Jitters All Around
With Two Weeks to Go and Lots At Stake, Voter Anxiety Is Spiking

By DeNeen L. Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 20, 2008; C01

In the wee hours of the morning, she sits in a darkened room, watching a repeat of the political news she watched just hours before but listening this time for things unsaid, for any cues that would calm her down, make her a little less anxious about the presidential campaign.

She listens closely as journalists interview each other, then interview pundits who spin until she gets dizzy. The polls widen, but polls have been wrong before.

Before she flips out, she flips the channel.

Rachel Ament, 24, sinks into a velvet sofa at a Glover Park coffee shop, where she seeks like-minded company. It is no fun to swim alone in a pool of political anxiety.

"I was raised comfortable. Middle class. Now I'm a freelance writer without health insurance," says Ament, who is out of a job at the moment and operating on two hours of sleep. "I need health insurance." She thinks she has a better shot at affordable health insurance if Barack Obama wins. Her pale face shows lines of worry like a furled flag.

For the first time in her experience, she is nervous about the polls, the speeches, the debates. "I've never been so wrapped up in politics," she says. "I think this campaign has roused interest in the most apolitical people. . . . This may be the first election that will be extremely hard to get over" if her candidate doesn't win.

Brittany Tressler will have a hard time getting over it if he does.

Tressler, too, is 24, and she works for the Republican Party in Montgomery County, Pa. She can't understand why her friends and family aren't as scared of Obama's inexperience as she is or as impressed by John McCain's long service to his country, so this political season has been hard on her personal relationships. She avoids the subject altogether with her boyfriend's parents. "My mother is an Obama supporter," she says. "At first, I took it personally. I said, 'I work day in and day out for the Republican Party, and here you are supporting Obama!' "

She is experiencing the campaign "kind of like a tennis match: "McCain does something, then Obama does something. This is my first presidential election I've been involved in. It's nerve-racking."

As the fight descends into finality, people on both sides are wrestling with acute political anxiety, tied up in knots over the outcome of a contest that feels more intense, more personal than in previous years. Emotions are running even higher than they did during the dramatic court fight and recount that decided the 2000 election -- and not just because the country is about to have either its first African American president or its first female vice president.

Voters are worried about the economy. The war in Iraq. The resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. A diminished view of the United States in the world. Climate change and shrinking ice caps. Loss of jobs. Banks going broke. The Dow dropping 778 points in a single day. These are issues they live with, feel in their gut.

Even the pros are scared. Is it any wonder that ordinary people are finding it hard to cope?

"There is a sense of an upside-down universe," says Stephen Stein, a psychologist with a private practice in Northwest Washington. "The party in power claims to be the party of change -- and denies any responsibility or culpability for the reality of the last eight years. It is almost like a Kafkaesque universe . . . a twilight zone. "

"I'm seeing it among people who are pretty functional: elevated levels of anxiety and depression and a general concern about the direction of the country," Stein says. "There is a lot at stake. It is real to everybody."

In recent weeks, the temperature of the campaign has spiked. McCain supporters have characterized Obama as dangerous; Obama's have called McCain an angry old man. Crowds have called for Obama's head. Crowds have booed McCain when he tried to soften the most personal attacks on Obama. In their final debate, McCain spent most of his time throwing punches at Obama, who deflected them mostly by ignoring them. Polls showed that their performances did little to ease voters' anxieties -- about their own candidate's chances or the other guy's flaws.

Lyle Beefelt's anxiety is professional as well as personal. Beefelt, chairman of the Prince William County Republican Committee, is working to hold Virginia for his party. "I was talking with the committee a week ago," he recalls. "I said, 'None of us wants to be on a committee where Virginia goes Democrat for the first time in 44 years. We don't want that to happen under our watch.' "

So his troops are working day and night. "We are in a bench-clearing brawl with the other side still swinging," he says. "In other elections, they [the Democrats] would have pulled out of Virginia by now. It's like the boxer that finds himself in the 12th round when he's knocked out the opponent every time in the eighth round. It motivates and turns the emotions up a notch. It makes everybody more worried, more edgy."

Beefelt says the McCain partisans he meets "worry about what will happen to national security in an Obama administration. They worry about what will happen to the economy. People walk into the headquarters and say they are terrified. They don't walk in pale with fear, but they think he will nationalize health care, raise taxes and re-regulate broad swaths of the economy. They think that will result in less money for their families and a worse economy in general. They feel he will not stand up for America."

There is something about the drumbeat of the 24-hour news cycle that heightens the anxiety. Something about the constant thump of dire headlines warning that this is the worst financial crisis since the Depression. Something about images of people lining up at banks to withdraw money. Something about once golden, seemingly untouchable Wall Street firms going broke. Something about the number of foreclosures, the rising number of people without jobs, the sinking balances in their retirement accounts.

Anne Collins, a psychologist with a private practice in Washington, says people are working themselves up by watching too much political television. "People are checking Internet sites they normally wouldn't bother with," Collins says. "People are really agitated about this and wasting a lot of time watching the same thing over and over."

Collins has been telling clients to take a break from the news -- to free themselves and put their angst to good use. "You can send an e-mail, or, if you are feeling strongly about an issue, there is a way to express support," Collins says. "You can work on a campaign and volunteer. When you feel powerless, doing something is an important way of moving through that. Disengage from the stimuli. Do something productive with those thoughts."

Carla Cohen, co-owner of Politics and Prose bookstore in Northwest, says her husband has reached the do-something stage -- "My husband said, 'I'm going out to canvass. It's [not good] to sit around and read e-mails that say how scared you are' " -- but she hasn't. She rushes home each evening to catch the news. Afterward, she sleeps badly.

"All I want to do is watch television," she says. "Concentrating is hard. We're all worried. I told my staff, I hope you're all registered. This is the most important election of my lifetime. It will determine whether our country will go back on track as a major player in the world and whether the sense of fairness will be restored."

Cohen says the craziness of the campaign reminds her of a Shakespearean drama within a drama, with whispering advisers, damsels in distress, the fate of a kingdom sacrificed for political ambitions.

"First there was the young prince and the queen," she says, referring to Obama and Hillary Clinton. "Now there is the young prince and the old king," meaning McCain. "There is even more contrast between candidates. McCain is stiff. There are mobility problems from his injuries. This is his chance. You feel as though he is willing to do anything it takes for this chance. You have Obama, so young and handsome, and it seems like everything comes easy. But people resent that."

Cohen leans back in her chair. "How does it end? Does it end with the prince? There is no vote in a Shakespearean play."