With less than a week to go until the polls close on the 2024 election, the presidential candidates are rounding the bend for the last leg of the race. And it looks like it’s going to be perhaps the closest photo finish in our country’s history.
There have been many close calls and weird scenes scattered among our presidential elections over the years. But a race where the final month of candidate poll results have stayed firmly within the survey’s margins of error is one of the biggest nail biters of all time. This is especially true when the neck-and neck-contenders promise such drastically different outcomes.
Everyone is suffering from election fatigue. There have been proud moments, and there have been cringeworthy ones. There are media who continue to provide balanced coverage of the red and the blue, but many more have moved to opinion-style reporting that makes it clear whose side they’re on. It’s now possible to read one top brand national media report saying that Harris leads certain states and another saying that Trump leads them – on the same day.
Likewise, most other segments of our society have taken sides in very vocal ways. We know who most celebrities are for and against. We know who the major corporate players are for and how much they’ve given. We’ve seen Beyonce hugging Harris onstage at one of her rallies, and we’ve seen Elon Musk jumping up and down like a six-year-old who overdosed on sugar at one of Trump’s events.
We not only know the especially successful rally cries and possibly fatal flubs of each side – we have those moments engrained in our memories for instant playback as we discuss with friends.
We’re clearly, as a nation, suffering from election angst.
We’re dizzy from information overload. We’re unclear on where misinformation might be leading us. We’re paranoid about the worst outcomes as described by vicious political ads.
We’ve received way too many hourly texts and emails asking for yet one more donation by clicking just one key because guess what – they already have all of our credit card information on file.
We’re afraid of the election’s outcomes, but we just want to see it all end.
When we launched Bospar’s Say It to My Face campaign back in early September, one goal was to encourage everyone to engage in spirited conversation and debate. I doubt anyone guessed how much noise our digital and social media-driven society would manage to create in those two short months.
The more personalized gatherings have been significant as well. Rallies. Concerts. Zoom events. Service club initiatives. Poll watchers. Phone and door-to-door canvassers. Post card-writing gatherings. America has been speaking up individually and en masse.
Our ultimate goal was what we’ve internally called a “get out the vote” campaign. And it looks like America is going to surpass itself on that front as well, with more than 60 million early votes already in as of this writing.
So, with all that said – what’s left to say?
After the voting is done, the most important thing of all still lies in front of us.
During these final moments of the campaign, some major last-minute initiatives likely will swing the votes out of deadlock and into a small but all-important lead for the candidate and into a winner-take-all breakaway.
But in fact, no matter who wins the election, they will only be taking half the nation with them. There have been many revelations in this campaign. And the largest and most shocking may be how truly divided our country is at this point in time.
No matter who wins, half our country will be bitterly disappointed and deathly afraid of what comes next. It’s hard to believe that half the country could feel that way if your own candidate wins. But it’s true – it works both ways. Few of us had any idea how strongly the other half differs from us and hates our candidate as much as we hate theirs.
So what comes next is obvious. We need to find ways to close the giant gaps in our society. Our goal needs to be that when we hold our next election four years from now, we do so as a much more unified country than what we are today.
As individual citizens, the task of re-uniting and healing what a number of high-powered, well-financed interests are tearing apart seems daunting. And it is. But the big thing to remember is that the special interest and propaganda groups might have the big bucks – but they don’t have the votes.
Only we have the votes.
And if we purposely set out to know, listen to, understand, empathize with and forge closer relationships with those “on the other side” over the next several years – then we can stand together as voters in the next presidential election who know what we believe based on knowing each other.
As we enter the post-election phase, the concept of “Say It to My Face” becomes more important than ever before. It’s not a two-month effort. It needs to become a daily way of life.
We can only hope that threats of violence are overplayed and that our election and leadership transition will be a peaceful one. We can only expect that this 60th election of our U.S. President will be finalized in as timely and uneventful a manner as it generally has been since 1789.
We hope and expect that a week from today or very soon thereafter – with the election results published and everyone in agreement that the results are legitimate – that we can then get on with our lives – productively, peacefully – friends and foes working together, in harmony, to make our country an ever better place to live.
