Awake. Haunted.

I'm up. In a few minutes, I take my son to school. He's alarmed by the news I just gave him. I told him he doesn't have to worry.

I hope I'm right. I don't really believe I am.

I try to practice my politics somewhere in the neighborhood of "a pox on both your houses," trying to remember that the speck I see in the eye of my political rivals is probably matched by the log in my own. Politics is ever an elbow-throwing business, the Republic usually survives, and so I don't want to let myself get too high or low about specific outcomes.

But what haunts me is this: Many of the people I know who ended up in the Trump camp pretty much expect him to be a disaster, too, or they did until they convinced themselves otherwise.

And they did convince themselves — in some cases because tribal affiliations demanded it, in other cases out of spite, and in many cases because they ardently believed that Hillary Clinton was just as monstrous as their candidate.

But they know. They know he's awful. And hey supported him anyway.