Wednesday, November 9, 2016

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | November 6, 2018 |

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | November 6, 2018 |

Welcome to election day, folks. For better or worse, it’ll all be over by this time tomorrow. I’m not sure how to use this space this morning. I doubt we need a get-out-the-vote operation on Pajiba, where I suspect the turnout — even during the midterms — is above 95 percent, and we have a lot of readers overseas who genuinely feel as invested in all of this as we do. You folks are good people. I mean, you complain a lot. And sometimes, you zero in on the thing that matters the least to complain about, and some of you (I won’t name any names) are mean drunks, but you all are good folks.

In general, too, the turnout operation across the country has been amazing this year. I’ve had three lovely, wonderful people come to my door at separate times over the last week just to remind me to vote, and I appreciate the hell out of them. One lady told me yesterday that she’s working the polls, and if I don’t show up, she’ll know. “Yes ma’am,” I said. “I won’t let you down, ma’am.” It’s hard to believe that this is a midterm election, and I know for a lot of Democrats, especially, that you’re more enthusiastic about voting against Donald Trump than you’ve been about voting for a candidate since probably Obama in 2008. Some of you are probably looking at your school board races where there’s no party affiliation and just voting for the name that sounds the least like Trump. I get it. Fuck Sally Strump. I don’t care how many box lunches she makes for the school kids in need every day.

There’s not much point this morning in rehashing whatever bullshit Trump ejaculated from his cloaca mouth last night, or what Sean Hannity had to say, or what racist assertion Brian Kemp made yesterday (but that Black Panthers tweet? JESUS, dude). Minds are made up. You’re going to polls or you’re not. Some of you have already been. Some of you are reading this from your phones while waiting in line. Thank you.

I guess I’ll just say this: The hardest post I’ve ever written was on the morning of Wednesday, November 9, 2016, and that’s saying something considering that we called the race for John Kerry at 3 p.m. on election day in 2004, and that we got it so wrong we basically stopped writing about politics for the better part of a decade. I just remember staring at my computer screen on November 9th, stunned, with no idea what to say. What am I going to write? How do I do this? Where’s the silver lining? Are these results going to hold up? How do you move ahead? Are we going to quit politics again? This is too hard. THEY’RE GOING TO BLAME ME, AREN’T THEY?

I think, however, I went with something along the lines of, “Remember this feeling.” It was a common refrain during the first many, many months of the Trump administration. During the Women’s march. While we were all out protesting the Muslim ban. When we marched for healthcare. When the GOP backed the NRA after that school shooting … and that one … and that one. “Remember this feeling.” In the last two years, though, it’s like that feeling is now baked in. It’s our permanent state of being, and I’d really like to wake up tomorrow morning without that feeling.

But I don’t know what’s going to happen. I trust the polls right up until election day, at which point they are meaningless. I love the huge turnout this year, but I also know that there are a lot of Republicans voting to own the libs. I expect we’ll win the House and lose the Senate. I’m OK with that result. In fact, I’d be very happy with that result. I’d like to see Gillum and Abrams win. I don’t expect Ted Cruz or Steve King to lose, but nothing would bring me more joy. What I don’t want to do is spend the next six months dissecting how the Democrats botched this. What they did wrong. How they could’ve performed better. How we can learn from our mistakes as we head into 2020. There is nothing more exhausting than an election autopsy when you’re on the losing side, and besides, I genuinely don’t think there’s much more Democrats could have done. We have fielded a historic number of female candidates, and people of color, and we raised a ton of money, and knocked on so many doors, and if we’re going to go down, I’d rather go down that way than with a bunch of middle-of-the-road white dudes.

I’ve got nothing else for you. I’ve written a politics post almost every single morning for the last 2 years (or 3 years, really), and I don’t know if it makes things better or worse or neither, but no matter the outcome, we’ll be here for you tomorrow, one way or another. Tonight, we’ll also have an open post, should you want to grieve or celebrate amongst Internet friends while JS (probably) drops a lot of wonky political intel in the comments throughout the night.

Good luck. Godspeed. Vote.