Opinion

How does the election feel around the country? 5 writers capture the vibe.

Ha ha! I’m kidding, of course. No, wait, I’m not. Floridians are wildly unexcited about this election. I know this because I have personally spoken to nearly six of the state’s 23 million residents — in professional journalism, we call this “assessing the public mood” — and in every single case, when the election came up, these residents assumed the facial expression of a person who has just opened the door to a port-a-potty on the last day of a midsummer chili festival.

This is not to say Floridians don’t care about the issues. For example, we’re deeply concerned about the border. I don’t mean the border with Mexico; I mean the border with Georgia. That’s how the New Yorkers are getting in. Tens of thousands of them move to Florida every year, lured by our abundant sunshine, our low taxes, our relaxed standards regarding the storage of highly classified government documents and our policy of permitting people to continue to legally drive long past the point where they have essentially the same neural reaction time as a zucchini.

The problem is, the New Yorkers are buying property down here, and they're very aggressive. If you go to a party and have too much to drink, you could very well wake up the next morning to discover you sold your house to a New Yorker. I myself have done this a half-dozen times, and it has to stop.

Another issue we have in Florida is bears on crack. I am not making this issue up. The Florida legislature recently passed a bill that would relax the penalties for killing bears, and one of the sponsors, Rep. Jason Shoaf (R), made the following statement (Google it if you don’t believe me): “We’re talking about the ones that are on crack, and they break your door down, and they’re standing in your living room growling and tearing your house apart. When you run into one of these crack bears, you should be able to shoot it, period.”

Period!

Of course, these are not the only issues we Floridians care about. We don’t live in a bubble down here. We’re well aware that the nation faces critical challenges, both at home and abroad, and as the presidential election approaches, we share the same concern felt by all Americans in these uncertain times, namely: What happens if some New Yorkers buy a house occupied by crack bears? In that scenario, my money would be 100 percent on the New Yorkers. But I think we can agree, as a nation, that it would be fun to find out.

Dave Barry is a novelist and a former humor columnist for the Miami Herald.

Angela Garbes: This election is as exciting as Washington’s dreary weather

In much of Washington state, winter consists of approximately six months of interminable gray and drizzle. Survival means endurance — living in perpetual dampness and managing your expectations. When the sun makes its brief, brilliant appearance in March, you mustn’t get your hopes up; it will be months before you can reliably count on sunshine and blue skies.

It seems a little basic to turn the weather of the Pacific Northwest into a metaphor for this year’s presidential election, but if the cloud cover fits …

Any buzz surrounding the state primaries, which were settled weeks ago, has mostly faded. Both President Biden and Donald Trump won handily. The prevailing sentiment of Washingtonians runs along the lines of “Meh, what does it matter, they don’t even campaign here.” Indeed, neither candidate visited Washington state ahead of its primary elections, and it’s unlikely they will spend much time campaigning here for the general.

Though Biden garnered 84 percent of the Democratic vote, 10 percent of party voters marked “uncommitted delegates” as a way of officially registering their discontent with the president’s financial and military support of the Israeli genocide of Palestinians. It was another tactic in the regular series of nonviolent protests in the past five months that have shut down Seattle’s Space Needle; clogged Interstate 5, the highway that runs through Seattle’s city center; disrupted city council meetings in Spokane; and seen high school and university students walk out of classrooms across the state.

Trump won the Republican primary easily with 76 percent, though Nikki Haley — who dropped out of the race a week before the primary — still garnered nearly 20 percent of party votes. The familiar liberal-conservative divide found across the United States corresponds to urban-rural areas of Washington. In small towns across Washington, where properties are bigger, Trump flags and banners also tend to be large. But if you look closely, many are weathered and dirty, having endured four years of elements and hanging outside. They flap in the wind, passive, with the same sort of resignation found in voters.

Biden will almost certainly win Washington in the general, but there’s no sense of pride, excitement or energy around this fact. “We’ve been reading for months how the election will come down to 10,000 votes in like six states,” a father at an elementary school pickup said. Washingtonians, like so many Americans, understand this as a rematch between two old men no one seems to particularly like. The election will come down to the same battleground states far from our corner of the country, and we’ll sit back and watch. Summer will come and go, warming our skin and spirits. But by November, we’ll have settled back into the familiar gloom.

Angela Garbes is a nonfiction author based in Seattle.

Melissa Fay Greene: Look to Atlanta’s ever-changing suburbs

Ariel Baverman, an agent for Coldwell Banker Realty, sells homes north of Atlanta to a diverse array of clients in neighborhoods that once epitomized White flight. Her territory includes counties her Jewish parents once felt uncomfortable driving through. It includes long-ago “sundown towns,” so named because Black people would find themselves in extreme peril if still in the vicinity after dark.

Real estate promotions now describe these towns — with their boutiques, coffee shops, breweries and alfresco dining — as “cute.” “You know, they’ll have the cute railroad tracks that go through downtown,” Baverman says. “You can have brunch and walk around and shop. The bookstores host children’s authors. There’s live music.”

Big houses with front porches and deep backyards are more affordable out here than their equivalents near most big cities. With nearly 328,000 transplants in 2022, Georgia ranks fifth-highest in the number of residents who lived in a different state the previous year. Thousands are unpacking in precincts that voted for Donald Trump in a landslide in 2016 and in 2020 delivered Georgia to Joe Biden. “Republicans like breweries and walkable neighborhoods, too,” says Bernard Fraga, associate professor of political science at Emory University. “But young people move more and highly educated young people move even more — they’re the ones who have the money to move around — and those cohorts are, on average, more liberal. Outsiders still see these counties as conservative strongholds, like in the 1980s. As they turn purple, some observers mistakenly conclude: ‘Older white voters must be rejecting Trump and favoring Democrats again.’ That’s not the case.”

They’re turning purple because older White voters are being swamped by newcomers. “Georgia is purple at the federal level,” Fraga continues, “and still very red at the state level, but people from East Coast and West Coast cities see Atlanta now as one of these cool destinations where they’ll be okay. Atlanta is a beacon.”

Baverman recently helped a Seattle couple buy a spacious house in Acworth, northwest of Atlanta. They worked remotely and couldn’t afford Seattle. “They literally told me that once all the other priorities checked out, they wanted a state where their votes would matter.

“I drove around Lawrenceville with an Atlanta family looking for more space and less traffic,” she continues. “‘Don’t Tread on Me’ and ‘Let’s Go Brandon!’ signs and banners were everywhere that day. The couple found the perfect house, but the wife said, ‘I don’t feel safe here.’” They ended up buying in a neighborhood where yards signs are not permitted, even though the surrounding area — Cherokee County — was super conservative. “However those people were voting,” Baverman tells me, “they kept it to themselves.”

Together, we look at BestNeighborhood.org, a site frequented by real estate agents. It offers detailed maps of political diversity, county by county, with the commentary: “Southern states are considered quite Republican, but the map below shows that variation exists everywhere.”

Cherokee County was so red, it looked burgundy, with a sprinkling of tiny blue dots. “Are those the Democrats?” I ask. “Like, three Democrats live east of Holly Springs?”

Baverman laughs. “No,” she says, “I think those are ponds.”

Melissa Fay Greene is a nonfiction author based in Atlanta.

John Grogan: My Pennsylvania community wasn’t always like this

The banner was hard to miss. Three feet tall and some 15 feet long, it stretched across the garage of a modest house a few blocks from mine in our little town. The banner featured just two words: a giant obscenity, the action verb of choice for the profane, followed by the name of the president of this country of ours. “Blank Biden.” In your face for all to see — the children on their school buses rumbling by; the young moms pushing strollers; the elderly who take this route to the bank or supermarket. And me, of course.

I am a walker, and my loop takes me past this house. “Blank Biden.” Really, neighbor? Is this what it has come to? A big “F you” to not only the president of the United States but to every member of our community? I am not easily offended, but this offended me. And it made me angry and sad. And, quite honestly, made me want to shout back, “Yeah, and blank you, too, buddy.”

My community wasn’t always like this.

I live in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, a bucolic patchwork of farm fields and forests anchored by the postindustrial steel cities of Allentown and Bethlehem. We locals like to brag that we live in the purplest region of one of the purplest states. The valley is home to a diverse blend of union workers and college students; hunters and gun enthusiasts; townies and tech workers; farmers and back-to-the-earth hippies. Our Pennsylvania Dutch roots run deep, but so do our vibrant Hispanic, Middle Eastern and African communities.

I’ve lived here for a quarter of a century and always considered my adopted home to be a place of moderate, mild-mannered folks who all got along pretty well. Conversations tended to focus on family and our tomato harvests. Then came 2016 and the ascension of Donald Trump as divider in chief and normalizer of egregious behavior. I have watched dinner parties devolve into shouting matches, friendships end and neighbors stop talking. It’s a new age of hostility and incivility. From my observation, most of the vitriol is coming from the die-hard defenders of Trump and is aimed at anyone who dares disagree. As yet another yard sign in my town put it: “Blank your feelings.”

For months, on my walks, I considered knocking on my neighbor’s door and having a respectful conversation. “Knock yourself out with your Trump signs,” I wanted to say, “but could you please cool it with the angry obscenities? Could you show a little respect?” But, of course, like all the mild-mannered among us, I avoided what I knew would be an uncomfortable confrontation.

And then one day, I walked by, and the weathered banner was gone. Could it be? Could my neighbor have finally realized there are more constructive ways to voice a political point? The answer, I regret to report, is no. Within days, a new banner was up in its place. This one proclaimed: “Biden Sucks.” Which I will take as a small victory in the decency wars. At least these words I can repeat in a family newspaper.

John Grogan is a nonfiction author and former columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Charles Yu: In Orange County, the 2024 campaign goes on spring break

Seven months out, the election is everywhere, but it comes to me largely through my phone. As the survivors of California’s jungle primaries look toward November, the waves of emails and texts — bolded and capped and full of exclamation points — have subsided. For now.

Traveling from Orange County to Los Angeles International Airport to D.C. not long ago, I did not see a single MAGA hat. No bumper stickers, either, for President Biden or Donald Trump. I did not overhear one conversation about the election in the security line, the boarding line, on the plane, in the hotel, in the hotel gym, in a restaurant. In the airport shuttle, the driver was listening to show tunes.

Friends, wanting to stay friends, have learned the lessons of 2016 and 2020. We talk about it behind closed doors, with spouses and children. Or we just talk less about it because we already discussed it. And what good did it do? Did anything any of us said actually change anyone’s mind? It’s hard to continue a conversation when the starting point is: “I just don’t really like either of them.” Eight years ago, I was looking to argue. Four years ago, I was watching the news at home. This year, I’m staying mostly quiet. Because what do I know? About anything? Am I so sure I’m right?

Everyone’s shouting online and on television. As Irvine (and the rest of this formerly solid red county) continues its shift from purple to blue, the talk is of local races, not national, and the chatter is about Shohei Ohtani, or college admissions, or the rain.

At the National Archives, my family and I shuffled through security, climbed the stairs to the rotunda, waited in line to see the founding documents. It was the longest line we encountered. The atmosphere was electric. The crowd was comprised almost entirely of student groups and families. Museum staff directed us: You all are forming lines. Why?

There is no line. Just human nature. It’s funny and true, but I can’t figure out which way it cuts. Are we sheep? Or just self-organizing? Don’t be shy, they tell us. Get in there, get a good look and move on so the next person can see.

When it was our turn, we found ourselves being crowded out by an eager family. The dad kept pushing through, taking and retaking photos. For his personal collection? For posterity? His daughter recited portions of the text from memory. Others waited patiently while these folks got what they needed from this experience. And I was momentarily irritated by their lack of awareness until I realized: This is what exclamation points look like in real life. These people are just really excited about the Constitution.

Charles Yu is a novelist and screenwriter based in Irvine, Calif.