October Following a Presidential Election: The Cruelest Month of Every Four-Year Cycle

Just as it's a sure bet every fall that the leaves on the trees will change colors and drop, it's a sure bet that I will have a huge dose of campaign season nostalgia every October.  The smells and colors of the season instinctively take my mind to the peak of election campaign season, and the thrill of counting down the days till the first Tuesday in November.  Presidential election years come with the biggest adrenaline reward for election junkies like me, but midterm elections certainly deliver the needed payout for fall campaign fever too.  The odd-numbered year before the Presidential election offers up some deferred gratification since, particularly where I live in Iowa, the Presidential primary campaigns are well underway and come to fruition with votes taking place in January of the following year.  Those Octobers aren't as exciting as Presidential general election and midterm election years, but there's nonetheless something for an election junkie to latch onto.

But then there's October 2017, the year after a Presidential election.  Last fall's election night result was an unthinkable disaster and has helped me repress election campaign cravings almost entirely for most of the past 10 months.  But as is the case every year, autumn comes and my mind starts lusting for a campaign season, only without any prospect for a payout on that craving for another year.  Sure, there's the gubernatorial races in New Jersey in Virginia on November 7th, and while I'm damn glad I have that on the horizon in a couple more weeks, it definitely won't give me the electoral reward I desire.  Making matters even more painful, it's typically the fall months leading up to the next midterm where Senate candidacies declare for the following year and races really start to take shape.  Knowing it's a full 12 months away before these Congressional and gubernatorial races come to fruition is sheer torture to an election junkie like myself, and I suspect thousands of us would concur.

"Election campaign withdrawal syndrome" may not be a formal clinical condition, but it should be.  This October, I'm feeling an emptiness in my soul like I haven't felt since October 2005, the year after George W. Bush's re-election, rehashing tapes of election year past and counting down the days until my very limited fix from the NJ and VA gubernatorial contests in 17 days.  The fact that 2005 comes so readily to mind for me and not 2009 reinforces the long-standing narrative that you hunger for victory most when your party's out of power.  By contrast, I'll just bet Republican-leaning election junkies don't have the same level of energy right now than they did in October 2009 when they were setting the stage for their comeback.

So for 17 days, I'll have the two aforementioned gubernatorial races to hang my hat on, but I'm not confident that will whet my appetite.  With that in mind, definitely expect some previews and early predictions for the 2018 Senate races at some point in November.