One More Wake Up

Tomorrow is election day in the United States. At lunch on Friday, a candidate asked the sheriff if he was coming to the election night party in the county seat. He wouldn’t be, he said. Because of the election they had extra officers on duty to address uncertainties of what might happen when the polls close. His presence was required to command that group.

Our politics changed since I began voting: we need a standby police force to address potential conflict. Hopefully the extra staff won’t be needed. In Iowa’s most liberal county conflict escalating to violence seems unlikely.

For the first time since I can remember, I finished my list of voters to contact on Thursday before election day. We used to go right up to the poll closing with our efforts, yet this cycle we got ahead of the game. I continue to do two or three things each day to contribute to electing Democrats. Unless something dramatic and unprecedented happens, I plan to stay home on election night.

The tension created by this year’s political campaigns is palpable. Regardless of who is elected president, the tension will be real. I recall the reaction among the electorate when the first black man was elected president in 2008. If the first black woman is elected tomorrow, I expect an intensified encore of the drama. If Trump is elected, his chaotic governing will be unrelenting. I’m braced for both possibilities.

In an email sent Nov. 3 at 6 p..m., Jen O’Malley Dillon, Campaign Chair, Harris for President, wrote the following:

We feel very, very good about where we are. More people — and more diverse people — are voting than ever before. We are currently on pace to turn out the voters we need to get to 50%+1 in each battleground state.

We continue to have a few paths to victory: By winning the Blue Wall (Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania), by winning the Sun Belt (Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina), or by winning a combination of the two. We are seeing what we need to see to pull at least one of those paths off.

Volunteers knocking on doors, making calls, and making sure voters have what they need to head to the polls are making a difference in this race. So much so that undecided voters in the last week are breaking for the Vice President by double-digit margins.

We know that, among the remaining pool of undecided voters, more are open to voting for the Vice President than for Trump. Our team on the ground is kicking ass reaching those voters and we have to keep it up in the days to come.

The day before election day, we are standing by to see what happens. I’m confident the best qualities of being an American will prevail.