Persuasion time for election over

Praise Jesus. It will be over on Tuesday. ( Or Wednesday. Or Thursday. Or next week.)

Whatever the outcome of Tuesday’s presidential election, it’s the beginning of a new era in American history. If President Trump is re- elected, it will be double- down time on the policies — or lack thereof — of the last four years.

If Joe Biden wins, the brakes will squeal and the chassis will shudder as we stop and change direction.

Whichever, the time for trying to persuade is long past. Minds are settled.

But … I’ll say this in closing: The litany of offenses by this president is long and malodorous.

Near the top, for me, was his failure to decisively, categorically denounce the Beavis and Butt- Head gang that plotted to kidnap and “try” the governor of one of these United States. If that did not call for a primetime television address to the nation and an appeal to reason, I don’t know what might have.

So that’s it on the persuasion front.

The focus now has to be on the next four years.

One of these guys is going to be president. And we — all of us — are going to have to live with it.

Though little has been done in Washington to set a civil tone, we can do it ourselves.

There’s been an increasing tendency on both sides of the political divide to demonize the opposition, to tar them with the acts of the fringe on both sides.

In other words, Democrats, including Joe Biden, favor lawlessness, looting, shooting hard- earned taxpayer money out of a cannon, degradation of suburban life in favor of paving over paradise and building not just a parking lot, but high- rise, low- income public housing designed to facilitate mayhem and drug dealing.

Republicans, on the other hand, are wealthy white supremacists who care only for their retirement portfolios.

I need look no further than our circle of friends to see the fallacy.

That circle includes strong supporters of the president. Some of these friends go way back.

We have shared vacations, drinks, meals, child care, you name it.

I know they are God- fearing, family- oriented people. They are good people. ( There were not “good people on both sides,” by the way, in Charlottesville.)

And I know that they know Mrs. Daly and I are not closet looter- supporters or Antifa- bynight socialists.

We don’t discuss politics. And that’s fine. Should a conversation even veer in that direction, one of us diverts it.

I don’t like Donald Trump.

Others do. I wasn’t enamored with George W. Bush. But more people thought he should be president. I lived with it. Yet another example of the learning experience I’ve had hundreds of times: People don’t always agree with me.

The man elected in the popular vote Tuesday, or the winner in the Electoral College, or, heaven forfend, picked by the U. S. Supreme Court, is president for the next four years.

Hard as it may be, we’re going to have to live with it. And even if some politicians feel they’re better off dividing us into competing camps, we should know we’re better off pulling together.

And let me add a word of praise here for the employers who are giving their employees paid time off to vote. That’s a good thing. Election Day should be a paid holiday.

And politicians should be making the process of voting one that is convenient. It certainly is suspicious when one party puts enormous effort into figuring out how to keep people from voting.

So, vote. The late congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis got his head split open on the Pettus Bridge trying to secure the right of Black Americans to vote. Voting is important and a privilege that, so far, has separated America from other countries.