"Hey, losers!"

What? Are you gonna cry now?
 Cry, cry for me crybaby!
 Cry!

 

 Nine days until the election.

 The election we've all been waiting for.  For four years.  The election that  will bring our nightmare to an end.  The election that will drive   the   monster from the White House.

 We've looked forward so long to the election that we now dread its arrival.  All our hopes have been pinned on Trump's losing.  What if he wins?

This week's issue of The Economist says that its modeling gives Biden a 92 percent chance of winning.  Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight gives him an 87 percent chance.  All the polls predict, by varying degrees of certainty, a Biden win.

And yet, I have a hollow feeling in the bottom of my stomach.  A Facebook friend writes "We are Democrats!  Anxiety is our middle name!"  Which is true, of course.  Not for us the traditional pre-Trump Republican complacency of settling back with a good cigar and a snifter of brandy, awaiting the inevitable victory.

But this time, it's more than that.  We still live in shock from 2016.  When an equally assured victory turned to ashes on Election Night.  Despite all the polls to the contrary.  (Although to be fair, the polls had been turning sour during the final two weeks before the election.)

But 2016 robbed us of our confidence that we could rely on polls and other traditional means of predicting results.  It's less the fallibility of the polls that worry us.  It's Trump himself.  Lying in wait.  Scowling, smirking, sneering.  Kicking all traditions of civility away, deriding them as the crutches of "losers."  Watching the Democrats approach, innocent, trusting, like Hansel and Gretel walking through the forest.  Like little Ralphie on his way home from school, in A Christmas Story.

Until he sees Scut Farkus, the consummate bully -- leaping out in front of him!  

"Not so fast, losers!  Trump shouts.  Look, I've won again!  I'll always win!  You'll always lose!  Hahahahaha!!"   

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”

(A quotations Trump somehow remembers fondly from his otherwise useless English course at Fordham.)

I see it over and over, as the 2016 nightmare replays itself in my mind.  Because, as another Facebook friend noted, we're all now suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Maybe.  It's at least nice to have a name for it.

I think it's time for me to take another nice long walk.  I'll try to avoid talking to myself too obviously -- I hate to draw stares.