What do you hate more?

The presidential election campaign? Or the furor over HB2?

The good news is that one will be over in a few weeks. The bad news is that the other won’t.

On Nov. 8, the election campaigning ends. The heavy doses of drug-like campaign ads and cable news coverage the mean-spirited, misleading and malicious barrages fired by and at the candidates will halt.

But HB2 will still be with us, tearing us asunder, holding our state up to ridicule.

Unnecessarily, because reasonable people could have worked out a common-sense solution that recognized, respectfully and practically, the needs and aspirations of transgender people, while protecting the public from danger and abuse.

But politics gets in the way.

The governor’s re-election campaign ads tout HB2 as necessary protection for children in public bathrooms who could be threatened by adults of the opposite sex.

Meanwhile, the Democratic challenger’s campaign energizes core supporters by calling for the immediate and unconditional repeal of HB2, exploiting its growing unpopularity in the sports and business communities.