As you read this missive, the results of the Super Tuesday primary elections will be fodder for the yakkers on radio and the talking heads on TV. Learned columnists, academic experts and political operatives will be reading the tea leaves, too. All will try to predict which candidate will become the Democratic  challenger to the incumbent President.

Then, of course, they will explain why the candidate they favor will emerge as the next President. Welcome to the great American game of chance – the Presidential Sweepstakes.

Watch the experts closely. They will use computers, charts, diagrams and even logic to predict the outcome. Some, on the right and left, will venture into the "Twilight Zone" to convince us to back their favored candidate. I love to watch for the "experts" who no one has ever heard of before, the ones who base their predictions on the stars, or alleged sightings of Bigfoot, or flying saucers based at Area 51.

Some will claim the election was fixed because they know someone who knows someone whose mailman once had a black dog that predicted Richard Nixon would be driven out of office. Trust me, their reasoning gets hard to follow. Our elections are always complicated because they are all about us, and we are very, very complicated.

For example, we have seen attacks on the press by the White House and other GOP leaders who claim this TV outlet or that outlet is filled with lying, no good scoundrels. Democrats pile on Fox News, Republicans seem to hate MSNBC and CNN. They all cry “fake news, fake news.” If you were one of the good students who paid attention in American history class, you would know that this is not a unique situation.

Not long after our Constitution guaranteed freedom of the press, Congress, at the urging of President John Adams, passed the Alien and Sedition Acts.
According to the Library of Congress, both laws were designed to silence and weaken Thomas Jefferson's Democratic-Republican party and favor the Adams party, the Federalists. The Alien law made it harder for new immigrants to become citizens and authorized the President to deport aliens "dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States." Sound familiar?

As I mentioned, elections are complicated. In 1800, President Adams was running against his own Vice President, Jefferson. it was done differently in those days.

Here is what the Adams-backed Sedition law said: "If any person shall write, print, utter or publish …any false, scandalous and malicious writing against the government of the United States or either house of Congress ... or the President to bring them into contempt ... or excite against them … the hatred of the good people … or resist any law of the United States shall be punished by a fine of $2,000 and imprisonment not exceeding two years."

It was enforced. David McCullough's biography of John Adams notes Congressman Matthew Lyon of Vermont spent four months in jail after he wrote a letter to a paper suggesting Adams had an "unbounded thirst for pomp, foolish adulation of selfish avarice." Lyon, who once argued with another representative and spat in his face, became a national hero and was re-elected.

What would they have done to the latest cast of "Saturday Night Live?"

During the 1800 election, Adams and Jefferson's supporters traded insults. One suggested Jefferson cohabited with slave women at Monticello. On the other side, McCullough relates a story (Adams denied) that he had ordered a friend to procure four pretty mistresses for their use when they were in London. "Most vicious were the charges that Adams was insane. Thus, if Jefferson was a shameless southern libertine and a howling atheist, Adams was a Tory, a vain Yankee scold, and, if truth be known, quite mad," wrote McCullough.

I guess it makes the rantings of our current commentators, from Rush Limbaugh to Stephen Colbert, seem a bit tame. These attacks make President Trump's insults seem a bit juvenile, too – for example, when he calls his rivals like former Vice President Joe Biden "Sleepy Joe," Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders "Crazy Bernie," or Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren "Pocahontas" or "Goofy Elizabeth."

The Des Moines Register wrote that Trump was "a feckless blowhard." Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham once called him a "jackass."  Late night TV host Jimmy Kimmel lampooned Trump's lack of military experience, saying the closest he ever got to battle was a fight with (comedienne) Rosie O'Donnell."

And so it goes. You can bet the squabbling will continue all summer long unless the Coronavirus throws a spanner in the works. God forbid. Here is a tip. When you pour over the returns from Super Tuesday, remember the sage words of Yogi Berra: "It ain't over till it's over."