Election Night in America

By BARRY FRIEDMAN

During the early evening on Nov. 8, 2016, I was headed out the door to do election commentary for The Frontier, a news website in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when I passed my television and saw that with about 91% of the Florida vote in, Donald Trump was leading Hillary Clinton.

This was not supposed to happen.

I had a sick feeling … nah.

It was going to be a historic night, as America was about to elect the first female president. After Barack Obama was elected in 2008, outgoing Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said: “One of the great things about representing this country is that it continues to surprise. It continues to renew itself. It continues to beat all odds and expectations. You just know that Americans are not going to be satisfied until they really do form that perfect union and while that perfect union may never be in sight, we just keep working at it and trying.”

This was going to be another such night.

By the time I got to the studio, it was clear Trump was going to win Florida. After the debacle of the 2000 election, though, no network was calling it.

OK, but Clinton didn’t have to have Florida, remember?

We’re going to be fine. Fine.

Ziva Brandstetter, one of Frontier’s founders (she’s now with ProPublica and doing some of the best investigative work in the country), had brought her son to witness history being made. She also brought snacks and Absolute Peach Vodka.

Things were soon not fine.

Nobody drank, nobody snacked, nobody smiled as the returns came in. As the evening went on, it was clear Clinton needed Pennsylvania to win the presidency, which was not going to happen — same with Wisconsin and Michigan.

Each time a state was called for Trump or one wasn’t for Clinton, the pall in the room got heavier, thicker. I think it was Rachel Maddow, who finally said the words, “It is clear Donald Trump is going to be the next president of the United States.”

Ziva opened the vodka.

She tried to put the election into perspective for her son.

“This is awful,” I said, talking about the peach in the vodka.

Or maybe I was talking about the sense in the country.

In 2016, America got cancer; in 2020, it went into remission; in 2024, it came back with a vengeance.

Some didn’t fear the cancer, though, but welcomed it. Some felt immune to it. The country needed gutting; the swamp needed draining.

Trump was the chemotherapy.

Bring it on.

I was at a friend’s this past Nov. 5 — another night that was going to be historic, an African American woman might be president. The TV was on, iPads were flickering, instant messages were sending and being received. The night turned out to be the 5th Inning of Game 5 of the World Series if you were a Yankees fan.

Actually, no, that wasn’t it.

Harris was never up 5-0. She didn’t blow the lead. She never had it. She didn’t flip one state; she didn’t win one state Biden didn’t win. Forget Georgia, North Carolina, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan — she barely won Virginia. The only good news between 7 and 9 CST was that news wasn’t worse. On MSNBC,Lawrence O’Donnell complained about the Electoral College, Symone Sanders talked about the effect the bomb threats had on turnout, and Jen Psaki and Michael Steele told us to relax.

They were right.

But it was pathetic.

The pollsters weren’t wrong. Our hearts were.

Democrats in the time of Trump are mostly scar tissue. Where was the Blue Wave? The talk about Harris’s ground game, the campaign’s infrastructure — or more to the point, Trump’s lack of such things — proved laughable. For weeks, Trump unraveled before our eyes, and it didn’t matter. He called the nation he wants to lead “the garbage can of the world,” and it didn’t matter. In October, he channeled the German American Bund Rally of 1939, and it didn’t matter. He turned Arlington Cemetery into a backdrop for a campaign photo, and it didn’t matter.

In (fill in the year), he (fill in his action), and it didn’t matter.

You know all this.

I asked James Cullen, my editor here at The Progressive Populist, if I could turn this column in on the Wednesday after the election, instead of the Tuesday deadline.

He agreed.

My hope was to write about a Harris victory and to compliment those Americans who had been undecided the election — apparently that was possible — but voted to save the Republic that Tuesday. Better angels and all that. The column was to be, as Rice talked about, a nod to the American renewal, its next step towards a better union.

Had Trump lost, the Republican autopsy would have been easy: in the future, don’t nominate a felonious, crude, fascist wannabe. Don’t threaten to frogmarch 11 million out of the country. Don’t go “down” on microphones in front of children. Don’t allow women to die in hospital parking lots waiting to get an emergency abortion. Don’t listen to Elon Musk. Don’t threaten to jail your political opponents and shoot journalists.

So what exactly are Democrats supposed to learn from this? Kamala Harris ran an almost flawless campaign. She was energetic and effusive and articulate. She was light to Trump’s darkness. There was no Comey letter, no Clinton or Obama fatigue, no campaign missteps in a battleground state, no problem getting the message out.

Americans knew her. Americans knew him.

And Americans chose him … again.

The lesson is what we learned about ourselves … again.

My exasperation with that — how many years already? — is exhausting, even to me.

Peach vodka doesn’t get better the more you drink it.

Barry Friedman is an essayist, political columnist, petroleum geology reporter — quit laughing — and comedian living in Tulsa, Okla. His latest book, “Jack Sh*t, Volume 2: Wait For The Movie. It’s In Color” is the follow-up to “Jack Sh*t: Volume One: Voluptuous Bagels and other Concerns of Jack Friedman.” He is also author of “Road Comic,” “Funny You Should Mention It,” “Four Days and a Year Later,” “The Joke Was On Me,” and a novel, “Jacob Fishman’s Marriages.” See barrysfriedman.com and friedmanoftheplains.com.

From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2024

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