The Best Day of Any Election Year

My first big mistake was made when, in a moment of weakness, I consented to learn the game. ~ Robert Benchley on bridge, but it applies to politics

The best day of any election is the Monday prior to the final vote. There's not enough time for any last minute smear to stick. All the campaigns, if their consultants budgeted properly, have run out of money and are now wallowing in debt, having spent it all on those same consultants. The pollsters have given up annoying people at dinner to organize their ambush teams for tomorrow's annoying exit polls. Sure, there will be an ungodly rash of robocalls this evening but turning off the phone solves that problem.

Tomorrow comes the patriotic excitement of voting.  Followed later by the banal news coverage as all the networks race to be the first to call the election based on the results from two precincts in Hinckley, Ohio. Wolf Blitzer will punish viewers with some cloyish new graphic display. Chuck Todd will draw all over his video monitor trying to ape the spontaneity of  Tim Russert's eraser boards of 2000.

Wednesday will bring the evidence - some real, some faked - of vote fraud, vote caging, vote suppression, and voter intimidation. Recounts will be demanded. Recounts will be opposed as unnecessary expenses. In the coming days provisional and absentee ballots will be counted and not counted, lost and discovered. Reasonable people will suggest kicking Florida out of the Union.

Then come the lawyers followed shortly thereafter by the judges. If we are very unlucky, the Supreme Court will ignore the explicit language of the Constitution and choose our next president. Again.

Today is the beautiful calm between the violence of the election season and the chaos of the post-election fight.