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I am consumed with worry and fret about the election, which means you must be too, writes John Casey
Since I worked in politics and because I have an unquenchable thirst for politics, for years family and friends have been seeking out my “sage wisdom” during every major election cycle. I’m sought out, presumably, to assuage their worries and validate their predictions and hopes.
And every time over the years, I’ve given the same answers to their cascading questions. Polls? Don’t pay attention to them. The media? They create horse races for ratings and readers. Pundits? Ignore them. In fact, ignore all the noise. And I stress that nothing means nothing until a week before the election. I assume, then, that they all go off thinking, John sounds so confident, he must be right.
I have a confession to make. My perennial responses have been an ongoing ruse. I not only don’t ignore the polls, I obsess over them. I follow cable news coverage like a mouse chasing cheese. I read everything like it’s a hot dog eating contest. And everything means something for the months and weeks before the first Tuesday in November and beyond since recent elections have no longer been decided with relief the next day.
It’s a proverbial case of “physician, heal thyself” except I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea of what remedy would cure my angst. How do you attempt to clear the decks of politics when it’s your passion? When it runs in your blood? When it almost consumes your state of mind? I long for December to come so it can all be over; however, when it is finally over, I’m lost like a frenzied baseball fan after the last pitch in the World Series.
How will I spend my time moving forward? What will I think about? What will I read about and watch on TV? What will fill me with fright?
Don’t follow the polls, right? Wrong! Every pre-dawn morning, I turn on my phone in the dark, and scroll through news alerts about the latest polls. When I see that Vice President Harris has fallen a point behind overnight in Pennsylvania, for example, my heart skips a beat. It will be a morning without coffee. I’m already full of jitters. And don’t even get me started about Nate Cohn.
The television is the next stop. Sometimes I forget to go to the bathroom, and at 60, that’s a big miss. I flip between Morning Joe and CNN. Why? So that I can catch the feels from all the pundits at the table or who are beamed in from home. Like I do during a Pittsburgh Steelers game, I shout out “Way to go” if Joe Scarborough trashes Donald Trump. Or “F you” if CNN’s Scott Jennings says something mildly complimentary about Trump.
Pundits exist not to inform me but as a vehicle to affirm my hopes and to vent my anger.
During commercial breaks — the beauty of these two networks is that they seem to take breaks at the same time — I scroll through The New York Times, Politico, Axios, and anything else that pops up in my news feed related to the election. Usually, after reading the first paragraph of the stories, I will know whether I want to read more; otherwise, it’s on to the next and the next and the next, flipping frantically to find something that keeps my heart beating furiously.
The punditry and stories also include down-ballot races, but in order to curb my enthusiasm, shall we say, and stave off more insanity, I won’t go into the weeds in this column talking about those. You can use your own imagination as to what that’s like for me.
All the while I’m deluging my serene and sane editor, the wonderful Alex Cooper, with column ideas, because everything I hear and read is worth writing about. Everything means something during this election. My dear Alex knows the depths of my craziness and how to quell my wildness. He must imagine me in a real-life version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
When he says no, I scramble indignantly for other topics that might warrant a yes. Why? Because I cannot ignore the noise. I have to be a part of the noise. I have to do something that helps Harris and hurts Trump. It’s as if I think what I write will change hearts and minds in favor of Harris. “Get over yourself,” I tell myself. “Nobody cares what you think.” But that doesn’t stop me from thinking that what I write will have enormous consequences on the election.
There’s another thing about churning out columns about the election. They are cathartic. Like this one. If I write about Harris, Trump, or a cause that I strongly support, I can help alleviate my heart skipping a beat. My blood pressure will drop. Words will be balm for my frayed nerves. Prosing will provide a brief respite from hovering over my phone or computer, gobbling up anything I can read about the election. When I write I’m in another world. Lost in words.
And then, when I’m done. I look up at MSNBC, and the cycle of perturbation starts all over again.
I know better. I know pollsters who have told me that it’s all about the money — like everything else. Polls aren’t being manipulated per se, but if polls show a clear front-runner or a runaway race, no one will pay attention to them — and worse, candidates or clients in this case, won’t keep paying for more polls in order to get the answers they want.
It’s also all about the money for news channels, newspapers, news sites, and news feeds too. If the media reported that it was a runaway race, people would tune them out. The media know there are millions of people, like me, who are consumed and need them at all hours of the day, because everything means something.
If I woke up tomorrow, and Joe Scarborough said, “Harris is so far ahead, there’s no way Trump can catch her,” I’d go back to bed. It’s all about eyeballs and clicks, and a tight race assures addicts like me keep coming back. And as long as I keep coming back, people like Scarborough and Jennings will continue to be paid, because advertisers will keep buying ads. The vicious circle of obsession.
Perhaps, when I’m called upon to offer my own punditry, I should be more honest moving forward. I should tell inquisitors that the polls matter hugely, that they should watch Morning Joe, Inside Politics, and Deadline White House daily — actually, no, they should just leave the TV on 24/7. And as far as my punditry goes? Don’t read what I write because I don’t know any more than you do.
The only thing that I do know to be absolutely true is that everything means something during these last 17 days (That's including a few days after the election when it's finally called.). And with that, please don’t bother me until December, when the whole thing is hopefully over, and I’ll be begging for a distracting conversation.
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