This editorial is a blast from the past.

As The Beachcomber’s deadline arrives this Tuesday, election day has also come, at last, to our divided country.

But as we prepare these pages and they roll off the press, they won’t have the banner headlines that have now already appeared in daily newspapers, announcing what comes next. You’ve already seen those headlines. We haven’t. Not fair.

From our perch, here in the dim, forgotten past of Monday afternoon, we have so many questions.

Who won? Was it close? Is it over?

Did Biden and Harris prevail, and if so, has Trump began to carry out his nightmare threat to force the election into litigation, ending with his hand-packed Supreme Court?

Or did Trump find the same path to narrow electoral college victory that he pulled off in 2016?

And how are you all doing now? Be honest. Are you okay?

How we wish, as we write these words, that you could just call us up, from the future, and let us know.

But there are a few things we wouldn’t have to ask you on that phone call, because we already know how some of this has gone down.

We are now certain, for instance, that the Biden-Harris ticket won the Vashon vote in a landslide.

It’s been the Vashon way for decades — in every presidential election here since the days of Walter Mondale, the Democrat candidate has reliably triumphed with local voters. And in the last 20 years, in particular, Democrat presidential candidates have gotten huge margins of victory here, much to the chagrin of the island’s minority Republican population.

So we’re just going to predict right now, on Monday afternoon, that Biden has received close to — or even upwards of — 85% percent of our island’s vote.

Ditto, Washington. It went blue. It’s easy to divine the future when you don’t live in a swing state.

We’re also willing to go out on a limb and predict Biden has won the popular vote of the entire county.

But stopping to think about it, that’s about all we can predict. If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that everything can change in an instant.

So here at The Beachcomber, we’ll just keep taking this year one week at a time.

This week, you’ll find stories on our pages about what makes our community strong — which might make for inspirational reading right about now.

You’ll read about how the owners of our historic, single-screen movie theater are making yet another stand to keep their treasured business open.

There are photos here of other things that make Vashon special — orcas cavorting close to our shores, and a spooktacularly safe Halloween celebration at Camp Burton last week. Things that make us smile and feel happy to call this place home.

There are also serious stories here about public health and safety on Vashon.

A new program is about to launch the distribution of Narcan on Vashon and you can read about that in this week’s paper. Here in our small town, it could mean the difference between life and death for someone you know and care about.

You’ll also hear how the owner of Vashon Island Coffee Roasterie has acted decisively and with great transparency, in partnership with our Emergency Operations Center, to let the community know quickly about a case of COVID among the Roasterie’s staff.

We applaud this kind of transparency by a business in the face of our collective fight against the coronavirus.

It makes us know we can prevail as a community. We’re made of strong stuff here on Vashon.

Here’s to stepping into the future together, whatever it brings.