With fear and without illusions: this is how the Democrats speak about the Biden advantage
No one is happy in this strange and horrible time. But there is a special circle of unhappiness that is reserved for those who continue to suffer from the unexpected defeat of 2016.
For many Democrats, election night 2016 unfolded in the unhealthy trajectory of a horror movie in which the teenage protagonists pull out their beer and party, unaware that the serial killer they believed to have defeated stalks them out the window.
The parties to see the results, the tailored suits, the balloons, the blue-dyed cocktails, the vertigo, the historical sensation, the election projections that showed that Hillary Clinton would surely defeat Donald Trump are now for the Democrats the evocative postcards of a credulous and prelapsarian world. As the next presidential election looms, and Joseph Biden is far ahead of President Trump in the polls, the traumatized and eager 2020 Democratic voters don't want to make the same mistake.
"In my mind I assume Trump wins because I can't stand the thought of another disappointment like that," said Helen Rosenthal, a Democrat who represents the Upper West Side on the New York City Council. “Secretly, in a little corner of the back of my head I wish and hope that Biden wins. But most of my brain says, 'Okay, Trump wins and New York won't have a tax bailout and we're going to lose more ground on the environment and we're going to lose Roe vs. Wade and we are going to lose in medical care. '
"For what it's worth, I'm already depressed about it," she added.
It is difficult to overstate the anxiety the United States experiences, because it faces a hydra of tribulations: the pandemic, the economy, the fires, the protests, the violent plots against officials, the attack on voting rights, the misinformation encouraged by the state and the feeling that what is at stake is democracy itself.
A recent study by the American Psychological Association revealed that 68 percent of adults in the United States said the 2020 election was "a significant source of stress" in their life (among Democrats, the percentage was 76 percent, 67 percent for Republicans and 64 percent for independents). In all cases, 77 percent of Americans said the future of the country had them stressed.
"This is the most stressed electorate I can remember," said Lee M. Miringoff, director of the Marist University Institute of Public Opinion, which has been conducting polls for 40 years. He mentioned the US Postal Service delays and sounded a bit stressed himself.
"There are many events that are new and disturbing," he said. “You start each day without knowing where you are going to end the day. It's very bumpy and you go down the road bump after bump. The news cycle may be under 30 minutes in length right now. "
No one is happy in this strange and terrible time. But there is a circle of unhappiness reserved for Democrats.
"What we see among Democrats is a feeling of 'we were in this place four years ago, so we're not getting our hopes up,'" said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. "In a consistent way, Republicans are more confident that the election will turn out the way they want."
He said he is concerned that "a significant number of Republicans will not accept the result if Donald Trump loses because they are convinced that he will win."
He doesn't feel very well either. "I'm anxious and frankly, not just as a pollster, about whether the polls will be right or wrong," he said. "There is the possibility of a real existential crisis for the republic."
Last week the writer Susan Orlean wrote a tweet about the mental state that described the mood of four years ago compared to today.
"In 2016 our plan for Election Night was to party to party and celebrate what would undoubtedly be a historic victory," he tweeted. "This year: staying home (of course) and too nervous to plan anything."
The responses came in a flood as other Twitter users remembered where they were in the last election. Many ended up with some variant of "and then we got drunk and fell asleep crying."
"Post-traumatic syndrome around here," said one.
“2016/2020… from champagne to Xanax,” said another.
"I remain traumatized by the memory of our Hillary cupcakes," Suzanne Nossel, Executive Director of PEN America, tweeted.
The day after the election, Isabelle Anderson, 33, went to a festive gathering for staff members at the Bay Area high school, where she was working as a psychologist. Many of her students were undocumented immigrants.
It was a very unhappy meeting.
"Everyone sat down, feeling so lethargic," said Anderson, who now lives in St. Louis. “Some people were crying. We wondered what was going to happen to our students, to their parents ”. The funeral atmosphere became so oppressive that everyone went home.
In Woodstock, New York, Abbe Aronson is still haunted by the heartbreaking experience of her 2016 election party that began as a celebration and ended with a group of adults turned into some kind of zombies and crying in the living room.
Aronson, who is a publicist, has not organized anything this year. Fight pre-election stress with an arsenal of fun activities like baking, volunteering, doing crossword puzzles, planting plants, posting harmless feel-good pictures on social media, and taking “sanity walks” through the woods with a small group of friends .
"The walk lasts until everyone is feeling better or at least not crying," he said.
But anything can make her angry. Recently, her longtime mailman, an older man who brings cookies for his dog and whom she gives a Christmas present to every year, mentioned that he had started hearing "this really funny guy named Rush Limbaugh" on the radio. "Do you know what a 'feminazi' is?" He asked.
"I said, 'Ernie, I'm one,'" he said.
Since then they have not spoken. Get two to five hours of sleep a night. "I talk to you and my neck throbs and I have a visceral response," he said. "I have chronic pain in my left shoulder and left neck, from being a middle-aged person who is furious."
In Eudora, Cyd Fenwick, 56, suffers from the stress of being a blue voter in the middle of a red sea. The other day he had a nasty confrontation with two women without masks in the supermarket. Her 80-year-old mother, whose car is decorated with Obama stickers, was nearly driven off the road by a truck carrying Trump, she said.
"I'm desperately trying to be optimistic," Fenwick said. "I have a lovely bottle of melatonin."
Nate Silver, editor of the FiveThirtyEight survey site, recently posted a list of suggestions for “staying sane” over the next several weeks. Some seem illogical, from a Democrats' mental health standpoint. Tip # 2: "Don't assume Biden already has the election in his pocket."
David Gill, 39, lives in Atlanta and has already taken that perspective to heart.
"Polls give people a false sense of security and believe they don't have to go to vote," he said. “Will there be a peaceful change of command? That is a big question. The great concern is that it does not accept the results or that it incites violence ”.
Many Democrats seem irritated by the word "Trump" itself.
"I never say her name, I never hear her, I don't write her name," Aronson said.
"I find that individual so disgusting," said Jane Kelly-Forest, 61, who lives in a suburb of Des Moines. “You want to believe in the polls and you want to believe that people will see what is in front of their eyes. I am disappointed by the electorate and the population as a whole because they cannot see what she is ”.
And what about November 3? If they can survive the next two weeks, how will Democrats deal with election night?
"I know I don't have that much power," Aronson said. But do you know how when people get on a plane and start talking to God? I tend to remind myself that even if things don't go the way of sanity, we will keep fighting. But in my most emotional moments I think 'How much fight do I have left?'
On Twitter someone named @ PigWings11 said that the country had had enough of this campaign.
"I wonder," @ PigWings11 wrote, "if I can ask my doctor to anesthetize me until November 4."
