I like what my co-blogger said about voting for Gary Johnson … see it here. I, however, remain unconvinced that Hillary cannot lose the election.
On the day of the final debate, Ellie, a friend, and I took a leaf excursion down the Mississippi River. It was a beautiful day, a beautiful trip, the leaves were fantastic but that’s a story for another time. At a small bakery/deli in a small town in which we stopped for coffee and a Danish, the bakery ran a straw poll of presidential preferences: buy a cookie and vote for your candidate. The ongoing results were hand-written on a sheet of newsprint hanging on an easel in the bakery. It looked something like this:
No kidding. I certainly understand this is not a scientific poll; it might prove only that Trump supporters like cookies whereas Clinton supporters are more into Danish, or Long Johns, or whatever. Or perhaps that Trump supporters are more likely to go into a small bakery in a small town in Minnesota than are Clinton supporters. Nonetheless, as a person who would not vote for Trump if he were the only candidate running, and who is fearful of his being elected, I was chilled to see the results of this poll.
We also noticed lots of “Trump/Pence” political yard signs and few signs for any other side. This reminded me of the large number of signs my wife and I saw many years ago when driving toward northern Minnesota in another election year. That year Jesse Ventura shocked the world with his election to the governorship of our fair state. Had you seen all the “Ventura” signs in the yards that Ellie and I saw, you might not have been so shocked, either.
And then Ellie and I watched the debate. I heard Donald say he is not willing to state, up front, that he will accept the results of the election. I can almost … well, maybe not. I go in and out thinking that the country is going to be in big trouble regardless of the election outcome.
If Trump wins we’ll be in trouble because we have Donald Trump as POTUS. I’ve previously expressed in these pages the concern that brings me.
If Hillary wins, we’ll be in trouble because we’ll have Donald Trump doing everything in his power ( and I’m sure there is much in his power ) to delegitimize Hillary’s presidency. Legal challenges; rumor mills; conspiracy theories. He’s good at all of these things; and he’s already set up the belief that the election is rigged. At a minimum, this will destabilize the government of the United States for a time.
This would result in lots of people who have guns ( for the very purpose, in many cases, of not being out gunned by the state ) being more unhappy with the presidential election than they may have otherwise been and, by extension, the election results in their own state/county/city/school board. Not only unhappy, but convinced the results are not legitimate. I have seen stories ( admittedly, on the internet … which proves they might be true ) that quote Trump supporters that there will be bloodshed if he doesn’t win.
Trumps’s casual, “I’ll just keep you in suspense,” as if he’s keeping the winner of an Emmy a secret, is alarming, as Hillary said in the debate that night and as President Obama said later. His casual response to real violence that occurred at his rallies ( early on, I witnessed it on tape; not recent events ) does nothing to suggest to me he’d do anything were some/any/a group of his supporters to go off the deep end and start shooting people.
I hope and pray I am just an alarmist.
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