Are these people this neurotic or are they affected by the rhetoric? Most of them admit they are turning to alcohol and drugs to ease their anxieties. Here are a few examples.
With little more than a week to go in what could be the closest presidential election in American history, the nation is on edge.
“I’m honestly legit kind of terrified,” said Rebekah Williams, a 46-year-old Atlanta resident wearing a T-shirt that read “pro science, pro choice, pro wrestling.” The thought of trying to get through the next couple of weeks until the election had her on edge, not to mention what might happen afterward. To get through it, she was counting on “a lot of marijuana.”
“I can remember elections where it felt like things would be OK regardless of the outcome,” Phillip Appiah, a 50-year-old contractor from Stone Mountain, said as he waited in line for a food truck on the stadium turf. “That feeling is absent this time.”
“I don’t have emotions anymore. I can’t let politics make me emotional,” said Lauren Groh-Wargo, a Georgia Democratic strategist who runs the Fair Fight Action voter-mobilization group founded by former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. “These races are so close, you just have to do what you can and focus on what you can control.”
A Democratic lobbyist in Washington put it more succinctly: “There are not enough gummies I can take to soothe the angst!”
(Especially since the gummies he was taking were laced with marijuana.)
Maria Selva, a 52-year-old Realtor who voted for Harris, said she worried the U.S. was taking democracy for granted the way she had seen people do in Venezuela, where she spent part of her childhood. “Most people think, it’s OK, after this election you have a chance again in four years. I truly doubt if Trump wins that will happen,” she said. “It’s not just the presidency in question—the future of the country really is.” Her husband, Luis Blanco, said his plan to get through the “nerve-racking” next two weeks was “a lot of Scotch.”
For many anxious voters, what comes next is simultaneously too awful to fully consider and can’t come soon enough. At Harris’s rally in Clarkston, the sun began to set as the crowd awaited former President Barack Obama, who would warn them, “Just because [Trump] acts goofy does not mean his presidency wouldn’t be dangerous.”
Nathan Mullin, a 50-year-old salesman from Stonecrest, said “Usually elections are about, you know, who has the best tax policy, or who’s going to help the poor,” he said. “Now it’s about something completely different.”
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