As the Post's Aaron Blake recently reminded, or warned, us, you and I won't decide the presidential election. We already know where our votes are going, just as the other side knows where its votes are going, and because the sides are roughly equal in number, for the most part — and where it counts — they'll cancel each other out.
So who will decide the next occupant of the White House?
Voters who have paid no attention whatsoever to pretty much anything other than what's on TV each night. Some minuscule segment of the civically disengaged and chronically uninformed in only a handful of battleground states will nevertheless vote and thus determine whose finger is poised over thousands of nuclear weapons.
I won't dwell on how out of touch with even the most towering of national topics these shockingly clueless Americans are. Let it suffice that they're part of the 55% who think the economy is shrinking, the 56% who are pretty sure we're in a recession, and the 49% who believe unemployment is at a 50-year high. (Harris poll)
So let's move on to a few other, more acute subjects and those who reside in darkness, such as the one-out-of-five Americans (19%) who thought after his NYC trial had concluded, verdict rendered, that Trump was acquitted, or that it was still proceeding, or just weren't sure. (YouGov)
Or, let's ask independent voters what they've heard about Trump's indictment for pilfering classified documents, a crime for which an everyday scofflaw might serve five years in a federal prison. Among the indies, 56% have heard "nothing at all" or "a little." (Marquette University Law School )
Trump once said that election fraud "allows for the termination of all rules, regulation, and articles, even those found in the Constitution." You know that, even a well-read Englishman or German Frau knows that. But 78% of Americans said it's either untrue or they didn't know. (Ipsos)
Here's my favorite, if one can have a favorite among the horrendous. And this one might cause you to never the leave the house again, knowing there are this many of the walking braindead out there. Again nearly four-out-of-five Americans (78%) either agreed that Biden said, or didn't know if Biden said:
"I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Donald Trump."
In sum, if you're pulling the covers over your head in the wee hours of 6 November, dial up your neighbor — who, statistically speaking, is likely among the above groups — and offer your thanks for their having torched your country.