Maybe it’s nostalgia, but I miss the old election nights, the ones we had before the stakes got so horribly high. No one warned of “existential consequences” or called trauma counselors into the office.

The end of a campaign was once something to celebrate, a shining marker of our participatory traditions – a jubilee of civic duty, a peaceful transfer of power. Now, the once-routine exercise of certifying electoral votes has been officially designated a “special national security event.”

Ideally, this ordeal won’t last too long and we’ll have something clearer soon. Ideally, no one will be hurt or killed this time. I wish I could reassure you that our democracy will survive, no matter what.

Elaine Godfrey: The real electoral risk comes later

Alas, I can only say this: elections matter. And this one Really imported. I guess you’re with me on this, and you’re not one of those “undecided” people on cable news groups “still waiting to hear more details” from Kamala Harris or whatever. But if you’re reading this, I suspect you’ll be watching tomorrow with deep interest. And you will not be calm.

Why not at least try? Maybe try something akin to “grief minimization,” a term I came across recently and that pops up in my brain a lot. Minimizing grief is a choice — or at least a worthy goal, especially this week.

I have spent the last few days gathering wisdom. I went back and revisited some of the comfort I found helpful after the 2016 earthquake. “It’s not the apocalypse” Then-President Barack Obama said in a post-election interview with David Remnick of THE New Yorkers. “I don’t believe in the apocalypse, until the apocalypse comes. I think nothing is the end of the world until the end of the world. Certainly, Donald Trump’s presidency has been bad, perhaps worse than feared. But I understood Obama’s point that prolonged mourning would be counterproductive, a kind of self-inflicted paralysis.

Likewise, preventive anxiety produces nothing good. My friend Amanda Ripley wrote In The Washington Post last week, about a study in which women waiting to learn the results of a breast biopsy had levels of stress hormones in their saliva similar to those of women who had already learned they had breast ‘a cancer. “In experiments, people who believed they had a 50 to 50 chance of receiving a painful electric shock became much more agitated than those who believed they had a 100 percent chance,” Ripley wrote. “Anticipating possible pain is worse than the anticipation of some pain.

In other words, don’t wallow in the possibility or inevitability of a worst-case scenario. Instead, look for distractions. Maybe edibles too.

Purchase illumination in advance, which you can apply during peak hours. To that end, I spent a few days last week reaching out to some of my favorite campaign gurus. I wasn’t looking for information about the election itself. Instead, my goal was to put together a last-minute toolkit of coping mechanisms and best practices for mental health.

Where possible, we should try to become sensible consumers of the torrent of treacherous and triggering information in which we will soon drown. Note the metaphor here, because it follows important advice: be careful where you swim. Avoid unnecessary waves and currents. This includes most of the information you get on television before a critical mass of feedback is processed, not to mention most of the wild opinions, conjectures and “partial data” you get from the various walls of noise of broadcast (disguised as cards). before 9 or 10 a.m.

“It’s extremely important to consume information on your own terms,” CNN’s Paul Begala, a longtime Democratic consultant, told me. As Election Day approaches, Begala tries to turn off any news notifications on her phone that might increase her tension levels. “You can’t let anyone use your amygdala as a weapon against you,” Begala said, referring to the area of ​​the brain that helps regulate emotions such as fear. Text bulletins, algorithms, and (God knows) social media are designed to prey on our amygdala. But resist. You don’t need this information right now, much less unnecessary predictions or speculation. It’s just empty calorie pre-game. Trust me, you will know who won and who lost. The news will find you.

In the meantime, be humble and surrender to the unknown. Once again, no one knows who will win. I’m pretty sure it will be Donald Trump or Kamala Harris (you’re welcome). Yet people still have a primal need for certainty, even when it is obvious that nothing is possible. They are convinced that there is a special class of TV decoders that possess secret knowledge otherwise inaccessible to the uninitiated. They want to believe that these so-called super experts are keeping the “big secret” from themselves and their various co-conspirators.

“A woman from LaGuardia came up to me and said, ‘Who’s going to win?’ “, James Carville, who will yap on Election Night with Brian Williams on Amazon Prime, told me. “And the guy who was with her said, ‘Oh, he knows who’s going to win.’ He just doesn’t tell you.

Carville often understands this. “People think people like us have all the answers,” he said. Here’s a not-so-big secret: that’s not the case.

I watched a lot of live sports on TV. I did this largely because I wanted to see what was happening in real time. Today, thanks to many screens that didn’t exist 30 years ago, I can be sure to learn exactly what happened and see what it looked like and felt like so many times. whenever I want. I sit through way more 10-minute YouTube synopses of NFL games than I do full three-hour assignments (with the endless penalty flags, referee meetings, commercials, injury timeouts, official reviews, etc.). This saves me a lot of time and a roller coaster ride.

I’m always hesitant to make sports analogies, especially with events as terrifying in scale as this election. If we exclude those who have money for a game, the sport will have very little real impact on most people who choose to invest emotionally in it.

Either way, sporting events are much better suited to television than election coverage. When you watch a match live, the result unfolds chronologically in front of you. This is not possible for an event as large and diffuse as election night, where partial data, second-hand projections, and “unconfirmed reports” arrive randomly from all over the country. Chris Hayes had a good explanation about this on MSNBC: “When you think about election night,” he said, “it’s like hearing the results of an entire basketball game, basket by basket, but be read completely out of order, after the match. already finished. »

You should really consider skipping most of these items. Take a walk. Leave your phone at home. Avoid any news, stimuli, or people that may increase your blood pressure. That almost certainly includes Trump, who will likely declare an extremely premature (and possibly erroneous) victory, regardless of what the early results say. Yes, it will be deeply irresponsible, but that should surprise no one. And any energy you spend reacting will only sap your reserves for later, when you need them.

David A. Graham: How come it’s so tight?

I’ve seen overwhelming projections for both sides, and compelling arguments for why pollsters might be underestimating support for both candidates. But a very close race remains the most likely scenario. Pace yourself and be realistic. Breathe, meditate, pray, seek simple pleasures, and be kind. It’s okay to be afraid of what might happen. Appropriate, even.

Rest assured, you will have a large community of fellow lockers to commiserate with. Take comfort in them. Contact them and say you love them.

“This is by far the highest-stakes election of my life that I haven’t been personally involved in,” Mac Stipanovich, a longtime Republican Party operative and lobbyist in Florida, told me. Stipanovich, a Never Trump Republican, says he’s as nervous about tomorrow “as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”

Stipanovitch would not speculate on the outcome of the election. But I got the gist: Anxiety is a natural side effect of this exercise, and perhaps even a privilege of a democracy – if we can keep it.