Waiting on the Edge of 2020

This is the last night of uncertainty before an entire week of chaos. After four years of despair.

Pippin : It's so quiet.

Gandalf : It's the deep breath before the plunge.

Pippin : I don't want to be in a battle. But waiting on the edge of one I can't escape is even worse.

This election cycle has been a war of sorts, with actual blood spilled and conflicts dotted across the landscape. We had trumpsters in their coal roller trucks attempt a Mad Max attack on the Biden campaign bus. We've had the wingnuts parade through Black neighborhoods - with police escort! - in blatant intimidation efforts to scare voters off from tomorrow.

Election Day will be more chaotic. Expect trump's "Observers" showing up in police or militia uniforms with loaded firearms strapped to every limb as the intimidating thugs they are. Expect last-minute tweets and text messages aimed at registered Democrats warning them to avoid their precincts when things are actually safe. Expect interference and blockades of precincts as the hour gets late, before the polls officially close, in order to stop late-arriving voters from getting in line. Hell, I'm expecting Russia to attack our power grid in battleground states to fuck up the electronic voting machines throughout the day.

Election night is going to be worse. Television, having spent decades turning the evening into high-drama events watching maps change colors, are going to be tempted - or pushed by trump - into declaring victories where ballots haven't even begun getting counted. But the old ways of covering the results doesn't work anymore: the reality that it takes days if not weeks to fully account for every submitted ballot means we shouldn't declare anything until it's all done. The problem with that is, trump wants his excuse to claim victory and to hell with the rights of the voters, so the intense "gaming of the refs" is going to create noise and anxiety for all Americans - and the world - that we shouldn't have to endure.

For myself, living in the middle of Florida where every third pickup truck is flying a 14-foot flag of trump's head photoshopped atop Rambo's body, the stress tomorrow - RIGHT NOW in fact - is going to be the worst I've felt even than 2012 during the runup and worse than 2016 when the dread of trump's Electoral College chicanery became all too real. Part of me hears the polling saying that Florida is 4 points in favor of Biden and Harris, but I know what the local Republicans are going to do to fuck up the turnout and I worry that I'm going to bed tomorrow night with my home state making the same damn mistake they made in 2016 (and 2010 and 2014 and 2018 with the Governor and Senate elections, we got screwed with Rick "No Ethics" Scott and Ron "No Masks" DeSantis thanks a lot).

And I worry - and hope - about North Carolina and Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin being real for Biden and for the Democratic Party. And I worry about the Senate races - we NEED to ship McConnell to the pit of Hell he richly deserves - that the Democrats need to win alongside winning the Presidency with Biden. And I hope, oh Lord I do hope, that the signs of Blue Waves happening in Georgia and Texas and Iowa and Arizona are true, especially my birth state of Georgia.

I want to see some hope of sanity after all of this madness. I know the viciousness of the trumpshirt followers won't go away, nor the calculated sadism of the Republican Party leadership, but we need to see a fighting chance to push back against their cruelty, rage, and greed.

I will see you on the other side of the storm.

Vote Tuesday if you haven't already. Vote Blue across the board, America.

Stay safe. This isn't over even when the ballots are all counted.