Well! Yesterday’s energy and relief were short-lived! Today I am back to having to force myself out of bed and into the shower. I had been hoping, perhaps stupidly, for a thorough trouncing: a good symbolic rejection of this president and his corruption and his incompetence, and also a punishment for some of the most blatantly terrible congresspeople. But no. I don’t know how to pass the time as I wait for what can in THE ABSOLUTELY BEST-CASE SCENARIO, in the absolute HIGHEST ACHIEVABLE DREAM, be a tepid victory that is not followed by a violent coup.
I keep trying to tell myself we knew this could be close. We might still win.
Joe got the most votes of any candidate. However it turns out trump was not far behind.
National disappointment, in-state disappointments — it’s all so discouraging. And having to wait for this tepid best-case scenario is so disheartening.
I sent $ to Raphael Warnock this morning. Other than that, I am trying to think of the next right thing to do.
It is so difficult not to feel thoroughly disheartened. How can so many of our fellow citizens still support this lying, arrogant, vile human? I am sinking deeply into numb mode.
I just don’t get it. At all. I’m so sad.
You’re not alone. I really thought there would be a reconning.
I’m going to drag myself to the shower as well and eat many delicious things today.
Ugh. I am feeling the same. I planned ahead and took the day off to complete a home project. I am so sad that the “victory” I am now hoping for is winning by the skin of our teeth. It shouldn’t be surprising, but it is.
I’m taking a nap. No mater who wins, we can’t let this change who we are.
I’m glad I saved the chocolate for today.
In 2016 the polls were much closer so I was very worried that Clinton would lose. This year, I never thought a Biden win was a slam dunk but so many polls had him up by so much. I think the pollsters need to reconfigure their weighting systems or maybe people are lying to the pollsters. Or Dear Leader is just that fricking lucky.
I really wanted the Hollywood ending — the repudiation of the last 4 years. I really wanted to be able to think “Whew, the U.S. isn’t as racist, homophobic and bigoted as I feared.” But the fact that this election is this close makes me nauseous.
or he CHEATS. and people help him cheat.
I have a hangover. I did not drink. that about sums it up.
I’ll take the tepid victory. I pledge to do my best to hold everyone accountable for everything going forward. I feel like this was never taught to me, maybe I wasn’t paying attention, but this is what happens when well-meaning people let the whole thing chug along unquestioned for YEARS.
I hate us. We are vile. It is our own fault. I hate that too.
The US is absolutely as homophobic, racist, and bigoted as we feared. This election is ample evidence of that. We must face the reality that we are a minority, fighting an uphill battle. There ARE more of them than there are of us. We can’t pretend any more.
Last night I looked at the returns for my county and they made absolutely no sense. NO SENSE. And then I looked at the fact that absentee had not been reported yet and I felt peaceful and lo, my peaceful feeling was correct. 221967 total voters (78.2% turnout), 153809 absentee. Of the total voters, 135,806 voted for Biden. Of those Biden voters, 107,311 voted absentee.
This same pattern held true in Virginia. And it’s holding true in Pennsylvania, where over 1.4 million absentee ballots are still to be counted.
I did truly hope for a Biden landslide, I’m super disappointed that so many of our fellow citizens are horrible people voting for a horrible person.
No matter what happens now, I’ll never get over that disappointment.
do you know who I do not hate? Swistle and these posts and the people commenting. all y’all are lovely. let’s all together make the whole world less vile, yes? one little encouraging post or comment at a time coupled with one little action.
I’m buying birdseed today because I am out and the birds shouldn’t have to suffer because people are terrible. I also bought a few groceries for the foodbank in my town and I’ll bring them over today. And I gave to pizza to the polls last night and am contemplating raices today. I’m also stalking the delivery of the self-striping, rainbow sock yarn I purchased (must stash yarn on the google). And I’m going to re-waterproof all the things (like raincoat things).
I am feeling numb and detached. That so many millions of people around the country are fine with the last four years is infuriating and heartbreaking, but my brain seems to be trying to protect me from thinking about it while we wait to know, and I’m trying to let it. And wait.
My husband, who is not generally an optimistic person, has been reassuring me all morning that a Biden victory is still by far the most likely scenario. He can recite half a dozen different ways that Biden can get the electoral votes.
But yes, what I wanted was an UNEQUIVOCAL REFERENDUM, a statement from America that we do NOT want this kind of leader and we do NOT accept his divisive rhetoric. And instead, I feel like our country is even more divided than I had realized over these four years. It is so disheartening.
Yes, all the fictional media we consume (and a whole lot of the nonfiction, since we don’t get an accurate sample of all biographies, only the ones where things “happened” in an interesting/satisfying way) tells us that of course Good Will Visibly Win and Evil Will Get Satisfying Smackdowns and oh, it would have been so nice if various mendacious and malevolent senators had gotten statistically-unlikely smackdowns, but no, we did not get that (at least for the senators I was hoping). And yes, it would also have been *really nice* for there to be a stronger repudiation of the current president as well.
Eternal judgment: still believe they’ll face that down and that they will not enjoy the process. But I wanna see them shut down and taken out of power NOW!
Also, thank you for your chatty posts yesterday!
I too am very disappointed and disheartened by the fact that all the bigotry and harm caused to so many of our fellow Americans, doesn’t seem to matter to half the voting population. I would have loved a landslide that ended the election last night but I didn’t expect it. It is very, very sad. I think Biden will win and there won’t be a coup but a big tantrum that won’t amount to much. Listening to his fake winning statement last night I heard a scared man who knows it’s over.
I’m thinking today about what I can do for my immediate community and plan on spending more time doing that. I am moving forward whether the country chooses to or not.
Thanks also for the distraction threads. That was very helpful for me!
This is kind of OT, but I have seen a couple of links today to this article about how people are conditioned to expect suffering to be rewarded. This is like the flip side of the idea that bad behavior will be punished, right? Both of these narratives are coping mechanisms to help us deal with an indifferent universe, and there are many, many stories (especially religious ones) that reinforce the idea that Behavior/Experience A will be followed by Consequence/Reward B. It’s confusing and upsetting when the narrative does not play out in reality.
I have a coping thought for such situations. I am not an American but sometimes repugnant candidates get far too many votes where I am, too. The coping thought is that some of those voters are moral enough to recognise the offensiveness of the candidate (and so maybe I can live with knowing that they live among us) but they feel compelled for reasons of their single issue to vote for that candidate, whose win they see as a lesser of evils. And yet, I’m am still wincing in disgust.
I’m so sorry that this is happening. I wish I could help. We have had our own terrible election, it is so very dispiriting.
If you don’t already, you should follow Dan Rather on Twitter. He’s so calm, so knowledgeable & so reassuring. Put facts into perspective and just makes me feel much better.
My sorrow is that more people voted for a racist, fascist self centered grifter in 2020 than 2016. MORE PEOPLE. Last time I could rationalize that some people expected a pivot or whatever, but in 2020 you know exactly what you are signing up for.
This is who we are? Really America?