Happy Monday, lovelies. If you’re wondering what that hyperventilating sound is, it’s me preparing for Trump to be deemed the ‘winner’ of tonight’s debate because he’s being graded on the village idiot scale. Since I am a political pessimist, I’m pretty sure Clinton could reunite North and South Korea by granting Kim Jong Un his own bad movie podcast, and we’d still be seeing OMG Trump Wins Debate headlines tomorrow.

Stay with me here: you’d think a debate between the candidate The New York Times praises for her "intellect, experience, toughness and courage over a career of almost continuous public service” in their endorsement, and "a man far more consumed with himself than with the nation’s well-being” would be an easy contest. But it is not.

And why is that? According to an NBC/WSJ Poll reported by Jonathan Chait in Daily Intelligencer, "voters judged Donald Trump to be more honest than Hillary Clinton by a ten-point margin.” A TEN-FOLD MARGIN. Take a second to breath that in. The man who lies more than once every single day while on the campaign trail, who lied 87 times in a five day period according to Politico,

I’ve joked about this before, but we’re in a post-truth era and I honestly have no idea what will happen tonight. I’m not looking forward to it. And it really doesn’t help that Cool Dad Tim Kaine is raising expectations. COME ON, TIM. KEEP IT COOL, MY MAN.

As we’ve seen time and again, Trump will lie on that stage. And what is Clinton supposed to do? Now that debate moderators have decided that it’s not their job to fact-check the candidates (do I have any high school debate subscribers? what would have happened to you if you’d willfully lied during a competition?) she either has to ignore the lies or fact-check him herself. If she fact-checks him and does so firmly, everyone will say she’s angry, because psychological studies say that while men are serious. women are angry, unlikeable harpies - in the words of the New York Times’ Gray Matter, “She’s a bitch, but he’s just having a bad day.”

I had a friend yesterday ask me “so, do you actually think Trump could win?” YES. Yes I do actually think Trump could win. I wish I had good, uplifting news to tell you, but in case you haven’t been watching the polls as closely as I have, 6 weeks to go, Clinton and Trump are tied.

CLINTON AND TRUMP ARE TIED. TIED. So you’ll excuse me if I’m not unwaveringly optimistic about how tonight will go. I’m dreading this evening, and I go into it with an expectation of awfulness.