Hey y’all,
It’s Election Day, the day we’ve all been waiting for, or dreading, for months now.
I hope everyone who can already has or will get out to vote. I like voting on Election Day, so I’m planning to go around 2 or 3 this afternoon.
I’ll admit that I don’t really have a trading message today. The markets are kind of flat and I think everyone is looking ahead to tonight and the outcome of this Presidential Election.
So pardon me as I get on my soapbox again — you can skip this issue if you’re not in the mood, but I wanted to encourage everybody today because I think we’re really feeling the strain of this election more than most.
It really is such a privilege to be able to live in this great country and make our voices heard — a privilege we too often take for granted.
So, whoever you’re voting for out there, whatever issue or candidate motivates you to get out and cast your ballot, I hope that you get out and do it!
We have the incredible fortune to live in the greatest country in the world. Whether your preferred candidate wins or loses, that will still be the case tomorrow.
Both sides are making the case that this is the “most important election of all time,” with the more extreme voices on both sides threatening that this will be the last election if their candidate doesn’t win.
I don’t think that’s true. To be honest, our nation has faced a lot stiffer challenges than Donald Trump and/or Kamala Harris.
President Lincoln touched on this in his Gettysburg Address. He said ours was a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
And then he explained that the Civil War was “testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”
Because it was never a guarantee that our country would endure!
In 1790, George Washington said “The establishment of our new Government seemed to be the last great experiment for promoting human happiness.”
An experiment.
That’s what America has always been.
That’s what it remains today.
Twitter and social media amplify our anxieties. They make it seem like the stakes in this election are all or nothing. They’re not.
The institutions are strong. The separation of powers is intentional. The checks and balances endure.
In the past, America has had fraught elections…
In 1824, Andrew Jackson won the plurality of popular AND electoral college votes, before backroom wheeling and dealing led to the inauguration of John Quincy Adams. Imagine the conspiracy theories that would have spread on X if that happened today.
In 1860, President Lincoln’s election led to the immediate secession of South Carolina and the inevitable Civil War that followed. The war was long and costly, but the “experiment” survived and endured.
1876 was a real fight: Hayes vs. Tilden, with Tilden winning 250,000 more popular votes and 19 more electoral votes. States in the newly reformed union accused each other of fraud and fought over the results. Congress established a 15-member commission of senators, congressmen, and Supreme Court Justices to decide the election — and gave all 20 outstanding EC votes to Hayes to give him the election. The South planned to filibuster and block the vote counting (sounds familiar) until it was settled in a backroom deal in D.C. and Hayes became President.
More recently, in 1968, the Democratic Convention was a train wreck. LBJ announced he would not seek reelection, leaving an open field of Democratic contenders in his wake. One (Robert F. Kennedy, Sr.) was assassinated after taking an early lead. The two serious contenders that remained battled for the approval of the party in Chicago as violent anti-war protests raged outside the hotel where the convention was held. Hubert H. Humphrey won the nomination but would go on to lose to Richard Nixon, whom the country had rejected just a few years prior.
If social media had existed during any of these elections, the noise would have been deafening. And there would doubtlessly have been people saying that America couldn’t survive Rutherford B. Hayes, John Quincy Adams, or Hubert H. Humphrey.
But it survived them all. And it’ll continue to survive after today, no matter who wins.
My mom’s a worrier. She’s putting far too much of her emotional energy into this election. And I just have to keep reminding her that whether it goes the way she wants it to or not, she will still wake up tomorrow in the same bed, in the same house, and her life will change not at all.
That’s true for all of us.
So go out and vote! But don’t vote like your life depends on it because it doesn’t. Vote with your conscience. Think hard about your decisions. But remember that you live in the greatest country in the world, and it’s been through a lot worse.
It’s not the outcome of today’s election that matters as much as how we all respond to it tomorrow, and going forward after that. Whether we can continue to carry forth the values of liberty and the belief that all men and women are created equal. Whether we can accept a free and fair election and abide by the results. Whether we can pray for our leaders, even if we don’t like our leaders, and hope that they lead with wisdom and courage.
If we can do all that, America will be fine. And so will we!
And, don’t forget: for the traders out there, the real fun starts tomorrow when the White House Wave kicks off!
To your prosperity,
— Stephen Ground
Editor in Chief, ProsperityPub
P.S. Tomorrow, Nate is hosting a Publisher’s Roundtable to help you navigate the post-election Fallout. Make sure your seat is saved here. I’m planning to be there!
