(NewsNation) — We won’t be able to make projections on who will win any races until Tuesday night, but we can confidently project that regardless of what happens, the sun will rise in the east the next day.
That’s Wednesday, if you’re keeping track, and America will be better for it.
Despite warnings to the contrary by President Joe Biden, democracy will continue. The republic and the experiment started nearly 250 years ago will endure. Mr. Biden and his old boss, former President Barrack Obama, were right when saying some version of “we can’t take America for granted,” but we also have to give it a lot of credit.
Tomorrow and the ensuing days might be messy — mail-in voting and lines are messy. People in voting lines won’t talk to each other any more. Voting machines will screw up. Some judge will order the polls to stay open a few hours later.
Of course, Twitter makes all of this profoundly worse, and the internet will be awash in conspiracy theories from both sides.
Whatever happens, your crazy uncle Harry will yell at Thanksgiving that he knows a guy who knows a guy whose cousin was a poll worker that swears someone threw out 50,000 ballots.
Uncle Harry doesn’t, and it didn’t happen.
Will there be problems? Sure. Are the problems anything we suspect they will be tonight? No. You always worry about the wrong thing.
America started messy. It’s always messy. A representative democracy is a lot harder, and we should be happy about that.
It beats the alternative.
We’ve been through a lot together. Since I started in this crazy television news business, the Supreme Court decided Bush v. Gore and we all thought that would be the end of the Electoral College. Nope.
Less than a year later, 19 hijackers taught us to look outward rather than inward for threats to America.
Remember when George W. Bush vs. John Kerry was the most important election of our lives? Turns out it wasn’t.
And this isn’t the most important election of our lives. The important part is having the election.
Remember election night 2016? I do. We all knew Hillary Clinton would win. Then she didn’t, and we had President Donald Trump.
Guess what? Nobody moved to Canada. They all stayed here because we are the greatest country on Earth. We aren’t perfect, but nobody ever leaves.
The horror of Jan. 6, yes, was awful. But we got through it. The republic survived and is probably stronger because of it.
When the founding fathers met in Philadelphia during the summer of 1776 they didn’t try to create a perfect union, but a more perfect one. Every election we have, every hard thing we get through, is a testament to their genius, not their perfection.
So, whatever happens election night, the sun will come up Wednesday morning and we will be better for it.