New York Times: Beside the olive display at Zabar’s, that iconic hub of lox and neurosis on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Linda Donohue was trying to talk herself down.
Surely the polls she tracked anxiously were not to be trusted, she said. Surely Donald J. Trump, the man with the garish golden tower across town, would not be allowed to reach the White House.
“We have to have more faith in the American public,” said Ms. Donohue, 61, a longtime New Yorker now living in Seattle.
A man behind her could not suppress a loud snort.
Then Cathi Anderson, who was shopping with Ms. Donahue, mentioned yet another distressing poll, this one from Ohio, which showed Mr. Trump ahead. Ms. Donohue nodded grimly.
Just in case her faith in the American electorate was misplaced, Ms. Donahue said, she had retained her Irish citizenship.
For both parties, every election can feel like the most vital of a lifetime, the one day standing between a still-proud nation and its imminent demise. Among liberals, there is an especially rich tradition of “bed-wetting,” as even some practitioners call it, at the faintest sign of shakiness from their candidate.
But as Hillary Clinton lurches toward Election Day, her supporters at times seem overwhelmed by a tsunami of unease, exacerbated by Mrs. Clinton’s bout of pneumonia and a slow-footed acknowledgment of the illness. They are confronting a question they had assumed, just a few weeks ago, they would not need to consider in a race against the most unpopular presidential nominee in modern times: Could Mrs. Clinton actually blow this?
“It’s like someone dropped ice water on the head of America,” Julie Gaines, the owner of Fishs Eddy, a home goods store in Manhattan, said of Mr. Trump’s increased odds. “Everyone sobered up. This could happen.”
The creeping dread has accelerated in recent days, reaching critical levels even by Democratic standards.
Mrs. Clinton became sick. Several polls tightened to the margin of panic, with Mr. Trump overtaking her in surveys in Ohio and Florida. And even as Democrats hoped on Friday that Mr. Trump’s latest gambit — seeking to distance himself from his long history of “birtherism” — would backfire, there is a fear that no scandal can sink him.
A cartoon in The New Yorker captured it best: A woman sits in her psychiatrist’s office, perspiring in distress. The doctor scribbles on a pad. “I’m giving you something for Hillary’s pneumonia,” the caption reads.
