Election Day Is a Test. Please Tell Me Somebody Studied.

No pressure, America. It’s just a little pass/fail exercise with staggering consequences and no option to retake it next Tuesday.

It’s finally here. Election Day. It sort of feels like SAT day: You’ve spent weeks studying for a test with enormous consequences for your future. Millions of other people are taking the exact same test, too. The diabolical twist here is that your score depends entirely on how smart *they* are. And you’ve seen what they do at a four-way stop.

Yes, polls are fake. I still hate headlines like this.

If you’re like me, you’ve immersed yourself in graduate-level Election Prep. You’ve researched your candidates’ positions, scrutinized their records, examined their policy proposals, weighed their qualifications, investigated their donors, and attempted to distinguish their actual accomplishments from their carefully rehearsed talking points. Apparently, we’ve been overthinking this. The question we should have been asking is, “What does the guy who sings ‘Glory Days’ think?”

Yesterday, multimillionaire rock star Bruce Springsteen took to social media to enthusiastically endorse Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, calling him a fighter for the Constitution, a fighter for democracy, and a fighter against the “corrupt, lawless, and anti-American leadership currently in the White House.”

New Jersey. Michigan. Same diff.

I’m not sure if we’re electing a senator or preparing for another White House UFC match here.

Is this a celebrity thing? Like, you spend decades hearing people scream when you enter a room, and eventually you conclude they’re screaming “PLEASE TELL US WHAT THE FOUNDING FATHERS WOULD HAVE WANTED!”?

Considering that The Boss posted his unsolicited senatorial plug on his own social media pages, you might expect the comment section to be a fawning chorus of like-minded fans praising his political wisdom. To my smug and unbridled delight, you would be deliciously wrong.

X was not impressed.

Instagram had so many spirited hot takes I’m considering wallpapering my guest bedroom with them. A sampling:

“I am completely heartbroken to hear this from Bruce. A man I have admired and respected my whole life. A man who I always believed had the intelligence to understand and speak the truth to millions of fans around the world. THIS is sending a very dangerous message. A message that shows how strong propaganda can walk and talk. How utterly disappointing and irresponsible. Not you Bruce. I really hoped you would show some sense. Damn.”

“I can’t believe this. Why do you and legends like you have to devastate every core memory we have? Every nice soothing moment we can remember? Shame on you Bruce.”

“I am truly horrified by this post. I have loved Bruce for years but will stop listening to his music now. So disappointed.”

I’ve seen less traumatic reactions to actual divorces.

Perhaps Springsteen was attempting a little damage control. The previous evening, El-Sayed had given a fairly disastrous 60 Minutes interview in which he dismissed concerns about transgender students in sports as “manufactured social issues.” The comment alone was bad enough. But his attempt to elaborate is where things went spectacularly sideways.

“You have a phone in your pocket, right? You can get access to anything and everything in the whole world… The notion somehow that you are going to prevent your child from being exposed to something that you may find disagreeable, and that that is going to be because of school, is so profoundly outdated, because of course you have all the information and they have all the information. And the most important thing you can do is not try to protect the person from seeing a thing. It’s about trying to make sure that as you coach your kid through the world, that you are engaging with them and saying, ‘Here’s what I believe, here’s what you may see in the world, you get to make your choices about who you are going to be in the world.’”

I’m sorry, did an actual congressional candidate just argue that since a young lady can conceivably encounter a penis at any moment thanks to her ubiquitous internet connection, what’s the harm of letting her encounter a few in the girls’ locker room? As long as Mom and Dad debrief her about it afterward? I mean, if I got that wrong, do let me know. I’d hate to misinterpret a policy platform that appears to be “the internet exists, so good luck out there.”

El-Sayed went on to explain that he’s “not running to govern sports” (in which case, perhaps he should shut-the-hell-up about them), and insisted that the people even raising questions like this “don’t want to be talking about the real issues we face in our lives,” like groceries, gas, and healthcare. That’s like your doctor telling you not to worry about the lump in your armpit because your cholesterol is through the roof.

Here’s a crazy thought: Voters can care about grocery bills and the integrity of Title IX. We can rally against prescription drug profiteering while also believing that emptying prisons is a stunningly bad idea. We can bellyache about the price at the pump without wanting to hand our parental authority to a bunch of people whose idea of education may or may not include reading, writing, and radical gender theory. We can walk and chew gum while simultaneously objecting to the government telling us what kind of gum we’re allowed to chew. We’re a complex species.

And manufactured concerns? What does that even mean? That we don’t actually have them? Oh, sir. We have them. We’re literally dripping in them. And you can’t just slap an adjective on them and expect them to disappear like a teenager when it’s time to unload the dishwasher.

El-Sayed wishes his pre-election bad press streak ended with a little transgender outrage. The same day the 60 Minutes fiasco aired, his former Democratic primary rival, Representative Haley Stevens, flipped her endorsement to his Senate opponent, Mike Rogers. A Republican. (More than half of her staff quit on the spot; the rest are presumably fighting over the last available therapist in Washington.)

Stevens initially endorsed El-Sayed after losing to him in the primary, but after months of bickering, his campaign reportedly told her to stay away from his events… so she threw her support behind his GOP opponent instead. It would be like Bernie stumping for Trump because AOC didn’t invite him to her birthday party.

Here’s the truly terrifying part of all this: Despite the Hasan Piker controversy, questions about El-Sayed’s Muslim Brotherhood ties, the 60 Minutes faceplant, and being brutally publicly dumped by a fellow Democrat, the dude is still leading in the polls. Even Polymarket is right now giving him an eighty-one percent chance of sweeping this thing. Apparently, the only thing El-Sayed hasn’t managed to lose this week is the election.

It’s group-test day, folks. Michigan may be forever relegated to remedial democracy, but here’s hoping the rest of America is at least smarter than Bruce Springsteen.

Pencils down. God help us.

Just a bonus Election Day giggle. :)

POLL REDUX FOR FINICKY PHONES:

How confident are you in America’s Election Day IQ?

• We’re Mensa, baby!

• I’d give us a solid C-minus.

• We’re eating crayons at this point.

• Elections are for sheep.

• *combo/unsure/other