On Wednesday afternoon this week I made the trek into town, and scratched in the little circle next to next to the names Donald Trump and Mike Pence. It made me a bit queasy, honestly, but so did scratching in the circle next to the name of establishment RINO Richard Burr for Senate, as well as scratching off next to the name of the incoherent incumbent Walter Jones for Congress.

One vote for a New York liberal, one for a mini-McConnell, and one for a misanthrope loon who has managed to be loathed by both the House Freedom Caucus as well as by the office of Speaker John Boehner (and now Speaker Paul Ryan, too, no doubt).

Can I have some tums now?

Frankly, my conscience took a pounding in the booth, but the civic exercise of voting is not about my conscience, or gastrointestinal health, or anything else related to me personally. At the risk of sounding clichéd, it's about the country, and the Court, checks and balances, and so much more. I'm not in any way responsible for the choices I was given -- as I opposed all three of these people in the primaries -- and the primary season was the last time that my conscience was anywhere close to being on the ballot.

I think we should talk more about elections in these terms frankly. We rarely do.

Consider: Americans are an odd lot when it comes to voting, taking the least personal vote -- that for president -- and giving it a personal reverence that is logically absurd. Meanwhile, in local school board races, or those for alderman or what have you -- races that really are somewhat personal to individual voters -- there is rarely any personal attachment at all. It's all part of the upside down Republic we have now, where our central government becomes a bigger part of our lives every day. So many people talk about "my president," which is just as phony as the notion of going to the website of a huge corporation and having an interaction with "My Target," or "My Bank of America," by clicking on an icon.

People should be more concerned with "my liberty," because neither of the individuals running for the Oval are the least bit interested in that topic, unless you count wanting to infringe upon it as interest.

Speaking of which, ObamaCare, as it always does, has become a big issue in the last two weeks of the campaign. This happened in 2010, and 2014, and is happening now. In both cases, the GOP decided to make it the focus of their ad buys down the stretch. Better late than never.

Clearly ObamaCare is one reason some are seeing a tightening race now, and I firmly believe that we are.

Isn’t it funny how those premium notices can focus the mind of a voter? It's also interesting how they can focus the mind of Republican consultants and ad buyers too. Let's hope for the barely possible, that it can focus the ever-rambling mind of Donald Trump for a couple of weeks as well. ObamaCare, not Lee Harvey Oswald, or carping about this and that being "rigged," or threatening to sue accusers, is an issue he can ride to victory.

Yet he seems as uninterested in understanding "why" ObamaCare is a disaster, though he does say something bad about it from time to time, you know, with his "best words" and so forth. But does Trump even know who Jonathon Gruber is? Does he think the main problems with ObamaCare are those "lines around the states?"

Don't bother. I know both answers. But enough negativity, so let's look for a bright side.

To his credit, Trump did unveil a reasonably attractive "Contract with the American Voter" over the weekend. It was about six weeks too late, but there were actually a couple items in there about reducing the size, scope and influence of the federal government. I especially like the one where every new government regulation would mean two existing regs are taken off the books!

Well da-yum. That actually is a valid Reagan comparison. 

Several weeks ago, he delivered the best line of the entire campaign when he said "it used to be we made cars in Flint and couldn't drink the water in Mexico -- now we make cars in Mexico and can't drink the water in Flint." He didn't write that line, and his proposed solutions indicate that he's not totally clear on the liberalism that has caused both situations, but hell, it's a start. 

And then yesterday, at the ribbon cutting ceremony for the new Trump Hotel in Washington, we caught a fleeting glimpse of a candidate who would be fifteen points ahead — had he run his entire campaign in the manner of that speech. A new slogan was born, “under budget, ahead of schedule!” (Where has this guy been hiding?)  If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth the time to search it and watch. But alas, this Donald Trump didn’t last, as a few hours later he was down in Florida and was back in the mode of calling people losers and being petty and vindictive, campaigning against his vanquished rivals instead of keeping his eye on the ball.

All of which to say that there are ways Trump can win, though I doubt that he and his staff will agree. The avenue for Trump is the realization that a Hillary Clinton victory will mean some kind of ObamaCare mess for everything in our lives. It would be a socialist bureaucratic hell on earth, just like every socialist state on earth is.

Getting anything done in life would be like pulling teeth, including pulling teeth. Unelected, unaccountable, and largely anonymous bureaucrats would run our lives. They would be enforcing regulations they wrote, or perhaps those contrived by unelected, unaccountable and largely anonymous staffers in Congress. Taxes, fees, and fines would pop up from everywhere. The bureaucratic state hell.

There are millions of people who just want Washington out of their lives. Many of them are Never Trumpers -- or Maybe Trumpers. They're sick and tired of being falsely accused of being establishment elites, pearl clutchers, or cuck-servatives. (They're not the ones in dire need of the alpha male. There, I said it.) Throwing a few more bones in their direction could turn the tide November 8th. Besides, it's the right thing to do. Limited government is a crucial principle, and it works, every time it's tried. 

Edmund Wright is a contributor to American Thinker, Breitbart, Newsmax TV and Talk Radio Network – and author of WTF? How Karl Rove and the Establishment Lost…Again. He was never a Never Trumper, though he was tempted.