James Bennet, our Lexington columnist, considers a possible Democratic election defeat.

If you’re feeling a bit stressed about politics these days, I recommend watching this clip of Barack Obama rapping out some lyrics from “Lose Yourself” by Eminem during a rally in Detroit on Tuesday. It’s a reminder that even in this most fevered stage of the election cycle, people are having fun out on the campaign trail, connecting through music and laughter and not just the grim warnings that dominate news reports. 

I guess every presidential campaign I’ve covered has had an apocalyptic phase as election day approached, with candidates declaring it the most important contest of anyone’s lifetime. And maybe this time that is so. Certainly the warnings are the most dire. Vice-president Kamala Harris is calling Donald Trump a “fascist”—citing the conclusion of people who served him in office—and the stakes to some supporters of Mr Trump are even higher. As my colleague Kennett Werner reported this week, to them this struggle is not about democracy and the rule of law versus authoritarianism but about good versus evil, a word Mr Trump himself has taken to using to describe his opponents. For some evangelicals, Mr Trump, chosen by God, represents the last chance to rid America of demonic influence. 

Even for less eschatologically minded Republicans, Mr Trump’s I-alone-can-fix-it message means the possibility he might lose is devastating. Ms Harris makes no such vaulting claim for herself, to be not just this campaign’s best candidate but the last hope for the nation. In turning out voters, this extreme claim may help Mr Trump, so from his perspective it makes a lot of sense. As Eminem puts it in “Lose Yourself”, “You only get one shot. Do not miss your chance to blow.”

Yet as a party the Republicans will have future chances to blow, and whether Mr Trump’s approach will serve them well over the longer term is a different question. As I wrote this week in Lexington, I was struck by the exhilaration of the thousands who thronged to see Ms Harris when I was down in Atlanta on Saturday. Among the people I bumped into in the crowd was Mario Van Peebles, a director and actor whom I recognised from another Generation X cultural touchstone, his film “New Jack City”. I asked him the question most on my mind: what would happen to all that excitement if Ms Harris lost? 

As the DJ up on stage blasted “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire, Mr Van Peebles smiled and nodded, as though he expected the question. What mattered, he said, was to do something you believed in and loved, which was why he was there. “The win is an extra.” He went on, “Sometimes America moves two steps forward, one step back…In the ten-year plan, you can get disheartened. But over the 50-year plan, black folks got the right to vote. Over the 50-year plan, women got the right to vote. Over the 50-year plan, you could love who you want to love.” He gestured at some little girls dancing in the crowd and noted they were being introduced to a big idea of what was possible. “The optics are winning,” he said.