The Drumbeat

It's a drumbeat, a thrum, an electric current running through my mind and body on a daily basis. "It" is the news — an endless stream on phone (I'm addicted), TV, National Public Radio. The pundits, newscasters, commentators count down hours, days, weeks till election day, and whatever comes next. Like a rubber-necker at a five-car pileup, I can't look away, and can't stop thinking about the election and its aftermath.

Many of us are suffering from a kind of collective, societal PTSD after living through the first —- and hopefully last —- Trump administration. But as a sixty-something Boomer with a good memory, Trump and the early years of Covid were simply the coup de grace of a long line of bad memories tied to awful/venal/unethical Republican leaders, going back to Nixon, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, his son, W, etc.

In 2016, Michelle Obama rallied Dems for Hillary with the line, "When they go low, we go high." Well, we know how that worked out; it didn't. But my personal wake-up call came earlier, back in 2000, when George W. Bush "won" Florida by 537 votes while thousands of voters were mistakenly thrown off the voter rolls and the US Supreme Court stopped the count in heavily-Democratic southeast Florida, which essentially gave the Presidency to George W Bush.

Four years later in 2004, John Kerry ran a weak campaign, scuttled by W's "swift boat" ads, which basically said that Kerry (a decorated Vietnam vet), hadn't earned his second purple heart, and that his military record was a sham. Meanwhile, W had avoided serving in Vietnam by joining the Texas National Guard through his father's connections, while Kerry had volunteered for military service. Before the election, the Boston Globe reported that W had basically gone AWOL, had disappeared for a year when he was supposed to be serving in the National Guard. The story was ignored by the national media, and Kerry was suddenly on the defensive. Republican operatives had taken Kerry's strength and turned it into a weakness.

Fast forward to 2016, and we had Hillary's emails and the Comey report, which turned out to be a big "nothingburger," but probably swayed some undecided voters in a very close election. And so we ended up with Trump, a direct line to the fascist Republican party we have today, a cult of personality focused on Donald, and a sizable number of people who could not, and still cannot accept Biden's victory and Trump's defeat in 2020.

Now, in this liminal space, I turn on NPR, scan my twitter feed, check election highlights on Daily Kos and other progressive websites. Early voting is happening, ballots roll in, the experts analyze the data and say the numbers look good, bad, indifferent.

For me, at 67, the years fly by, campaigns and elections merging one into another, years and decades collapsing like a house of cards. Didn't we just go through this last year? But no, almost four years have passed since our last presidential election and its messy aftermath, the uprising of January 6 and the storming of the Capitol. Today, I'm hunkered down in my small apartment, hoping that Harris wins, not only the popular vote but in the electoral college, too —- by a large enough margin that Congress or our corrupt Supreme Court won't be able to overturn a fair election.

Before 2000, I had an easy faith in our democracy. Today, I take nothing for granted. Instead, I watch, wait, and hope as the news flows around me, like an island in the stream.

Judah Leblang is a writer, teacher, and storyteller in Boston. He will be performing his new one-man show, "The Expiration Date," at Medford Public Library on Saturday November 9 at 3 PM.

Find out more at /medfordlibrary.org/event/the-expiration-date-a-one-man-show-with-judah-leblang/