Let It Be – At Last – Finally Over!

Please, Lord, let it be over!

This ardent plea, or prayer, should unite nearly all Americans, whatever our political or even theological perspectives, as we click down the final days of an exhausting, ugly, deeply destructive election campaign.

Above all the other damaging aspects of this protracted epoch of electoral combat is its sense of endless and all-consuming stress and anxiety, which has dominated the national consciousness for two full years. Yes, Donald Trump announced his candidacy for a third presidential nomination on November 15, 2022, meaning we’ve spent more than 100 weeks debating whether this singular figure in our history deserves admiration and loyalty, or contempt, resentment and definitive rejection.

Issues of policy can be debated with some hope of compromise and conciliation, but when it comes to disagreements over Trump’s character and his fitness for the presidency, finding middle ground, let alone common ground, remains not only impossible but unimaginable. He can’t serve as commander in chief and leader of the free world for only Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays during the next four years while someone else runs the White House for the other days of the week. With “retribution” for an alleged stolen election in 2020 as his announced goal from the very beginning of his latest candidacy, it’s tough to see how the MAGA Man could ever split the differences on his soul-deep grievances.

This sort of division has produced a mood of shrill, apocalyptic desperation on both sides. For Trumpian true believers, victory on November 5^th provides the only chance for redemption and justice following a fraudulent result four years earlier that the candidate himself has repeatedly denounced as the greatest crime in all American history. On the other side, his implacable Democratic critics believe that any sort of victory for a convicted felon and outspoken admirer of dictatorial figures around the world, would threaten the very survival of the Democratic Republic—whose 250^th anniversary we’ll otherwise celebrate in the midst of the next president’s term.

Worst of all, Trump’s opponents feel special dread for an electoral outcome that remains uncertain and indecisive, because of the Republicans’ clearly announced intention to contest as strenuously as possible any outcome that strikes their all-powerful leader as dubious in any way. One of the strangest “closing arguments” I’ve heard from pro-Trump friends and acquaintances is the observation that the only way to avoid a new round of the “stop the steal” mania of 2021 is for Trump to win the race clearly and unequivocally. It’s even harder to imagine Kamala Harris contesting such a result than it is to expect Trump not to challenge any close results in crucial battleground states as he did last time.

But it is delusional wishful thinking to expect that a Trump victory, no matter how graciously accepted by the other side, would ever bring a healing conclusion to the bitterness, conspiracy theories and polarization that have characterized the duration of this appalling campaign. The agenda that Trump has repeatedly promised to enact, including the imposition of universal and punishing tariffs of 20% or more, the prompt apprehension and incarceration of some 15 to 25 million illegal immigrant “invaders,” not to mention the possible withdrawal from NATO membership and termination of aid for Ukraine, or the radical remaking of institutions like the FBI and the Justice Department, will produce conflicts and confrontations more intensely divisive than those merely rhetorical disputes that characterized the campaign. Moreover, the possible harm visited by Trump as a Constitutionally empowered President of the United States is potentially far more serious, and far more likely to succeed, than any new attempt to overturn a legitimate election that Kamala Harris wins.

So what’s the best hope for achieving a conclusion, or at least a significant reduction, in the recriminations, accusations, and end-of-the world hysteria that have unsettled the nation during the last two years?

First, we can hope that the upcoming tally of more than 150,000,000 national popular votes will generate a decisive outcome that will make a repeat of the bruising struggles of 2020’s electoral aftermath unlikely or impossible.

Second, we can express our powerful preference when we cast our ballots for the more moderate, less radical and confrontational candidate, thereby installing a new administration that could revive the spirit of cooperation and pragmatism that has consistently characterized our most successful leaders during the last 250 years.