We can now announce . . . .

 I dragged myself off to my motel room in 2016 at 11 pm in Newport News on election night after a 16 hour stint being an inside poll observer in that town (apparently SE Virginia doesn't have any democratic lawyers, so they have to reach 300 miles up to Arlington and Falls Church to find lawyers willing to drive down there for three days). I switched on the TV set and settled into bed ready for an exciting night watching the returns come in leading to a Hillary Clinton victory. Remember how she was 99% certain to win?

I had been inside a bubble all day since 5 am locked into a polling precinct place in the poorest part of town where the tally at the end of the night was akin to 80% Clinton, 11% Trump and 9% those faux candidates the pothead Johnson and the useful idiot Stein so nothing had prepared me for what I saw within a minute of turning the TV on. I have watched enough presidential returns to know that something unimaginable and momentous was afoot. Florida was gone, North Carolina (where I had canvassed) was gone, Clinton was losing in Virginia (where I had canvassed) with 95% of the vote in, but some returns from Democrat-rich Fairfax County were not yet in (where indeed Hillary eked out a thin state victory). I switched off the light and went to sleep with the TV set still on.

At about 4 am the change in the tone of the announcers woke me up in time to hear, "We can now announce that Donald Trump has just been elected as the 45th president president of the United States. I instantly knew, lying there in darkness in a strange bed all by myself in a seedy motel room far from home, that a bottleneck had arrived that my life was flowing through at that very moment. Into the one end my past life entered, a proud, confident American who knew America for all its faults was exceptional, and out the other end was emerging a citizen who knew he no longer knew his country and was fearful of the future, both for himself and his country. I felt like this moment actually might be a death knell of either myself or my country.

Sound overblown? America and its democratic institutions have become empty husks of themselves in four short years, no longer a world leader and having become the laughing stock of the world in its response to the worldwide pandemic with the most deaths and infections from it by far. Me die as a result of the occurrence of that moment? How about the threats or perhaps eventualities of dying by COVID-19, nuclear war with North Korea, a one-off nuclear exchange with a state like Iran (I do live in the DC blast range), shot by a heavily armed militiaman or soldier at a protest or denied necessary medical care by administration-ordered retrenchments in the health-care networks so the super rich could get get another hefty tax cut.

The last four years have been horrible for America and Americans who care to keep informed.

Last night felt pretty much the same as that 2016 moment for me, mingled with incredulity because Americans have seen what's happened in the past four years (caged and orphaned children, separated families, a quarter million Americans dead unnecessarily, unemployment at record-level, a looming depression, racism exposed and coddled, assassination plots against political or governing leaders tacitly encouraged, rampant corruption, allies cast aside, adversaries embraced etc. etc. etc.) , but I when I went to bed last night I still thought Biden would win, barely, the electoral college, perhaps by 270-268.

The political landscape was even more bleak when I woke up this morning, with no chance of the Dems taking the senate, the Dems losing seats in the house and Biden temporarily behind in his Blue Wall reclaiming bid, but I still think Biden will win, barely. We know that Biden will win millions more votes than Trump nationwide--so much for one person one vote--yet he has only one one tenuous path to a nail biter victory. But Dems are used to this; the last two Republican presidents, both tenures being utterly ruinous for the nation, were both outvoted yet entered the people's house (Dubya Bush thanks to a single vote--GOP appointed Scalia's).

Next perhaps I'll recount last night's fevered dream while I fitfully slept, no TV blaring this time to wake me up into an ongoing nightmare.

Less than two weeks out, and closing in on 225,000 deaths

 There's not much to do for the election since I voted last month.  I get text messages asking me to sign up for inside poll watcher training, like I did in 2016, but I resist it since I have more than one comorbidities concerning COVID-19.  I decided I am not going to spend16 hours in a closed space packed with people working and constantly shuffling in and out, it's a younger person's job now to save our tottering republic--I did my best the last presidential election.

I had chatted up one of the two live-at-home sons of my neighbors who had indicated an interest in the election and offered to take him to City Hall to vote in-person early, but he never answered the door when I knocked at the prearranged time.  (The other son, the one who went to college, brusquely said he didn't vote, go figure.)  I saw him last week on the sidewalk and he told me that he had indeed voted the day I knocked, only later, and he had voted for Biden.  Score!

I watched the second debate in its entirety, and clips of the first one, both gave me a headache to see a snarling, mugging bully hector an aging septuagenarian with utter, lying and nonsensical BS.  And I watch the count of American dead mount steadily each day, about to pass 225,000 in a mere eight months, most of them unnecessary if only there had been leadership from the president and a national plan.  As it is, the coronavirus is raging uncontrollably across the land while Nero fiddles, the U.S. is the laughing stock of the world in its ineptitude.

I sit at home, watch the news, go out threesor four  times a week to the store and wait for the virus to be over or quelled.  It's obviously going to be a long wait because absolutely nothing is going to be done to ameliorate the current situation before January 20th, which is still three months away at which time the U.S. under Biden will start at Go, with a full year utterly wasted thanks to the shocking  recklessness of the U.S electorate in 2016 who took a flier on such an obviously utterly unfit candidate and voted him in thanks to the obsolescent electoral college which strips the populous coasts of the power of a democracy's supposed mainstay of one person one vote.  All power flows through the Senate, Mitch McConnell has shown us that with his grim reaping, and every day I send out another $25 check to Democratic senatorial candidates, twenty checks so far.

I can't wait for November 3rd at 7 pm.