Rx for Election Anxiety Disorder

Is this YOU?

You’re a Democrat. You call yourself a liberal, and you’re not
ashamed.

All through the spring and summer, you felt hopeful. It was an
emotion you’d lost contact with over the last eight years, and it was
fantastic to feel it again. Your man was doing well. He was going to
win the election in a walk.

The country wanted change. Your man was change. Democrats were
change. Change would triumph. You believed.

Deeply.

But now you’re increasingly feeling anxious. You can’t concentrate.
You can’t manage anything close to the euphoria of January and
February, nor can you summon the optimism of June, July, and August.
Ever since the Republican National Convention, ever since Sarah Palin,
a gnawing dread has been lying just below the surface of your every
interaction. Sometimes you can’t keep it bottled up. Sometimes you
snap—at the screen, at your friends, at your family.

What you feel these days is that it’s happening all over again: the
lies from the right, the successful pandering to the evangelical
Christians, the sinking poll numbers for the Democratic ticket.

The man—your man—who should obviously be winning, now
seems like he could very well lose.

You wonder if you’re suffering from some sort of post-traumatic
stress disorder. You find yourself thinking ominously of how they stole
the election from Al Gore in 2000. You have flashbacks to that
heartbreaking, alienating moment in 2004 when you realized John Kerry
was going to lose, too. You can’t stop worrying. But you also can’t
stop following the events that are terrifying you. Your life is an
endless circle: read the news, worry, talk to friends who are worried,
get even more worried because they are worried, repeat.

If this is you, help is available. It’s time for a pharmaceutical
intervention.

Thankfully, new mood-stabilizing drugs have been developed
for this particular condition, Election Anxiety Disorder. Read through
the following offerings, and then ask your doctor which one is right for
you.

PALIUM

Recommended dosage: 5 mg per day until November 4, except for
October 2, the day of the vice-presidential debate—on that day,
the recommended dosage is 50 mg. Take with alcohol as necessary.

Effects: Induces a Valium-like calm with respect to all things Sarah
Palin and predisposes the mind to recall that she has only been on the
national stage a few minutes and yet already has a pattern of political
falsehoods, a knocked-up daughter pressed into a shotgun relationship,
a cadre of small-town enemies crawling out of her closet, and an
abuse-of-power investigation in her home state that’s being run,
helpfully, by a Democrat. While on Palinium, you will be soothed by
repeated waves of placidity and feel certain that all of these Palin
vulnerabilities will somehow lead to a Republican-ticket implosion
within the next few weeks.

Possible side effects: Delayed ejaculation, loss of lingering
resentment toward Hillary Clinton, desire to join the Alaskan
Independence Party.

VIRGINIACODONE

Recommended dosage: One tablet taken an hour before looking at any
map with red and blue shading.

Effects: Triggers receptors in the brain that have, in the past,
received the news that Barack Obama really could win Virginia and its
13 electoral votes. Causes pleasing sensation of belief that this will,
in fact, happen—that Virginia, which has been going to Republican
presidential candidates by slimmer and slimmer margins over the last
five election cycles, will finally tip into the Democratic column this
year, and that leaked Virginia exit polls on November 4 will trigger a
huge Obama landslide as Republicans across the nation sit on their
hands in despair and Democrats everywhere rush to amplify the pro-Obama
results.

Possible side effects: Obsession with Virginia governor Tim Kaine’s
winning voter coalition in 2005 and/or the minutiae of Virginia senator
Jim Webb’s narrow victory in 2006. May also cause drowsiness, induce
drawl.

AFRODIAZEPINE

Recommended dosage: 15 mg daily, half dosage if some of your best
friends are black. Consult with your physician before taking
Afrodiazepine if you are black.

Effects: Also known as the “Black people will save us!” pill,
Afrodiazepine focuses the mind on the record-shattering
African-American turnout that helped Barack Obama win during the
Democratic primaries. This drug fosters deep belief in the
turnout-altering nature of Obama’s historic candidacy and helps with
absorption of related numbers and percentages, such as the fact that
Ohio, which Kerry narrowly lost to Bush in 2004, could easily go for
Obama this time around if he wins 95 percent of the state’s black vote
(a not unlikely scenario based on Obama’s performance in the Democratic
primaries, when his take of African-American voters was well above 90
percent in several states).

Possible side effects: Tourette’s-like shouting of “Black people
will save us!” at inappropriate moments, awkward attempts to acquire
black friends.

CELLEXA

Recommended dosage: Four pills once a week or as needed depending on
friends’ moods and tracking-poll consumption.

Effects: Encourages the following response to any apocalyptic
discussion of negative poll numbers: “Yeah, but pollsters can’t reach
people who have only cell phones. And most young voters have only cell
phones, not land lines, and young people as a group are overwhelmingly
in favor of Barack Obama, and therefore these new poll numbers probably
aren’t as bad as they seem… Okaybye… Text you later.”

Possible side effects: Cancerous brain tumors.

JEWBUTRIN

Recommended dosage: Eighteen pills (a lucky number in Jewish lore),
or any multiple of 18 pills, weekly. Do not take with milk and
meat.

Effects: Stimulates the profound sense that elderly Jewish voters,
particularly in Florida, have long since gotten over all those e-mails
about Barack Obama being a Muslim and are now spending all of their
time—between canasta and mah-jongg games—forwarding e-mails that talk about how Sarah Palin’s pastor is tight with the
founder of Jews for Jesus, how Palin was in church the day this Jews
for Jesus putz came as a guest speaker and said that terrorist attacks
in Israel were God’s punishment for Jews rejecting Christianity, how on
top of all this Palin is an evangelical Christian, and how Jews are
generally creeped out by evangelical Christians, what with their
tendency to fawn over the Jews because they supposedly can help bring
about the rapture (at which point the Jews, their utility over with,
will be left behind and suffer eternal damnation).

Possible side effects: Appearance of speaking in
tongues—although this is usually only Yiddish, which is
harmless.

REGISTRITHIUM

Recommended dosage: As often as needed to combat feelings of vertigo
and despair.

Effects: Erases skepticism about Barack Obama’s chances by promoting
growth of the specific neurons and synapses connected with absorbing
news reports with headlines such as “Democrats Post Huge Gains in Voter
Registration.” Helps patient to remember that hundreds of thousands of
new Democrats registered to vote during the epic primary battle between
Hillary Clinton and Obama, and that overall, Democrats have added two
million new liberal voters to the rolls in 28 states since 2006 (while,
during the same period, Republicans have lost nearly 350,000 voters in
those same states).

Possible side effects: Vulnerability to belief that it might be okay
for individual taking this medication not to vote.

POLLZAC

Recommended dosage: One pill orally in moments of extreme
poll-related agitation. Also available in suppository form.

Effects: Completely erases all short- and long-term memories of any
percentages, pie charts, line graphs, and/or margins of error. Also
inhibits reabsorption of any such information.

Possible side effects: Disorientation, lack of balance, loss of
motor control, and intermittent belief that Ralph Nader is likely to
win. Not to be used while operating heavy machinery or by Bob
Barr.

BRADLEY EFFEXOR

Recommended dosage: Twice daily in last two weeks of October and
three times daily in first week of November. As needed until then.

Effects: Much like MDMA, this drug floods the brain with
serotonin, producing a sensation that the world is full of love, that
this love resides within all of us, that it is present now, that the
patient can feel it (and is perhaps aroused by it), and that therefore
no one would ever tell a pollster that he or she is voting for a black
man and then go into a voting booth and, out of coldhearted racism and
weasely cowardice, vote for the old white guy.

Possible side effects: Nocturnal emissions stemming from dreams
about intercourse with Barack Obama.

JOELOFT

Recommended dosage: Dissolve in Bud Light or Johnny Walker and drink
mixture rapidly before watching any speech by Joe Biden.

Effects: Patient will come to believe that Joe Biden is not only a
working-class hero and a good Catholic, but also the best good-ol’-boy
campaigner since Bill Clinton. Patient will further come to believe
that this will help Barack Obama tremendously among the white,
working-class voters and Catholic voters who don’t tend to like Obama
much. As a result, patient will see Pennsylvania as being firmly in
Obama’s grasp and soon thereafter should cease having any
Pennsylvania-related panic attacks.

Possible side effects: Strange attraction to old white men with hair
plugs. In a small percentage of patients Joeloft has induced fond
thoughts of Joe Lieberman. If this happens, patient should go
immediately to nearest emergency room to have stomach pumped.

ELECTRO-COLLEGE SHOCK THERAPY

Recommended dosage: For use only in extremely persistent cases of
acute election-related anxiety, to be administered only by trained
professionals.

Effects: Via electric current through brain and shouted commands
audible to patient during treatment, recipient of Electro-College Shock
Therapy learns, once and for all, that nothing matters except for the
Electoral College vote totals—not the popular vote, not the
national polls, nothing, nothing, nothing but the Electoral College
vote totals. Patient also is implanted with the indelible memory that
Barack Obama has led John McCain in projected Electoral College vote
totals for the entire race so far.

Possible side effects: Incapacitating obsession with polling data
from states such as Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Michigan, Iowa, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, and others.

EMMIGRATOL

Recommended dosage: Three pills before any meals with liberals prone
to declaring intentions to move to Canada.

Effects: Adjusts the human “fight or flight” impulse so that the
flight impulse is blocked and fight impulse heightened. Also makes
notions of visa applications, passports, and emigration papers
incomprehensible.

Possible side effects: Loneliness if/when John McCain wins.

WEST VIAGRA

Recommended dosage: 16 mg at first sign of despair over chances of
Democrat winning White House.

Effects: Strong confidence in the idea that demographic changes in
the Mountain West and a startling increase in elected Democrats in the
region over the last 10 years mean that Barack Obama will win
Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada—and maybe even Montana and
Arizona, too—thus triggering a landslide Obama victory that will
make even Ronald Reagan’s corpse jealous.

Possible side effects: Impulse to wear Carhartt jackets and large
belt buckles, attraction to people who look like Jon Tester.

INTERNETSAPRO

Recommended dosage: One pill whenever an effective John McCain
advertisement comes out.

Effects: Patient will recall, for a minimum of six hours straight,
that Barack Obama is doing something with the internet that no other
politician in American history has ever done before, and will further
recall that Obama has raked in, and will continue to rake in, a ton of
money off the internet—money that can be used to bury John McCain
in pro-Obama advertisements in the closing weeks of the campaign.
Patient will also remember that Obama has more friends on Facebook than
anyone, ever, or something like that, and that these types of
opportunities for direct communication with voters give Obama a huge
advantage and help him continue to build a campaign that is more like a
mass grassroots movement than anything else.

Possible side effects: Internet addiction, mounting credit-card debt
from repeated online donations.

DISCLAIMER: Discontinue use of any and/or all of these drugs if you
experience shortness of breath, heart palpitations, or a belief that
John Kerry actually was a great candidate. The Stranger and its
subsidiaries make no claims or guarantees about the long-term effects
of any of the products described, and disavow any prior or future
knowledge of studies linking these drugs to criminal acts, sleep
walking, or driving at high speeds in the direction of Mexico.

eli@thestranger.com