Saving democracy without succumbing to panic -- controlling those e-mail pleas that it's all up to me

The most important election of our time is coming -- again.

At stake is -- everything, just like in 2020, and the midterms of 2018, and so on back in the timeline of our 365-day-a-year election cycles.

The iPad has become an anxiety device.

And there is a lot at stake in the results of Nov. 8's general elections. They will determine whether the Democrats hold or lose their de facto majority in the U.S. Senate, or even gain a seat to go up 51-49. And that means the difference between Federal Court and any Supreme Court openings in the next two years being filled by Biden nominees, or blocked by boss Koch and his sock-puppet Senate Republican leader.

The outcome of these midterms also will show whether Republican jitteriness over the end of Roe v. Wade proves justified or just a bump in the road on their strategy of igniting their far right base by taking extremist positions.

So, yes, we should all be involved and stay informed -- even if that means lying awake a few nights until November.

But do I, a resident of Louisville, Ky., need to be made to feel personally responsible for who wins in Wisconsin, a state I've only been to one time?

"BREAKING POLL -- Barnes is up on Johnson in Wisc!" an email headline imposed on me as I was quietly scrolling the other night. I didn't know who either Barnes or Johnson were, but five minutes later, I certainly did.

Democrat Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes had expanded his lead to 7 points on Republican U.S. Senate incumbent Ron Johnson, according to a Marquette University Law School poll.

Other equally impassioned emails tell me Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock is statistically tied with Republican Herschel Walker, the former football star who has written that he has Dissociative Identity Disorder. Walker was described in a 2001 police report as "volatile" and having "violent tendencies," and he has fathered three out-of-wedlock children, along with one with his then-wife, who told police Walker once held a gun to her head and threatened to pull the trigger. The candidate has not denied that allegation.

Unqualified, unstable and dishonest -- the perfect
GOP credentials of Herschel Walker

Walker is being treated for his mental illness by a theologically but not medically trained counselor who believes in demonic possession and touts methods debunked as pseudo-therapy.

The patient insists his DID is under control, but he has recently falsely claimed he had been a member of Georgia law enforcement, and said he graduated from the college he actually left after his junior year.

It gets worse: Walker, a critic of black men who are absentee fathers, also at first said he had just one out of wedlock child, but later was found to have three. When asked about this, he insisted he somehow had not failed to disclose their existence.

And this person is tied with Senator Raphael Warnock, a recognized scholar, theologian, and family man who has stood in the shoes of Martin Luther King Jr. by serving as pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church.

MSNBC explains exactly who has McConnell fretting over "candidate quality."

Back to the nightly e-mails, Georgia democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who is one of my favorite Americans today, isn't behind right wing incumbent Brian Kemp. No, no, let us say she is within the polling margin of striking distance and solidifying her hold on key voter groups, which is something like the kind of chin-up e-mail headlines I see on her race.

I love what Abrams is doing for voter access and fervently hope she wins, but when I see all these emails at once, it's like the internet is holding me personally responsible for Georgia's outcome as well as Wisconsin's -- oh, and Pennsylvania's, where populist liberal John Fetterman has an 8-point lead over TV doctor/huckster Mehmet Oz in a race to replace retiring Republican Pat Toomey. Still, lots of negativity by pro-Oz groups are ripping at Fetterman on many fronts, so I'll have to check nightly to see how that lead holds up.

As the U.S. leans Blue,
the GOP leader feels blue.

I want to be kept up on these races, but I'd rather not be kept up by them as I learn via nightly scrolling that the future of the U.S. will be either progressive or fascist, depending on the whim of people I will never know in states 500 miles away.

So I'm going to give another round of support to my candidates (note: as a federal employee, I need to make clear I am not urging anyone to give money) and shift those nightly grabber alarmist e-mails into the - as misnamed as this term is - junk bin.

I still love the progressives Raphael, Stacey, and John, but I'll enjoy a proper amount of sleep not having to drop off to fears that our democracy depends on precisely how many voters in places three states away from my home fall for a football star who can't seem to keep it straight how many children he has.

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Brian Arbenz lives in Louisville, Ky. USA, just a few blocks from - would you believe it, Mitch McConnell's house.