I'm 63. My husband's a few years older. Both he and my best friend, who's my age, talk about that frequently - all the elections we've observed and voted in, and the conventions we've watched and campaigns we've followed (and in some cases worked on), and not one of us can believe it. We're all just incredulous. Not one of us can remember it EVER being this insane. Nor can we remember blocks of voters who are this insane, either!

I've never been genuinely frightened by a presidential candidate before. There've been many I didn't like and didn't support, but no one who's actually scared me before the Trump.

Turns out I was justified.

Sometimes, considering my surroundings at the time, I felt really alone and isolated, because I thought I saw a huge hoodwinking job being pulled on America. Nobody else seemed to. I was working in news and the whole "we have to be objective" thing was going on, PLUS the fact that it seemed like everybody else was besotted by the schtick and the "awww, good ol' Uncle Dutch" shit and the Busby Berkeley carefully-orchestrated shit and the adorable harmless old avuncular smooth-talking former-actor cue-cards shit. He fooled SOOOOO many people. And because too many Americans, from all over, were just besotted over him, nobody bothered to look below the surface.

Until long afterwards, after the damage had been done and he'd left his mark. That appeal he had was almost irresistible. And it continues STILL. To this day.

I wasn't fooled, and I was proud of that. But also depressed. Because very few people around me saw reagan the way I saw him. It was like EVERYBODY fell for it. But there was one time when I got an opportunity to sample the intangible appeal he had.

Through work, I actually had a chance to throw a question to him at this private press conference held for the chain of stations where I worked. The company's Washington lobbyist was friends with all the right people and set it up for us news and public affairs people, and the general managers of all the stations, too. I'll never forget that day. I remember being one of the first to enter the room and I knew I'd better choose a strategic place to sit, up on the third riser, right on the center aisle so I'd be at his eye level and he couldn't miss me.

So out he strode from a side entrance and stepped up behind the lectern, gave a few minutes of remarks about the economy and the bullshit that was being shoveled at America about the whole tax cut/trickle-down bullshit misadventure. And then, "so now we'll open it up to questions..." and my hand shot up. Sure enough, he called on me first. I asked him one of those questions I'd WISHED the regular press corps would ask him, and never bothered to, about his bullshit Interior Secretary, James Watt, who, in the minds of most environmentalists, surely had arisen from the seventh level of Hell. I wanted to know why he continued to support this man in view of how much heat he was drawing in the public for his corporate/polluter-friendly decisions and positions. James Watt was the most controversial of reagan's many controversial Cabinet people, and nobody had ever asked reagan WHY he stood by this asshole. When Watt said in speeches, for example, that he wanted to see our public land and forests and wilderness areas "opened up to AAAALLLLLLL the people," it sounded good if you weren't paying attention. But to some of us, it was clear that when he said "all the people" he meant the lumber industry, the oil & gas industry, the strip-mining industry, and all manner of ravenous would-be commercial opportunists who by law were being kept out, and away from being able to freely exploit and ravage those juicy morsels. He was just about THE WORST POSSIBLE CHOICE IMAGINABLE to head the Department of the Interior.

And he gave me a complete bullshit answer about how he had faith in his Interior Secretary and the guy was doing a great job and blah-blah-blah. It was little more than more meaningless drivel. But, at least, it was an "answer," which nobody'd seemed that interested in trying to pursue. So at least I had my soundbite.

But I gotta tell you - standing up to ask him a question was the most fucking damn unbelievable experience I'd EVER had in my life. I felt as though I was standing up in front of an industrial vacuum cleaner, and somebody had just turned the switch on! I felt myself almost literally being sucked toward him, and I physically had to fight to stand straight and not be pulled across the room, smashing against the front face of the podium. I physically had to resist that incredible pull that I felt, and resist it HARD. When my turn was up, I damn near collapsed back into my chair, completely exhausted.

So that old bugger had this astonishing intangible appeal. But it was an utterly tangible thing.

Thanks for sharing that incredible story.

I STILL, to this day, shake my head about ronald reagan. I spent eight years in a state of total bewilderment. I kept thinking to myself "Seriously? None of you SEES this? NOBODY sees through this guy? For the Love of God, HOW is it that NOBODY sees through this guy???"

I STILL can't believe it, to this very day. Biggest snow-job in American history.

when he was President of the Screen Actor's Guild. At that time, in certain circles, he was not the engaging charismatic personality you describe.

When at dinners with his parents, RR was known to be quiet as intellectual conversation swirled around him, and they considered him not terribly bright.

The only time I was a registered Republican was for a brief period when I changed my registration so to be able to vote against him in their primary. I was that terrified of him.

As long as he had his cue cards or Nancy behind him mumbling what to say into his ear, or his many shrewd handlers who pasteurized or homogenized or otherwise processed him and scripted him and lit him well and propped him up and staged him Busby Berkeley-style and protected and insulated him, he was fine. Or he could give that eyebrow thing where one frowns down and one slants up so you get a pleasant, bemused facial expression that so befits "dear Uncle Dutch" whom we love and find simply adorable.

It was SO fake, to me. SO made-up. And it was SO infuriating to me to see how well it worked on people.

I think I spent all the Bush years, with TV muted if he came on, or just turned the channel.

2008...First time voter, voted for Obama

But this is something else...I am going to a GOTV event tomorrow, not sure what else I can do to help...

NPR STILL runs stories that present the election as if there's an actual, viable choice, and won't cover trump's obvious multiple pathologies.

... them to speak up at all

but it's the first time in my lifetime that i believe the republican will destabilize the country and would be an unmitigated catastrophe, probably for the entire world. but then gw came pretty close to all that didn't he. yet this guy is even scarier than him.

i'll be 61 this month.

i believe and hope the landslide will be huge. GOTV