Rick HasenVerified account

1/ the level of anxiety among ordinary people is palpable. Everyone who learns what I do for a living expresses concern about the country

2/ Trump has done some unprecedented things that have torn at our democracy:

--saying election is rigged and will be marred by fraud, calling close election results into question and deligitimiziing any Democratic win

--encouraging chants of "lock her up" aimed at Clinton, suggesting it is appropriate to jail one's electoral opponent

---attacking the free press, and encouraging taunts (or worse) against members of the press covering the campaign

----tolerating, and at times appearing to encourage, anti-semitic themes, motifs and not strongly rejecting support of white supremacists

3/ Outside interference with our elections, much from Russia, involving STEALING (not leaking) internal materials to damage one candidate

4/ An unprecedented bungling of public handling of the (legitimate) Clinton email investigation by Director Comey.

Not just the earlier press conference but the later letter, which he had to send because he couldn't control his own agency's leaks.

With Comey writing a letter that was so cryptic it was interpreted by some as signaling major wrongdoing by Clinton.

letter seemed to affect momentum of race, and could determine the outcome of close Senate races and, therefore, composition of Supreme Court

With Comey's revelations compounded by his failure to disclose Trump investigations, investigations into Russian intermeddling in election

/5 And finally troubling trends in the news media:

Traditional media taking a long time to learn how to handle a candidate who regularly lies, and raises dangers to democratic institutions

The need for an evenhanded narrative that gave equal attention to the relatively small email issues compared to the slew of Trump stories:

stories of potential sexual assault, tax evasion, uncertain business interests which could put a future president in a position of weakness

while many of these stories got eventually covered, the email issue consumed so much oxygen

This was made much worse by cable news, which had incentive to build Trump up for drama/ratings, selling it as reality TV and not serious

and outlets giving oxygen to fringe pundits with unsupported and irresponsible theories, all in name of even-handedness

And rise of incendiary and false news sites such as Breitbart, which mangle the truth and more importantly provide an alternative reality

It is a reality that allows Trump's base of non-college educated whites to really believe nonsense about it all being rigged against Trump

and the nonsense by Trump, amplified by faux media, further amps up the crowds against the press and democratic institutions

Language about taking the country "back" further fuels a backward-looking move to what for many Americans were the bad-old days.

6/ So there's lots of anxiety out there. for good reason. And I hope that the country can begin to heal Nov. 9. But I'm anxious too <end>