Cheer Up

With respect, all of the gloom and doom surrounding the campaign is starting to sound like the melodrama that you hear on "The Real Housewives of [Wherever]."  I would therefore like to make some contrarian positive (or contextual) observations.

First, in a post months ago I said that I was confident that there was not a national majority in favor of Donald Trump. In three weeks, that prediction will be borne out by the largest presidential landslide for a Democrat since 1964.

Second, the notion that past presidential elections were always conducted under "Gentlemen's Rules" where the loser graciously conceded is a fantasy. John Adams refused to attend Thomas Jefferson's inauguration in 1801. Andrew Jackson attacked John Quincy's Adams' election in 1824 as the product of a "Corrupt Bargain" and spent the next four years doing his best to undercut the President. In 1828, Adams and Jackson waged what is often described as the nastiest presidential campaign ever, with Adams refusing to attend Jackson's Inaugural.  In 1860 an entire section of the country banned Lincoln from the ballot and refused to recognize his election.  And so on.

Third, there are other presidential elections where the candidate conceded graciously but many of his supporters felt cheated.  How about 2000?  How about 1960?  You get the idea.

Perhaps the best expression of my feelings comes from Franklin Roosevelt's Fourth Inaugural Address. This is not famous like his first ("We have nothing to fear but fear itself") or the second ("I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished")  But consider after you hear it how much greater the problems of 1945 were than our problems, and that the man giving the speech was dying.

Here is the link to an audio version.