End of the election will bring relief

By Eric Frazier

The Charlotte Observer

If I were still pre-digital enough to own a paper calendar, I’d circle Wednesday, Nov. 9, on it. Why?

That’s the day after Election Day. The day when all the grown people of America who are losing their minds over politics can finally – I hope – begin to regain their sanity.

The general election season has barely begun, but it seems like it’s already been going on for two years. Donald Trump’s relentless bloviating curdles forth on seemingly every news show. Hillary and Bill Clinton’s transgressions, past and present, real and imagined, sprout and re-sprout like weeds no chemical can kill.

Just this morning alone, if you ventured anywhere near a broadcast TV news show or news website, you know that The Donald’s calling Bill Clinton out over past allegations of rape. You know the former governor of Pennsylvania is being called out for making a stupid misogynistic joke about Trump’s stupid misogynistic comments about women’s looks. You know a Fox News poll has Trump pulling ahead of Hillary Clinton, but they’re still the two most thoroughly despised presumptive nominees imaginable.

Bonus tidbit: There are even folks scouring the Internet for cellphone video that might finally prove whether angry young “Bernie bros” did or did not flip chairs over during that tumultuous state Democratic convention in Nevada.

You get the idea. Happy times. And it’s only May.

I’m under no illusion that we’ll wake up Nov. 9 and find that the reality of a President-Elect Clinton or President-Elect Trump means the end of the national food fight. No, the losing side’s supporters will be very, very angry.

But they’ll get over it. What else can they do? (Nobody’s moving to Canada). And then leaders will pretend to be adults again. They’ll have to start making promises that are at least realistic, if still difficult to achieve. Maybe they’ll even compromise! Crazy, right?

As tawdry and as stomach-churning as the next few months will likely be, let’s not forget that there’s an elasticity woven into the very fiber of American-ness.

Eric Frazier is a columnist for the Charlotte Observer..