The recent set of swing state polls by the New York Times—the world’s most overrated media company and one of the world’s most overrated institutions, period—have cued up a whole line of Democratic bedwetters to scream and cry and shout that the sky is falling. Despite the fact that the poll results are so laughably off-base (Trump +11 in Nevada and winning Las Vegas?) that anybody who takes them seriously clearly knows nothing about politics, that hasn’t stopped a cavalcade of panicky Democrats from seriously suggesting that Joe Biden ought to forego another run.
Folks, the first thing you need to do is grab a paper bag and breathe into it until you stop hyperventilating. Then you need to sit down with a stiff drink, or some weed if that’s your thing, and let Uncle Cliston tell you a bedtime story.
In a land called America a long time ago, there was a fellow named Michael Dukakis. I’m told some of his friends called him Mike. He came out of the Democratic convention less than four months before the 1988 election leading George Bush by 17 percentage points. But when November came, Mike lost 40 states to George, who then became America’s president.
George eventually took America into a war and saw his approval ratings reach 91%. The Democrats were terrified, and almost no leading Democrat chose to run against him in 1992 because he clearly could not be beaten. But a brave, if unknown, soul from Arkansas named Bill Clinton took a gamble, and a year and a half later, Bill won big and became the next president.
Things went sour for Bill quickly, and his party was crushed in the 1994 midterm elections. It was obvious that there would be no second term for Billy Boy, whose polling was in the toilet. Yet, in 1996, he won in a landslide that surpassed his 1992 election. Nobody has won by as large of a margin since!
Then, along came a man named Barack Obama, who fell behind John McCain in the polls in 2008 with less than two months to go before the election. Yet he somehow won a landslide that carried in crushing majorities for his party in Congress.
Much like Bill, Barack had a short honeymoon after becoming president. His party was creamed in the midterm elections, and his approval ratings almost never even sniffed 50%. Many polls said a man named Mitt Romney would defeat him in 2012. The leading pollster of them all had Mitt ahead all the way up to election day! And yet, Barack beat Mitt like a drum in almost every swing state and even won Florida, which it was believed was too Republican for him to win a second time.
Four years later, Bill’s wife Hillary ran for president, and her prospects were so certain that nobody believed she could lose to her opponent, an orange-haired clown named Bozo. She was so far ahead in the crucial state of Wisconsin that it clearly made no sense at all for her to waste precious time and money visiting that state. And yet, when the circus ended, Bozo had won, and the clowns were now running the circus.
Look, I get it, folks. You’re scared. Because Democrats are ALWAYS scared, and it’s annoying and completely not a good look, but it is what it is. But one of the reasons you’re scared is because you lack perspective—especially if you’re in your 20s and you haven’t seen 35 years of embarrassing polling mistakes or quick, crazy shifts in the electorate the way Uncle Cliston has.
Now, kiddos, I’m not going to promise you that Story Time with Uncle Cliston is going to have a happy ending. There’s no way in hell Joe Biden is losing all these states, and certainly not by the margins these ridiculous polls say he is, but it is absolutely possible that he could lose several of them and Bozo could become president again. We have to be honest with ourselves about that.
But freaking out and flailing around like unhinged lunatics every time a poll comes out doesn’t do any of us any good. The upcoming election is going to be close. It could go either way. What we need to do right now is to get ahold of ourselves, stay steady and courageous, and see this thing through.
And with any luck, we’ll all live happily ever after.
The End.