The drama of this election, tick tick tick…

For those of us Democrats following the drama leading up to the elections, it’s been a time [alliteration alert!] fraught with frenzy. A few weeks ago, things looked great: Dems were guaranteed to take the House, were making a strong case for the Senate, and rising politicians like Beto O’Rourke and Andrew Gillam were exciting us with visions of “the new Obama.”

Then things started getting dicier. The Kavanaugh hearings surprised many of us; it seemed obvious that he was an odious man who had probably done bad things to women in college, but even worse was his deplorable testimony in which he came across as just another vengeful, hateful white guy in the Trump mold. Even though his Republican enablers in the Senate chose to confirm him anyway (no surprise there), I would have thought the overall hearing was a net-negative for Republicans. But instead, the opposite seems to have occurred: it stimulated the Trump base, and now Trump’s approvals are up and the Senate looks unwinnable.

But still, I have very high hopes that the House will flip. Yesterday, Nate Silver’s website, 538, reported that “every time you hit ‘refresh,’ Democrats’ prospects in the House tick up.”

I like statements like that! They reassure me (and Democrats), at a time when we need reassurance. (But when do we not?)

There is a little uncertainty about this House optimism, though. According to 538, some of the most competitive races have “little to no polling,” making predictions nearly impossible. The near-mythic “Blue Wave” still is likely, 538 predicts—but the lack of polling in key districts “is currently our biggest blind spot.”

However, let us rejoice as we can! Things are looking good. I, myself, have no particular horse in the race for a new Democratic Speaker. I have no problem with Pelosi, but if the Caucus chooses someone else, fine by me. Won’t it be wonderful to have a House counter-balance to the religious fanaticism and neo-nazi fascism that has frothed to the surface under Trump?

This election really is personal for us. Issues aside, we Democrats are appalled at the vulgarity and indecency of the man in the Oval Office. He is as nasty a piece of work as has ever occupied that hallowed place. We are constantly appalled by the things he says and does—every day, it’s like, He said whaaat? (Now it’s his war on transgendered people.) And his Republican base follows him lemming-like off the cliff.

Remember during the campaign when Trump dropped hint after hint that he had little or no interest in LGBTQ issues? I was waiting for him to go on the attack, but aside from a few token appearances at rightwing evangelical “colleges” (they’re really Christian madrassas, not centers of higher education), he kept his fat little fingers off that hot button.

That was back when he calculated that he could win the homophobic vote without being overtly homophobic because he was pandering to those people enough as it was. Now, with a close election at hand, Trump has to turn out every damn single homophobe in the country of voting age. Peel them away from their QVC screens, get them to put down the Pabst Blue Ribbon and Fentanyl long enough to stagger to the polling place and vote “R” straight down the line. How do you do that? Kick one of the letters: L, G, B, T, Q, it doesn’t matter which one, just reassure the “Christians” that you hate the queers as much as they do. That’s what motivates them. “Why, he may be a billionaire New Yorker and an adulterous, lying, cheating sonuvabitch, but he hates them fags, the way a good Christian should. So, Clyde, gas up the Camaro, clean the beer cans and donut boxes from the passenger seat and drive me down to the Court House to vote for our President’s hand-picked candidates. And bring me my MAGA hat!”

I joke, but that’s about the sum and substance of it. These homophobes remind me of the Japanese soldiers who remained holed up in caves on those God-forsaken Pacific atolls for decades after World War II ended. They refused to recognize defeat even after their country was shattered and atomized to smithereens. At what point does continued resistance morph from admirable idealism to psychotic denial of reality? In the case of the Christian homophobes, most of them still believe that the Supreme Court will repeal Obergefell v. Hodges and once again ban same sex marriage. Now, while it’s true that SCOTUS has some very nasty rightwing Catholics (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Alito, Roberts, Thomas), and there’s plenty of evidence that (a) their attitudes towards homosexuality are dictated by the Vatican and (b) they were chosen by rightwing presidents precisely because of those attitudes, still the concept of stare decisis should prevent them from overturning a law which, if ended, would throw the country into a grave, and likely violent, social crisis. As much as the Catholic Justices may privately loathe the LGBTQ community, one would hope they have enough common sense not to toss a wad of spit that big into America’s eye.

But you never know! If there’s a gigantic civil upheaval out there sometime in the near future, lots of things could trigger it—including overturning Obergefell. Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Meanwhile, if you’re a Democrat and you’re feeling queasy about Nov. 6, remember this: We’re still extremely likely to take the House. And that’s enough—for now. Then we can get on to the good stuff–like dealing with Mr. Nunes (if he happens to get re-elected) with the idea of possibly bringing criminal charges against him.