As I write this, liberals everywhere are panicking. A Pew poll released on October 8 had Mitt Romney up 4 percent over Barack Obama nationally. A national Gallup tracking poll of likely voters had Romney up 2 percent. And everywhere—on Twitter, on progressive blogs, even in what we laughably used to call "the real world" before the internet snaked through our phones and ate our brains—Democrats are ready to call the race in favor of the opposition.

For instance, Andrew Sullivan turned into a giant wailing babyman on his blog, pronouncing that at the end of the first (admittedly disastrous) presidential debate, President Obama "instantly plummeted into near-oblivion," whatever the fuck that means. After writing that post, Sullivan clambered into his crib and cried himself to sleep in his little footie pajamas. Because Andrew Sullivan is a mewling fucking coward—and you are, too, if you're panicking right now.

Here's the thing. You can't stake your emotions on a single poll. Hell, you can't stake your emotions on seven polls. A poll is a photograph, a snapshot in time. Like a movie, you have to assemble many of those photographs together, in successive order, to create a narrative. Keep reading Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight blog at the New York Times, keep reading the Monte Carlo poll simulations that Darryl Holman at Horse's Ass (Horsesass.org) has been running (Holman actually predicted the outcome of the 2008 presidential election with greater accuracy than Silver, missing only that bonus electoral vote that Obama picked up in Nebraska), and you understand that no single poll can predict the outcome of the election.

And let's look at history. Have you ever seen Ronald Reagan's first debate against Walter Mondale in 1984? Reagan was rocking his early onset Alzheimer's for all it was worth, giving answers that were bloated, pause-ridden, and basically impossible to follow. But the thing about great politicians is that they never make the same mistake twice, and Reagan came roaring back to dominate the next two debates. The history of polls, too, is heavy with these kinds of potholes: John Kerry was edging ahead of George W. Bush among likely voters during this week in 2004. In September of 2008, a Gallup tracking poll of likely voters had McCain/Palin up 10 points over Obama/Biden. Surely you remember these moments in the 2008 campaign, where bloggers—including Sullivan—and hardcore liberals wrung their hands and predicted the end of the Obama campaign. We struggled as hard as we could to foretell doom and gloom: Google "Obama Bradley effect" if you need a refresher.

Look: Momentary panic is natural, especially when it's about something as huge and portentous as an election. But you fail as a grown-ass human being if you just wallow in your fear like a child or a dog hiding under a bed from peals of thunder. If you're that fucking scared, go do something. Donate money to the Obama campaign and to other causes you believe in. Even better, donate your time to causes you believe in. That'll take your mind off the panic. Don't give in to this defeatist bullshit. Dust yourself off, take a deep breath, and be a fucking adult. recommended