If You Can Keep It (opinion)

It's happening: Good morning, there's an election taking place today.

The great news is that someone will lose. Or will they? Nate Silver and other pollsters are predicting the final result being shockingly close, with some odds of a tie: "After 80,000 simulations, Kamala Harris won the Electoral College in...40,012 of them, or 50.015 percent," writes Silver. "The remaining 39,988 were split between Trump (39,718) and no majority—a 269-269 tie—which practically speaking would probably be resolved for Trump in the U.S. House ."

"In 6 of the 7 key swing states, our final polling average is within 1.2 points; the only one with something resembling a clear lead is Arizona for Trump," notes Silver. "But even there, some polls show Harris leading amidst evidence of a late rebound for her with Latino voters . And Harris has closed comparatively strongly in Wisconsin and Michigan."

Nobody knows how it will shake out, and after the turbulence at the beginning of the campaign cycle that led to Harris ascending in Joe Biden's stead, the campaigns have proceeded mostly like you would have expected: policy-lite, lots of Trump bluster, plenty of Biden-admin-related revisionism, both teams clumsily attempting to figure out how to message on inflation and border. The Dem strategists seemed to have mostly recovered from the wokeness fever that gripped 2020 (and proved unsuccessful at persuading moderates) and we were all probably better for it.

The civil war memes have abounded (see here and here ) and The New Yorker published a long feature on the Americans prepping for a descent into political violence . But no matter how this election shakes out, the doomer cosplayers are probably wrong, and we will still have a country at the end of it. A stupid country, full of government-spending-born inflation and violations of our civil liberties and the theft we're supposed to politely call taxation, but a country nonetheless.

"A republic if you can keep it," said Benjamin Franklin in 1787, on the last day of the Constitutional Convention, in response to a question as to whether they'd gone for played-out monarchy or been able to negotiate something better: a republic. It's a corny thing to quote, and even to think about, but I'm leaning in, damn it. This ole country we've got here is a great thing worth keeping, and that wholly transcends who wins or loses today. This is a country where upward mobility is possible for even the poorest newcomer, where you are allowed to worship freely and devoutly, where we've adopted a certain cultural friendliness to help us manage the turbulence of pluralism. We spend each day cooperating with those who are, in many cases, quite unlike us (more so if you live in a large city), mediated by the exchange of money and goods and pleasantries. We get to start businesses, stockpile guns, homeschool our kids, all with some permissions from the state, but by and large far more freedom than almost any other country allows.

None of it is perfect, but the essentials for a good life are more easily gotten here than almost any other place. And, perhaps just as importantly, the freedom to define what a good life looks like to you is freely granted here. It's all a gift—and it's very much worth keeping.

Scenes from New York: Let's help our brethren win (or lose) some dough.

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