In Democratic Party circles, progressives, liberals, and Democrats who live in fear and refuse to believe that Donald Trump could lose the election are called “bedwetters.”

The term is of interest to me because I was a bedwetter until I was 17.

Like gays and other minorities, I have learned to use the words and terms used against me. If I say I was a bedwetter, nobody can say much about it.

So I will use the term, even though it may give offense to some. It seems giving offense is one of my skills.  In politics, everyone gets to be a bedwetter some of the time.

I don’t generally use that term about other people, but I have also noticed the fear and worry – the ghost of 2016 – that causes many Donald Trump opponents to refuse to believe the good news.

This fear does not help their cause.

A Trump-loving neighbor with a rare sense of humor told me a Biden/Harris supporter came to his farm and gave him some Biden campaign literature.

“I hope Biden wins,” the canvasser told him.

“Aren’t you sure?” the surprised farmer asked him.

“No,” he said, “I was sure in 2016, and I was wrong.”

Well, the farmer said he replied, “if even you aren’t sure, I think I’ll stick with my guy.”

Trump canvassers don’t say things like that, I am told. They have the holy spirit.

I feel for the bedwetters, but I sometimes find them annoying. You will never find a Donald Trump supporter who has any doubt at all about who will win the election.

I’ve never heard one of them express a doubt that Trump will be re-elected, and by a landslide. I’ve never heard a Trump supporter express a single doubt about him, other than that he tweets too much. This has, I think, bred a kind of arrogance and complacency that will not help their candidate.

The bedwetters are vigilant and are taking nothing for granted. In normal life, this can be irritating. In a political campaign, it keeps candidates from complacency and lack of humility.

It keeps them sharp.

The devotion for Trump is more akin to a cult or religious figure than a political candidate. I take it with a grain of salt. It’s not smart to feel that way in politics, it gives the candidate a big head and the staff little incentive to change tactics when they should.

But confidence is important in a contested election, and people who go around preaching that their candidate is very likely to lose aren’t doing their cause any favor. Whenever I write that Biden is likely to win, people instantly e-mail and say things like, “I hope you are right,” or “they got it right last time.”

I call this Trump PTSD. It feels more like a disorder than a prediction.

I can feel the anxiety coming through the digital space. I don’t ask myself who will win. I ask myself if I believe I am right.  I hope I never think I can see the future.

Being what I think is morally right is all I can do, and it’s enough for me. None of us can say with certainty what the future will bring, and I don’t try. The future defines and reveals itself.

All we can do is choose what we believe is the right thing, and try to make it happen.

I try to acknowledge as well every day that I can never be sure I am always right. That would be dangerous and wrong, a death sentence for a writer. Everyone is right in their own mind.

Every morning, I do check the Five -Thirty-Eight polling and election page; this is to me, by far the most reliable, honest, and careful analysis of the November election.

It’s the site founded by Nate Silver, the polling wizard formerly at the New York Times. They know their stuff, they are the gold standard of pollsters.

Every day, the site’s computers simulate the election 40,000 times to see who wins the most often.

They sample 100 outcomes to give the best possible range of scenarios their own model thinks is possible. These include the best quality polls they can find, and Silver tallies the results and gives Donald Trump and Joseph Biden Jr. a likely-to-win or lost projection.

I an not in fear of the election, for some strange reason, but I have often recommended the FiveThirtyEight site as a kind of valium for bedwetters.

This morning the FiveThirtyEight site reported once again that Biden is favored to win the election, and by a widening margin. Trump, they found, wins 18 of 100 outcomes, and   Biden wins in 81 in 100 outcomes.

This is before Trump’s hospitalization and joy ride to see his MAGA worshippers (which did not go over well with the moderate and independent voters he claims to want to attract.)

I’m not sure why the bedwetters are so invested in his victory, all summer he has made one stupid mistake after another (the road was Sunday’s dumb mistake) you have to really be traumatized to think he can pull this off.

The startling FiveThirtyEight model not predict who will win the election for sure, but who is likely to win it today.

With one month to go, it would be difficult for Donald Trump to provoke enough earthquakes to alter that vote. Two million votes have already been cast.

No presidential candidate in modern American history has come back from such a deficit so close to an election.

The MAGA culture is very different than the bedwetters and Democrats. Like their leader, who many believe was sent by God to stack the federal judiciary, they believe Trump is a holy man coming to God’s work. How could he lose?

The bedwetters, on the other hand,  have been humbled by their humiliating defeat in 2016. The trauma is four years old but fresh. It causes much anger, worry, and sleepless nights.

It’s only politics, I used to say when I was a political reporter. But in 2020, it’s something else, something otherwordly.

The MAGA people have not yet known this kind of unexpected and jarring defeat; their Messiah tells them he cannot possibly lose the election legally, and so, being a deity, they believe him.

I suspect they will be the bedwetters of tomorrow, nervously checking the FiveThirtyEight site to see how Mike Pence or Nikki Haley is doing, the ghosts of 2020 dancing in their head.

As Donald Trump himself always says, just before a lie, I don’t know,  we’ll have to see.