrelated thoughts and then “weaves” back to create a grand narrative. Right. That’s like falling down the stairs and calling it tap dancing.
The pollsters are doing everyone a disservice by asking the same ho-hum questions from when politics was normal. Enough with, If the election was held today, who would you vote for? That’s moot when one candidate is grifting MAGADonald’s shirts hours after his fast-food publicity stunt. Or threatening to use the military against his political enemies. Or wistfully recalling how a failed insurrection was a “day of love.”
Remember when that volcano wiped out the villages? What a day of joy!
What the pollsters should be asking are questions that excavate the crazy:
If the election was held today, would you vote for a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist? If the election was held today, would you vote for someone who brags about snatching away reproductive rights for females? If the election was held today, would you vote for an election denier and charlatan?
Would you let this guy walk your dog?
Asking the right questions forces respondents to think hard about their answers.
Do you want to vote for a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist? Do you want to trust the economy to someone who inherited hundreds of millions and then filed for bankruptcy six times? Is the real working-class champion someone who ripped off hundreds of contractors? Do you entrust foreign policy to a bloviating fanboy of dictators? Should climate change policy be left to someone who believes windmills cause cancer? Do you want a leader who lies through his veneers every time his lips move? An anti-immigration firebrand who married two immigrants? A very stable genius who only recently heard of IVF and NATO?
Here’s something else the polling gurus never ask: why are so many of the “very best” people who were part of Trump 1.0 now saying he is the “very worst”? In four years, this guy produced more turnovers than Pillsbury. The White House was a revolving door of dysfunction and recrimination.
The military and cabinet officials who served by Trump’s pants-on-fire side now warn he is unfit for office. Mike Pence, the OG VP nearly turned into a pinata by angry red hats for not overturning a free and fair election, refuses to endorse his former head honcho. Think about that. It’s like Kim Kardashian expressing grave doubts about the moral clarity of Kourtney.
I’m done with this poll porn. If the American electorate wants four more years of divisive and toxic Cocoa Puffs, that’s on them. Or more accurately, it’s on the maddening anachronism that rank-shifts an electoral college over the popular vote and allows a few thousand in swing states to determine outcomes.
I was elected class president in Grade 8 by getting the most votes. If gym class was weighted or home ec was gerrymandered, I would have lost in a landslide.
Pollsters? With two weeks to go, stop freaking everyone out. You know how many American readers have emailed to jokingly ask if they can come live with me in the event of a Trump 2.0? I’d have to sell my house and buy Mississauga to accommodate all the requests.
There should be no horse race when a possible outcome is “Idiocracy.”
The pollsters need better questions — or no questions at all.
Right now, they are creating illusions and self-fulfilling prophesies.
